TXSE to Office in Bank of America Tower at Parkside — Pending Signage
Share News:
It looks like the upcoming Bank of America Tower at Parkside in Uptown will be a cornerstone of Y’all Street, with the Texas Stock Exchange inking a lease at the property — pending some signage approval.
TXSE, which is currently officing out of Weir’s Plaza in Knox-Henderson, has big plans for its permanent home. In addition to executive office space, TXSE plans on putting together a conference center, a broadcast studio, and a Texas business museum in what the exchange is calling the Texas Market Center.
It also wants to plant a public-facing flag in the form of a 10-foot-tall live LED ticker wrapped around the corner of Woodall Rodgers and Harwood Street at an elevation of 28 feet above grade. TXSE will need approval from the city council for the continuous scroll feature of the signage, and its lease at Bank of America Tower at Parkside can be broken without penalty if council members decline to give it.
A spokesperson for the exchange said there were still a “number of critical remaining items that are essential to finalizing the location of the Texas Market Center.”
TXSE previously said it wanted to sink its roots downtown, and stakeholders identified the exchange as a possible tenant for Bank of America Plaza on Main Street. Instead, TXSE opted for the new construction at 1919 Woodall Rodgers Fwy, just outside the central business district and adjacent to Klyde Warren Park. Once completed next year, Bank of America Tower at Parkside will stand 30 stories with more than 500,000 square feet of rentable space.
Bank of America Tower at Parkside is owned by Pacific Elm Properties, the Miyama family, and the global investment firm Sixth Street. The developer on the project is KDC, with Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates serving as architect and OJB handling the landscape design.
In a letter of support for TXSE’s stock ticker, Klyde Warren Park president and CEO Kit Sawers said the signage would add character to the district and hammer home the message that Dallas is striving to become a national financial center.
“Dallas being home to a national stock exchange is a milestone for the City, and the area around the Park — where so many financial institutions now reside — is exactly the right setting for the exchange to have a visible footprint,” Sawers said.
TXSE isn’t the only one in Uptown looking to put up a ticker. Texas Capital Center at 2000 McKinney Ave. also wants to install one on the face of its property. The signage is more modest at 3 feet tall, just above the lobby entrance. The influential (but not official) Oak Lawn Committee gave a vote of support to both proposed tickers on Tuesday.
A source is telling D Magazine that TXSE and Klyde Warren Park are working on plans for some ceremonial cannon fire at the park to mark the opening and closing of trade days instead of the more typical bell ringing heard at the New York Stock Exchange.
Mayor Eric Johnson and other officials and business leaders have been touting the Big D as a more business-friendly alternative to New York City, pointing to the growing buzz and footprint around the amorphous but very real Y’all Street phenomenon unfolding in and around Dallas.
“Nobody’s exempt from competition, and there’s no divine right that any company, country, or city has to success,” Johnson said on a trip to the Big Apple in April. “You have to go out there and earn success, and you have to beat out your competitors. And so what that means from a city standpoint is that we can’t just sit back and just hope that everybody figures out that Dallas has got this great environment to do business… We have to go and tell that story.”
Sure enough, New York exchanges aren’t sleeping on Y’all Street. NASDAQ and the New York Stock Exchange are setting up regional operations in Dallas, adding to the city’s growing reputation as a formidable financial services hub.
TXSE plans to launch trading next summer, with some $275 million in backing for the exchange from major financial brands like Bank of America, BlackRock, Charles Schwag, Citadel Securities, and Goldman Sachs.
