Work to begin in weeks on new Uptown tower at Hard Rock site

one-dallasstoneleigh1-copy-600

After hiring Dallas-based Hunt Construction Group, an out-of-state development group is readying to start developing a 20-story luxury high-rise on the former Hard Rock Cafe site in Uptown.

The tower will be one of the tallest, and most high-profile developments in the neighborhood.

Illinois-based Stoneleigh Companies LLC, along with Dallas-based Cheng Investments, recently submitted its building permits to get started on the 20-story residential and retail tower at the northeast corner of McKinney Avenue and Routh Street.

“We are going to start site utility work in the next two or three weeks and start digging a hole in June,”Stoneleigh President Rick Cavenaugh said.

The hole will be twice as deep as the holeGables Residential recently dug to build an underground parking garage below the soon-to-be Whole Foods-anchoreddevelopment on the kitty-corner site to the Hard Rock tract.

Hunt Construction will excavate about 65 feet deep, or about six-and-a-half levels of parking garage totaling about 480 parking spaces, Cavenaugh told me.

“In comparison, Trammell Crow Center is about 70 feet down, but that was a much larger site,” he said, adding the development group selected Hunt Construction for the 1-acre site after interviewing six contractors in a competitive bidding process.

“This is a big project,” Cavenaugh told me. “This is a high-profile project that will be one of the tallest buildings in the area with high-end finishes and high-end tenants.”

Cavenaugh is finalizing the retail tenants for the tower, which includes about 30,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space. The project also includes 200 luxury apartments homes.

Waterford Residential was hired to be the management company for the tower, with apartments being leased for $2.25 to $2.50 per square foot. Phil Shepherd is the project architect.

If construction begins in June, he says he expects to complete the project in March 2016.

Source: http://www.bizjournals.com/dallas/news/2014/04/21/work-to-begin-in-weeks-on-new-uptown-tower-at-hard.html