Southern Dallas’ Redbird Mall Revitalization Brings Access, Talent, And Purchasing Power To The Area – Including A 150,000-SF Medical Center

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Five years after launching the redevelopment of Redbird Mall in Southern Dallas, owner and developer Peter Brodsky has proven his thesis—the demand for a vibrant mixed-use development south of Interstate 30 in Dallas is a sustainable investment that generates a profit.

Rendering: Reimagine Redbird

Reimagine Redbird, the revitalization project of a historic 1975 mall in Southern Dallas, is now home to the only Starbucks in the 208 square miles of Southern Dallas and the location is the No. 3 top performing Starbucks in the city. The development has created 1,000 living wage call center jobs with Chime Solutions, Class A apartments at the Palladium Redbird, the DEC—a thriving incubator space for entrepreneurs, and more.

“I am excited that a short five years later, we’ve really got momentum here,” said Brodsky, at a Wednesday, March 31 Tomorrow Fund Investors virtual meeting. “I think people are really understanding that this is a market to be addressed and it has to be addressed thoughtfully because there is a history there that has to be grappled with. But fundamentally, if you provide people the opportunity and the access, they’re going to rise to the occasion.”

Mike Rosa, DRC Senior Vice President of Economic Development, moderated the virtual discussion with Brodsky, which highlighted Chime Solutions CEO Mark Wilson’s expansion at Redbird and Brodsky’s update on the growing development.

Here are three key takeaways from Brodsky’s Reimagine Redbird development:

Room to Grow

Southern Dallas’ 208 square miles make up 54 percent of the City of Dallas’ land mass and 40 percent of the city’s population, yet it is only 15 percent of the tax base.

While past policies have left Southern Dallas underinvested and underdeveloped, Brodsky said the demand for services in the market creates a great opportunity for investors to build value in the community and generate an investment.

“There’s just been a lot of highways going through communities and there’s been a lot of landlords who don’t invest in their properties or put in amenities that are viewed as exploitive, such as payday lending,” Brodsky said. “So, we’ve invested a huge amount of time and effort to make sure that there’s trust with the community.”

The lack of real estate is visible in office space comparisons where about 95 percent of office space in Dallas is north of Interstate 30 and only five percent of office space is south of Interstate 30.

“That means 40 percent of the of population in Dallas can’t work where they live,” Brodsky said.

In a forgotten part of the city that lacks almost every amenity from restaurants to medical care facilities, Brodsky has been building bridges and creating partnerships throughout Dallas to attract every quality of life vertical to the site. Historically only served by one hospital, Methodist Health System, Redbird is now leasing 150,000 square feet of space to UT Southwestern Medical Center and is working with Parkland and Children’s Hospital on new space at the site. Development plans also include a Courtyard by Marriott, the area’s first branded hotel.

Access to Talent

In two years, Chime Solutions’ call center at Redbird has grown by 30,000 square feet with 1,000 living wage jobs, said Chime Solutions CEO Mark Wilson.

“Our run in Dallas as a company has been one that has been really gratifying and fulfilling,” Wilson said. “It has lived up to all of the promise that was put before us in my initial conversations with Peter Brodsky and those who introduced Redbird to us.”

Chime Solutions focuses on providing access to living wage jobs in underserved communities like Southern Dallas. The company partnered with Paul Quinn College to provide 25 students in a leadership program the opportunity to work with its client Kaiser Permanente on a project and it hopes to expand the partnership to surrounding universities.

“In a lot of these communities where, we as a company, have a focus today, there’s a lot of talent that’s really pent-up and hasn’t had a chance to see the light of day,” Wilson said. “Our company is really focused on trying to change that dynamic and doing whatever we can to cultivate, identify, and develop the talent that is there but just needs that investment.”

The company sees low employee turnover due to social programming investments it makes in its team, such as financial, homeownership and real estate classes and plans to provide a daycare on site.

“We’re looking forward to the day when a major international Fortune 500 company wants to be in the area because they see the workforce demographics at Redbird are the same at 75 and LBJ,” Brodsky said.

Dallas is also a hotspot for the company’s business development, Wilson said. In the last 90 days, Chime Solutions has signed commitments with Toyota, Cigna, Google, Humana, Dallas County, and more.

“Dallas has presented very nicely an opportunity for our company to exercise on our mission, but also do what we need to for our clients,” Wilson said.

Southern Dallas Is A ‘Great Location’

Located at Interstate 20 and State Highway 67, Redbird is closer to Downtown Dallas than the Galleria Mall.The site sits across the street from City of Dallas’s District 3, which is the largest middle-class district in Dallas.

“It’s well located and it’s a great place for a development,” Brodsky said. “It has a solidly middle-class audience. There are a lot of assets in the community that draw people from all over the city.”

In addition to the No. 3 performing Starbucks in the city, the area is home to many African American mega churches and education institutions, including Paul Quinn College, UNT Dallas, Dallas Baptist University, Mountain View College, and Cedar Valley College.

Recent data shows the average income of Redbird Starbucks patrons is between $75,000 and $100,000 a year in an area with no other amenities to frequent, Brodsky said.

The surrounding purchasing power is one of the reasons Redbird never closed despite years of neglect. As the only covered mall in Southern Dallas, it has become a symbol of quality over time.

“Let’s bring people to Southern Dallas and provide opportunities for the people who live there, and we’ll all grow together because a higher tax base is going to benefit everyone,” Brodsky said.

 

Source: Dallas Innovates

Colorado Health System Building $150M Orthopedic-Focused Hospital With ASC, Medical Office Building

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Colorado Springs, Colo.-based Penrose-St. Francis Health Services plans to build a 72-bed orthopedic and spine hospital on a 57.8-acre parcel of land in Colorado Springs, The Colorado Springs Business Journal reported on Feb. 18.

The health system will pay $150 million to develop the hospital, which will also have an ASC and medical office building. The development will also have a retail portion.

The hospital will have 10 operating rooms and a 12-bed emergency department. Penrose-St. Francis anticipates opening the facility in 2023.

After it opens, the system will redirect some orthopedic and spine cases to the new facility.

 

Source: Becker’s ASC Review

Real Estate

Texas Is ‘Going Big’ In Biopharma

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Texas wants to get the word out: It’s not just for oil and pipelines anymore.

The Lone Star State is a rapidly emerging biopharma hub, with more than just a lone focus on oncology. Houston and Austin are home to some of the top up-and-coming biopharma companies, and real estate powerhouses like Hines are anchoring major new developments with them.

Ridgeline Therapeutics is one such company, established in 2012 and spun out of technology invented by founder and CEO Stan Watowich at the University of Texas Medical Branch. Ridgeline develops small molecule inhibitors of nicotinamide N-methyltransferase (NNMT) to reverse Type 2 diabetes, obesity, muscular dystrophies and sarcopenia (age-related muscle degeneration).

During the past year, the company has begun to ramp up, hiring, applying for funding, developing the program and advancing projects closer to IND filing and clinical trials. How has their residence within JLABS@TMC, part of the Johnson & Johnson Innovation-JLABS incubator ecosystem, helped during this year of rapid acceleration?

“Working in Houston, for a biotech company, I think is great,” Watowich said. “The ecosystem, it’s not small, but it’s not out of control, so you can actually get to know many of the other companies, the other CEOs, see what they’re up to, share ideas, thoughts…the even bigger thing is you have access to all of these academic labs.”

Texas, and Houston in particular, has certainly caught the attention of the real estate development market. Audrey Symes, Director of Research, Healthcare, Life Sciences and Advisory at JLL, an American commercial real estate services company, explains why the city is at the top of their up-and-coming markets list.

“There are a couple markets that are right at the gate, ready to go, but I would say that the number one that is really emergent right now is Houston,” Symes said. “Houston has an amazing network of both medical practitioners and incubators, universities such as Baylor [The Baylor College of Medicine], the Texas Medical Center, and MD Anderson I think is the premier cancer research hospital in the US if not the world. So Houston has been really at the precipice of rising into the next rank for quite some time.”

Academic institutions rounding out the illustrious network include Rice University, The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston,  Texas A&M University, and The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas.

“You have a lot of idea flow coming out of this, and a lot of people thinking about starting companies,” Watowich explained.

With the commanding presence of the MD Anderson Cancer Center, the largest cancer center in the U.S., and one of the most preeminent in the world, the assumption would be that oncology is the state’s number one focus. According to Watowich, it is only at the center of a wide range of therapeutic passions:

“I would say oncology is definitely a strength in the medical center,” said Watowich. “Because you have MD Anderson, you have the Baylor college of medicine, you have some of the hospitals with their specialized care. But I would say neurological diseases are a strength, metabolic diseases are a strength, muscular diseases are a strength…it’s hard to say where there’s not a strength.”

Hines is a privately owned global real estate investment, development, and management firm traditionally known for its office spaces. The company has been diversifying significantly during the past decade, and two of their key focus areas – life sciences and senior living– mirror two of society’s biggest current priorities: healthcare and the rapidly aging population.

In July, Hines finalized a deal with 2ML Real Estate Interests to build a mixed-use life sciences and technology-based development called Levit Green, next to the Texas Medical Center. The company plans to break ground on the phase I building in the third quarter of 2021 and complete construction in late 2022.

“It’s not often that an organization can have the opportunity to develop 50 plus acres adjacent to the largest medical center on the planet. That opportunity came along, and we thought it was absolutely intuitive that you could marry up that type of opportunity next to something like the Texas Medical Center,” said John Mooz, a senior managing director, and market head of Houston/Austin/San Antonio at Hines.

For industry and real estate developers alike, the cost of building, and cost of living can often make the difference when deciding where to locate.

“In our trying to understand what the best end-users are for Levit Green, I do think they will be both organically from here, but also locating from either coast where among other things, it’s expensive to build relative to Houston,” Mooz said. “You have gross rates that top $100 psf, and Houston can be almost half of that. And when you’re looking at a company with early-stage funding, that can be a huge difference. So I would argue that Houston can attract top talent and top organizations with an incredibly affordable quality of life, and strong diverse, cultural offerings. With the global oncology pharmaceutical market projected to be worth approximately $200 billion by 2023, Houston is primed to move to the top of any emerging life sciences cluster list. That’s a pretty strong trajectory in a place that spends a lot of time studying cancer. You combine it next to a medical center that has over 9,200 beds, and we have, by anyone’s count, somewhere in the order of 1100-1200 clinical trials going on right now.”

For all of its merits, Texas is still growing into the biopharma mentality when it comes to capital investment.

“Where Texas really falls behind is capital,” Watowich said. “It’s not that they don’t have money…most of the money is from pipeline and it’s hard to get them to understand that investing in biotech per se isn’t really that different from doing a very deep offshore oil well. The risks are comparable, the timeline’s comparable, and the money’s comparable.”

Watowich is working with other Houston and Texas leaders to launch the Accelerator for Cancer Therapeutics. This Accelerator will assist entrepreneurs aiming to turn their research discoveries into clinical-stage biotech companies supported by forward-thinking investors and non-dilutive funding.

“People need to be willing and accepting of taking risks. And culturally, that doesn’t happen everywhere,” said Travis McCready, Executive Director, U.S. Life Sciences Markets at JLL. “The three mega markets that exemplify this are greater Boston, the Bay area, and San Diego. They (Houston) have a really glowing and exciting creative scene, and I like the creative economy as a measure and metric of risk.”

“The other key for Texas is an injection of privately-led development dedicated to the life sciences market, Mooz said. “Texas Medical Center, I believe is the eighth largest business district in the United States, and the work and the development that’s gone on there is astounding. It’s mostly by in-place organizations and not privately-led development, and that’s what’s been missing. I think what we really need is purpose-built facilities to accommodate all of that R&D, and that’s what we’re trying to answer.”

 

Source: BioSpace