Leasing signage was tacked up not too long ago at the Dolce Midtown apartment development straddling Bailey St. along the north side of W. Gray, notes a reader relaying years of curiosity about the project’s slow-but-maybe-not-always-so-steady progress. The development’s website doesn’t offer any clues as to when move-in might be possible, but the company has opened a leasing office down the street (in one of the not-getting-knocked-down-any-time-soon segments of the River Oaks Shopping Center).
A few of the hawk-eyed cranewatchers over at HAIF claim to have spotted some backward clock-ticks on the work in the form of partial de- and re-construction of the 2 midrises’ upper stories during late 2015, possibly related to all the torrential rain that year on the building’s siding and wooden framing. But the buildings apparently re-reached their full heights not long after; as of last Friday, there’re even some relatively complete-looking facade sections on the eastern midrise (as shown above). The western building of the 2 still looks to have only been issued its Hardi-plank balcony flaps, however:
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The skybridge across Bailey St. previously planned between the midrises also has yet to materialize:
The exterior design of the structures has undergone a significant facial reconstruction or 2 since the project’s first introduction back in 2013. The newest renderings of the complex from the management company show the eastern building’s non-parking-levels floorplan as a U facing away from W. Gray, with a pool courtyard tucked into the nook — just barely subverting the full Texas Donut look, though embracing plenty of classic corner tower mortarboard accents:
- Dolce Midtown [Pace Realty Corporation]
- Previously on Swamplot: Mysterious Midtown Fire Blackens Fuzzy’s Tacos to Crispy Shell; Apartments Moving In on Freedman’s Town Rowhouse Lot
Images: Lulu (photos), Dolce Living (rendering)
No first floor retail? ;)
Don’t slack on the snark, it’s GFR.
This multi-family project was started when oil was $120/barrel. As the slide to $20/b happened
construction slowed to a skeleton crew. Now that its up to $50 they do a bit of stucco and window
work now and then. Not sure any electrical is proceeding. I understand this is a project of Vladimir Putin
through a US subsidiary and the funding comes from Moscow.
38 months is nothing compared to other apartment under construction on West Gray near Woodhead. I think that place has been under construction since 2010.
Given how slow the building pace has been and speculated to be tied to the price of oil, this could be the SPR (Strategic Petroleum Reserve) of apartments.
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Kept in storage/stasis, it will be ready to release on the market once we have a true apartment supply shortage. (Which will be never.) An alternative fact/theory could be they are going for a world-record in being the longest to take to build an apartment complex.
@Bernard….. 1916 W. Gray has been under construction since at least early 2013, maybe earlier than that. It was announced 2 years before that.
@walker- parking requirements make mixed use at this scale very difficult. Also increases the cost of the development exponentially. $30,000 on average is the cost of a structured parking space.
#EndParkingMinimums
Does anyone know the latest on this languishing apartment construction project? I mean, WTF.
@HTX Just noticed that Roscoe Properties is at least managing the property now. They may have purchased or took over leasing recently because it wasn’t listed on their website a few weeks ago.
Roscoe’s website states the first move-ins at Dolce Living will be Oct 2018. That obviously wont happen, but good to see another company has taken over.
To expand on cmoney’s point: a 700-sf 1BR apartment requires 1.33 parking spaces. At 350 sf per parking space, that’s a ratio of 1.5 sf of rentable space per sf of parking. A 1000-sf 2BR apartment requires 1.66 parking spaces, for a ratio of 1.7 sf of rentable space per sf of parking.
GFR requires 4 parking spaces for every 1000 sf. More if restaurants are a high proportion of the square footage, and restaurants are usually a high proportion of the square footage. That’s a ratio of 0.7. If it’s structured parking, those 4 parking spaces add $120,000 to the cost of each 1000 sf of retail space. That retail space is competing for tenants with other projects. If land value is, say, $60/sf, a standalone retail space with surface parking is providing parking about $80,000 per 1000 sf of built space, which is $40/sf cheaper. For restaurants, it’s $100/sf cheaper, since the parking minimum is 2.5x higher.
So the developer has to ask himself if it’s worthwhile to build retail space at a 15-25% cost disadvantage to his competition, or if he can demand a 15-25% rent premium to justify the extra costs. The lack of GFR in these kinds of projects will persist until either (a) land values increase to the point where structured and surface parking costs the same, (b) structured parking costs decrease to the point where structured and surface parking costs the same (e.g. automated parking structures), or (c) we stop requiring some much g.d. parking.