As a Hospital Rises, So Do Hopes for a Neighborhood
Joseph Cahoon, director of the Folsom Institute for Real Estate at SMU's Cox School of Business, talks about the impact of the new Parkland Hospital on the surrounding neighborhood.
By MAXINE LEVY
DALLAS — On the edge of downtown Dallas, the sleek, 17-story tower that is the new Parkland Hospital punctuates the pancake-flat Texas landscape like a gleaming exclamation point.
North of the city’s main commercial hub, the sprawling county hospital, 2.5 million square feet with 862 beds, is scheduled for completion in late August. Once patients fill the hospital sometime next spring, the building may become a centerpiece for the area’s evolving real estate market.
“You can’t spend $1.3 billion and not have an impact on the local real estate market. You just cannot,” said John Wiley Price, Dallas County commissioner for the district. “We’ve already seen the effects with lofts, multipurpose housing and the kind of development we’ve not seen there in 15 to 20 years.”
The previous Parkland Memorial Hospital, built in 1954, had become outdated and crowded. With the city’s population and medical needs growing, Dallas County approved a $747 million bond issue in November 2008 to build a new Parkland complex. . .
“You are going to see Parkland becoming the linchpin to creating a more vibrant district,” said Joseph Cahoon, director of the Folsom Institute for Real Estate at the Cox School of Business of Southern Methodist University. “There are a growing number of health practitioners who will be able to live in the area. It’s that live, work, play lifestyle that is now at arm’s distance from the hospital.
“The area has been an island and lacked any quality multifamily development. Now that’s changing.”
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