Uptown Dallas’ almost century-old Maple Terrace is reimagined and ready for office tenants

Steve Brown

You won’t find much of the Roaring Twenties left inside Dallas’ Maple Terrace.

When the Uptown Dallas building opened its doors on Maple Avenue in 1925, it was the city’s most exclusive residential address.

Almost a century later, Maple Terrace is having a second debut — reimagined as the neighborhood’s newest luxury office digs.

Developer Hines has spent the last two years turning the long-time apartment tower into a boutique office building. It’s part of a mixed-use development that includes two restaurants out front and a new high-rise residential building behind Maple Terrace.

Hines is pulling the wraps off the landmark redo this week and showing off the revamped historic building.

While the outside of Maple Terrace has been preserved much as it looked in the early 20th century, step through the front doors and it’s another story.

The plush modern finishes and posh furnishings would be at home in a high-end hotel or luxury resort.

“We wanted it to have a residential feel,” Hines senior managing director Ben Brewer said. “It has that warmth that makes you want to be here.”

At only about 157,000 square feet, the Maple Terrace building is the smallest of several new office offerings on the way in Uptown. It’s also the only building in the neighborhood that combines historic architecture with a highly-amenitized new workspace.

“The term boutique office in commercial real estate is usually more about the size of the project,” Brewer said. “But there is a warmth here that a lot of those buildings are lacking. There are not many comparable buildings.

The interiors by Houston-based Rottet Studio combine soft furnishings, mirrored walls and ceiling panels with polished wood floors and paneling.

Just inside the front doors, there’s a reception desk and lounge area. Continue toward the back of the building and you’ll find a bar and more lounge seating that looks out on a landscaped courtyard.

That linear courtyard separates Maple Terrace from the 22-story apartment tower still under construction next door. The first of the 345 rental units will be available early next year.

Dallas architects GFF and 5G Studio Collaborative designed the Maple Terrace project. Hines is developing the property with Mitsui Fudosan America and McNair Interests.

Hines bought the landmark building, which housed apartments, back in 2020. The developer’s decision to convert it to offices was unprecedented.

“We could have done residential,” Brewer said. “But we felt like the residential units were better suited for the new building.”

Hines gutted the old apartment building designed by noted British architect Alfred Bossom, who was also the architect for downtown Dallas’ Magnolia Building.

The building was originally advertised as Dallas’ first “million-dollar apartment house.”

The developer restored the Mediterranean-style exterior but added two more floors of office space on top and to the rear of the original structure.

The most eye-popping space in the Maple Terrace offices is a broad eighth-floor terrace overlooking Maple Avenue and the surrounding Uptown neighborhood. “It’s intended for employees to come here and do work or have functions,” Brewer said.

Down on the building’s ground floor, there’s a fitness center, golf simulator and conference center with a board room and training center.

Hines has already leased the penthouse office floor to California-based investment firm GI Partners which will start moving in next month. Brewer said his firm is already giving tours and talking to other interested tenants. “Finance and creative firms, I think, would value this the most.”

Out front on Maple Avenue, work will be done soon on two free-standing restaurant buildings that will house a New York City seafood restaurant named Catch and a Doce Mesas upscale Mexican restaurant by Dallas restaurateur Mico Rodriguez.

The eateries and new apartments in the adjoining tower will bring increased street life to the Maple Terrace block, which is across the street from the century-old Stoneleigh Hotel.

“We feel like Maple Avenue is going to be one of the major, exciting streets,” Brewer said. “You are in this pocket of Uptown I call upper Uptown. It’s the gateway from Turtle Creek.”

Maple Terrace’s location between downtown and residential districts across Turtle Creek in Oak Lawn made the building one of Dallas’ most exclusive residential addresses back in the day. Over the decades, the apartments played host to a cast of artists, actors and celebrities, including Greer Garson, Shirley MacLaine, Zsa Zsa Gabor and Judy Garland.

“There are generations of Dallasites who have links to this building,” Brewer said. “Once in a career, you can do something like this — working on a 100-year-old building in a big project that is mixed-use.”