Jonas Woods’ Pacific Elm Properties scored a $132.5 million recapitalization for a massive office-to-residential conversion in downtown Dallas.
CIM Group provided the loan for the 50-story Santander Tower at 1601 Elm Street downtown, the Dallas Business Journal reported. The debt is a win for Pacific Elm, which had a recent brush with foreclosure on a downtown residential holding and lost its stake in the Comerica Bank Tower at 1717 Main Street last year.
The financing backs the second phase of Pacific Elm’s Peridot Residences, a 396-unit apartment conversion spread across non-contiguous floors of the tower. The first phase delivered 291 units last year. The CIM loan will fund the second phase of construction, which will include 105 apartments.
When finished, the building will balance rentals with 858,000 square feet of office space, the two-story Mint House hotel, the private Tower Club and ground-floor retail.
About 350,000 square feet of office leases have been signed at the tower since the redevelopment launched. Those include New York-based law firm Wilson Elser, which downsized into 19,000 square feet on the 26th floor late last year. Santander Consumer USA, the auto lender and namesake tenant, occupies more than 200,000 square feet.
The project is indicative of Dallas’ wave of adaptive reuse downtown, where some office landlords are racing to meet residential demand. Pacific Elm, led by Jonas Woods and backed by billionaire Tom Dundon, emerged as a central player in that shift. The firm’s holdings include six Class A towers spanning 4.4 million square feet. It also owns Bryan Tower, at 2001 Bryan Street, where it’s planning another office-to-apartment conversion.
Santander Tower was among North Texas’ largest office properties, with 1.4 million square feet. Its repositioning signals how owners of even the region’s trophy assets are recalibrating toward mixed-use — a trend reshaping the Dallas skyline as work patterns and tenant priorities evolve.— Eric Weilbacher
Read more
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CIM Group offloads apartments in Dallas’ highest-rent submarket
Pacific Elm Scores $280M construction loan for Parkside Uptown
Santander Tower’s resi conversion moves forward
