The Most Expensive (and Largest) High Rise Homes on Turtle Creek, Ltd Edition 2505, Officially for Sale Saturday

Oh this one just gives me shivers — cannot wait to see the completed project, and it won’t be long now. Groundbreaking is scheduled shortly after the New Year, and I understand construction fences are going up even as I type. Everything the folks at Great Gulf do is a total Class Act, from the hot starchitect who is nurturing the project, Siamak Hariri, to hand-delivering the press release to my office with a box of delicious dark chocolates.

(I wonder if all the real estate reporters in town got the same chocolates because if so, I may just try to snag Steve Brown’s!)

The news is out that Ltd. Edition 2505 Turtle Creek will begin official sales on Saturday. Contracts have been printed, and the HOA docs are hot off the presses. I am glad to hear this because I spoke with Siamak Hariri in September for an update. I don’t think a starchitect has ever been more psyched about a project. Christopher Wein, the president of Great Gulf, the Toronto-based developer, says “discerning Dallas buyers looking for an alternative to the traditional low-rise estate home will find it here.”

Right there on Turtle Creek, where the views really are unparalleled.  I was at a dinner party a week ago on Turtle Creek and we just supped on the magnificent view of downtown for several minutes.

“The site is really the strongest amenity,” says Katye Sloan, who, along with Jeffrey Lester, are the Briggs-Freeman Sotheby’s team marketing Ltd Edition 2505.

The $225 million project has a sexy, curvaceous exterior of light gray masonry and glass. Great Gulf has been working on plans for a development here since 2008, when it acquired the land.

The structure will feature ten foot ceilings, expansive terraces, hardwood flooring and double-sided fireplaces. Not condos, no, these are “estates in the sky”, vertical mansions with an average of 3800 square feet of space — much larger than any condo built in this town to date, though many prospective buyers at Ltd Edition are still putting units together.

“This is a very good time to buy,” says Katye, “pre-construction, it is possible for people to come in and put units together — or easily make changes to the floorplans.”

Of the five interested buyers circling, four couples and one solo, all but one are interested in putting units together on the lower floors for bigger homes.

Let’s face it: Dallas just doesn’t do “small” well. We like the square footage, and if I had a dollar for every friends who has moved out of a 6,800 to 8,000 square foot home and squeezed into a 1200 square foot condo, well, I’d be able to buy at Ltd Edition without a mortgage.  So many friends ended up putting two units together IF they can get their hands on the square footage next door. It does make sense to do it all while the building is being built. So though the building was planned for 100 residences, there may be fewer, but larger units.

Siamak told me those units were in the design stage, as he had finished the working drawings. Any changes?

“The lobby experience has been expanded and made more lush,” he told me, “We are expanding the full court of the front landscaping.”

He mentioned a beautiful, cobblestoned drive from Turtle Creek, four motorcourts beautifully tailored with lush landscaping. What he wants to achieve in the lobby is a distinct sense of arrival into a room — a huge “ah ha!” defined by a European edge, with glimpses from every view of the vast expansive gardens that will distinguish this project from just about any in Dallas.  (Even the bar will have garden views.) The architecture will expand into the garden, in fact —

“The whole lobby expands right through and to the gardens,” says Siamak. “As it does in any luxurious, gorgeous estate.”

There have been a few changes in the original design — previously, the location of the garden was one level up, but Siamak brought it down to the first floor to give the allusion that the lobby is an extension of the gardens. Terraces are still the biggest in town. The developers increased the number of units on floors 2 to 13 from four units to 6, which contracted the size of the terraces a tad. Of course, we are still talking 350 to 450 square feet of terrace space in these homes. From floors 13 to 20, there will be only four homes per floor except for the two penthouses on the 19th and 20th floors.  The smallest unit, a one bedroom, is about 1700 square feet. The penthouses: 6,000 square feet plus. The largest units will have up to 1200 square feet of terrace.

There will be small elevator lobbies on each floor, two elevators for the south side of the building, two for the north. Elevators will not be direct into the units anymore.

I asked Siamak for help with a visual example of what Ltd Edition might look like. He gave me a hint:

“This will truly be the new luxury address in Dallas for some time, ” he said, ” it will have just enough of a signature to be recognizable. I believe true luxury knows when to hold back. Think of the Kimball in Fort Worth — it’s one of the most confident buildings in the world, and amazing in its simplicity.”

Restraint is difficult to achieve, said Siamak. He assured me his design will not be shouting at us.

“The building is on Turtle Creek Boulevard, ” he said, ” we have to be solid.”

The new pricing per square foot is an average of $799 for floors 2 through 13, floors 14 and up will be at about $1000 per square foot. There are four pallets of finishes to select –stone, wood, and marbles, all on display at the Cedar Springs Ltd Edition Sales Center.