City Hall is finally selling The Worst Building in Dallas — and, no, I don’t mean the decaying, leaking, sinking Dallas City Hall. Not yet, anyway.
No, I’m referring to 7800 N. Stemmons Freeway, otherwise known as the building that cost taxpayers $29 million, including the $14.17 million purchase price.
The 11-story dump, built in 1981 and renovated a decade ago, was supposed to be the glass box in which the city stuck its permitting office. Except — and this is the part that always kills me — the city couldn’t even get a permit to occupy the Stemmons building because it was, to use the technical term, jacked up beyond repair even after City Hall spent another $15 million trying in vain to make it inhabitable.
Even now it’s costing the city $73,000 a month just to maintain and secure the property, according to City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert’s April after-action report.
I swung by 7800 N. Stemmons, which is just north of Mockingbird Lane, because a friend in real estate sent me the CBRE listing which describes it as an “outstanding redevelopment or owner-user opportunity located at the gateway of Dallas’ preeminent Medical District.”
Opinion
I went out there Wednesday to wander the withered, sad, overgrown grounds and peek inside the barren, busted building. Two permits are taped to the front door, each issued in June 2024 — after permitting staff was forced to retreat back to its moldering home on East Jefferson Boulevard. They’re for the installation of a new fire alarm system at the cost of $648,949.
The front of 7800 N. Stemmons, where the front door doesn’t lock, thus necessitating 24/7 onsite security.
Robert Wilonsky
The city’s about to take a multimillion-dollar bath on a bad purchase. In the words of Tolbert, and the Dallas City Hall T-shirts I’m having printed up at Bullzerk any day now, “Critical mistakes were made.”
Those mistakes begin with the purchase of the building, which was approved by the City Council in August 2022, when Tolbert’s former boss, then-City Manager T.C. Broadnax, was getting regularly shellacked by developers waiting forever to procure building permits. Broadnax and his staff — none of whom, save for Tolbert, still work in City Hall — needed an easy fix, which it found on Stemmons after real estate firm JLL conducted what Tolbert later referred to as “only a surface-level review of the building” and advised Broadnax to buy it.
I, too, made a surface-level review of the building and nearly busted my tuchus on a loose paver along the walkway leading to that front door that doesn’t lock. The city’s currently paying for 24/7 on-site security, which recently spent three weeks stuck inside a building without air conditioning.
CBRE’s listing for the building, its parking garage and the five acres upon which it sits touts its “flexible mixed-use zoning” and its “strategic location” and “strong market fundamentals.” But the most interesting thing about the listing is what it lacks: a price tag.
The courtyard between the building at 7800 N. Stemmons and its parking garage — a very scenic, welcoming site
Robert Wilonsky
CBRE says only that “the offering is being made unpriced and on an ‘as-is, where-is’ basis,” which means what you see — and can’t see — is what you get, no backsies. A few commercial real-estaters to whom I’ve spoken this week all figure it’s a teardown, if anyone even wants the property along the moribund Stemmons Corridor, which remains to be seen. CBRE often lists properties as unpriced to gauge the market’s interest.
The Dallas Central Appraisal District doesn’t ascribe a value to the property since it’s owned by the city, but in 2022 the property was valued at $10.5 million. A similarly sized property and office building next door is on the books for $6.7 million total — down $300,000 from its previous market value.
I called Patrick Benoist, CBRE’s first vice president listed on the flyer, to chitchat about how the property might best be used by a prospective buyer — ya know, to find out how they’re selling a building so bad that its purchase led to the suspension of all real estate purchases by city officials.
But when reached Tuesday, Benoist said, “Unfortunately I am not going to be able to comment on that one. Appreciate the call, but I’ve been told no comment.”
“Who told you that?” I asked.
“My client,” he said.
“You mean the city of Dallas.”
“Robert,” he said, “I am not able to comment at this time.”
The front of 7800 N. Stemmons, which can be yours for the low, low price of … well, look, make an offer, OK?
Robert Wilonsky
At which point I reached out to a city spokesperson, who didn’t have much to add other than the city manager would be sending the City Council a memo Friday night about the new listing. Turns out, I found out about this before the council members who signed off on auctioning the building in April.
Chad West, chair of the council’s Finance Committee, confirmed that council members were not aware the building had hit the market until I reached him Thursday afternoon. He checked in with Assistant City Manager Donzell Gipson, who oversees facilities — and sure enough, West said, the city and CBRE “have another 20 days before the first call for offers closes.” At which point the City Council will retreat behind closed doors to consider their options.
Regardless, West said, “it gives me great comfort to know that CBRE is managing the listing and negotiations instead of staff.”
Time and again, people we elected to office refused to take care of the one building they use every second of every day. And if they won’t take care of their own [insert endless expletives here], why should I trust them to take care of anything else in this city?