LH Press Library
US 75 Site to Get New Life
The Dallas Morning News, by Steve Brown
July 7, 2004
Vacant land along North Central Expressway is as scarce as open traffic lanes.
Now one of the largest empty blocks along the thoroughfare is finally going to be turned into a construction site.
Dallas-based Cirrus Group will break ground next month on a sprawling medical complex on the west side of Central just north of NorthPark Center. The company recently bought the site from a real estate partnership.
The 250,000-square-foot, two-building medical complex, to be called North Central Medical Plaza, will occupy land between Park and Walnut Hill lanes that was once part of the Glen Lakes Country Club.
The golf course has been gone for almost 20 years, but the high-profile property has remained vacant.
The location near North Dallas neighborhoods and within a short drive of some of the area's busiest hospitals -- Medical City Dallas Hospital, Presbyterian Hospital of Dallas and Baylor University Medical Center -- made the site perfect for a medical complex, said Bill Hutchison, president of the Cirrus Group.
"We've already 90 percent leased phase one," Mr. Hutchison said. "It will be a vertically integrated medical services facility."
The first 110,000-square-foot building will be the W.B. Carrell Memorial Clinic, which is relocating. The building will also have an ambulatory surgery center, orthopedic diagnostic and treatment facilities and a pharmacy.
The second building will contain 140,000 square feet of additional medical space. "There has been a whole lot of interest in the second building from primary-care doctors," Mr. Hutchison said.
The company also plans a rehabilitation center in the second phase.
GSR-Andrade Architects designed the project.
The six-story complex and adjoining parking garage are being built on a tract where developers had recently planned speculative office construction. But with the slowdown in office leasing, construction has slowed.
Medical development is booming, however.
"We've completed close to 20 projects, and we have another 10 at some point in the development process," said Mr. Hutchison, whose company was founded in 1996.
Reprinted with permission of the Dallas Morning News.
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