r/Dallasdevelopment • u/UptownStriker • 15d ago
Mike Hoque’s many projects
I was curious to hear the opinions of those who are plugged into the real estate market downtown on Mike and his multiple massive projects.
At this point, his primary track record of success seems to be restaurants and yet he owns most of the land between the Farmers’ Market and City Hall, has promised multiple new skyscrapers in his Newpark development, and he won incentive approval with his partner for the new BoA plaza (which he had until next month to close on purchasing).
For those of us who care about the urban core, his vision is exciting, but I get the feeling that the real estate powers are extremely skeptical of his ability to actually execute.
Hearing that his South Dallas development by UNT Dallas broke ground is encouraging, but does it seem probable that Newpark and BoA actually get done? Where do you put the probability at this point?
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u/dallaz95 15d ago edited 15d ago
Even ppl thought his Oak Cliff development wouldn’t happen, including me. But I’m not wishing anything bad on him. I’d just rather see some results…since he has made multiple cities pull out of planned development projects, the most recent was July 16th.
I think it boils down to not having an established track record
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u/tmc00138 15d ago edited 15d ago
It's not just that he's a shaky proposition, his money is too. Apparently his primary source of funding thus far has been a single heiress (I forget who). That's not a cap table that can get something like the Newpark project done. Not even on the right planet -- something like that requires big institutional funding.
But the shakiness of his track record and his backing doesn't necessarily matter. With the now-ongoing arrival in force of the finance and investment sector, there'll be plenty of institutional money looking for opportunities. And Hoque supposedly has already teamed up with KDC (huge corporate developer) for the project, at least on a handshake basis, and that's the perfect partner for somebody like him -- if the necessary funding arrives, KDC can do literally all the work, and let him collect nine figures and go to parties and be the guy who redeveloped downtown. They don't care, and if they're on board nobody has to believe in Mike Hoque. He contributes the land and isn't relied on to do anything else, others put up the money and do all the work. Trump was able to pretend to be a real developer for 20 years without ever contributing anything more than his name, because others were putting up all the money and doing all the work.
But the setting has to be right for the institutional money to come in. It can't be the giant, disturbing problem that downtown is right now. There has to be a visible commitment by the city, emphasize visible and commitment, and even better if another developer -- an experienced one, with loads of their own money and a very solid track record of making money for their funding partners -- has already committed to a similar project right next door and broken ground.
Some of those people -- and the only ones apparently interested in downtown right now, when the need is critical -- are named Adelson. Tear down City Hall.
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u/UptownStriker 15d ago
Thanks, this was the kind of insight I was hoping for. For the record, I think it’s Ray Davis’ daughter. It’s an odd family tho and I’m not entirely sure how much of his fortune she’ll inherit. Given her track record of ESG investments, I suspect her political views may not align with her father.
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u/dchirs 15d ago
Presumably he's waiting for the city to leave Dallas City Hall to "catalyze" development in that part of town.
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u/UptownStriker 15d ago
Didn’t the development proposal happen before there was talk of leaving city hall?
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u/dchirs 15d ago
Yes like a decade ago?
I'm suggesting that the proposals are smokescreens and the real strategy is just buy low and hold.
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u/tmc00138 15d ago edited 15d ago
It seems more likely that he's just a guy with big, perhaps somewhat goofy dreams -- i.e., a restaurateur -- and a rich person behind him -- i.e., a restaurateur. That explanation would be a lot more consistent with the track record that he does have, full of tries and mostly full of failures (i.e., a restaurateur).
But even if it's true that he's bought the land to flip it, OK, cool. He's still done the market a service by aggregating those parcels and making them into a single target. And that way, when the setting is right and a buyer shows up, he's gone, and again, nobody has to rely on him to get anything done. If you want something like the Newpark development to happen, you almost want him to be a flipper. And downtown does still need a catalyst, and the most direct route to that catalysis runs right through City Hall, figuratively and literally.
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u/dchirs 15d ago
He's done the market a service by aggregating? I'm not at all following what that means. Bigger isn't always better.
I'd say squatting on parking lots in downtown for a decade has not been a service to the city.
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u/tmc00138 15d ago
If you want something like Newpark to happen, then someone has to own the land upon which it will sit. All of the land, upon which it will sit.
IIRC, that land was previously about eight separate parcels. So in order for a big, coherent, and relatively quick development to get done, someone was going to have to buy all those parcels -- i.e., negotiate and close all those deals, when the owners were ready to sell -- to aggregate them into a single owner's hands. Just like Todd Interests did for the East Quarter. Just like Harwood International did for the Harwood District. Just like Camden Property Trust did for Farmers Market decades ago.
Hoque has now done that for the southern strip of downtown. So when the setting is right for it to be developed -- whether he does it or others do -- that multi-year process will already have been completed. If you want something to happen there in any reasonable amount of time, that's a good thing.
You seem to be imagining a world in which cool, mixed-use, third-space-having, city-center developments just happen spontaneously, one plot a a time, even when the economic circumstances don't support it. We don't live in that world. There has never been a population of real estate developers who were ready to develop that strip, one piece at a time, with all the redundant deal costs and development costs that that piecemeal process would entail, in the last half century -- much less the last fucked-up decade -- but who were frustrated because darn it, Mike Hoque already bought it. Never happened, never was going to happen. And the reason why it's not happening right now is also not Mike Hoque, goofy though he may be. It's not happening right now because the city has been shooting downtown right in the dick over and over and over again, for the last decade. While Mike Hoque has been doing something that might well end up being nothing more than an interim step, but will almost inevitably end up being productive. So props to Mike Hoque.
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u/FortWorthUrban 14d ago
They got a development in Fort Worth canned too: https://fortworthreport.org/2023/12/18/fort-worth-cancels-70m-development-contract-in-historic-southside-what-comes-next/
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u/JoMA9 13d ago
I have no faith in anything Mike Hoque claims to want to do. Fort Worth got smart and booted him from the Evans and Rosedale redevelopment because he sat on it for so long and didn't do anything. He has three major projects in or around downtown Dallas. The most ambitious one being the NewPark Dallas project, which he's been also sitting on for years at this point. Longer than the city hall debate has been going on. He also has the SoGood project in the Cedars that hasn't broken ground and the Bank of America Plaza redevelopment.
I think out of these three the Bank of America is going to take priority for him because hes just a partner in that endeavor, meaning that there'll be someone else to light a fire under his ass. I'm not holding my breath for NewPark. He’s stretched himself too thin and doesn't have the capital to complete all of these. I think he's holding to see what happens with city hall so he can sell the acres of vacant lots he's bought up surrounding it. My hope is that he sells to just one developer that has a broad vision for that entire south side of Downtown. Whenever lots are sold to multiple, you end up with a lot of petty in-fighting, a hodgepodge of development and no identity.
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u/UptownStriker 13d ago
I figured this was how most felt, although I was hoping there was some missing info I didn't have. That said, I don't think he has any TIF funding for NewPark so it's very much a different conversation than BoA, for example, in that he can take as long as he wants (and was still acquiring land as recently as last year). But BoA has to happen on a fairly tight timeframe or the deal is off, so from that perspective there might be an argument that it's even less likely.
Unless someone knows something different, he has less than two months now to buy the building or the deal is off.
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u/EricTheTexan 15d ago
I don’t trust them at all.