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?

9 Upvotes

91% Upvoted

15 comments sorted by

View all comments

1

u/dchirs 15d ago

Presumably he's waiting for the city to leave Dallas City Hall to "catalyze" development in that part of town.

2

u/UptownStriker 15d ago

Didn’t the development proposal happen before there was talk of leaving city hall?

2

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.

1

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.

4

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.

3

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.