Hot corner up for grabs on Preston Road

Dallas Morning News – February 4, 2012 – by Steve Brown

When it comes to real estate, location is everything.

And there are few better-known Dallas addresses than the intersection of Northwest Highway and Preston Road.

Real estate brokers are hunting a business to occupy the one vacant corner at the high-traffic crossroads.

Venture Commercial is marketing the almost 9,000-square-foot vacant property just east of the Dallas North Tollway. For decades the site was used for a service station.

Bordered on two sides by an office and retail complex, the corner is being shopped to banking and retail businesses. Venture has even had architects draw up plans showing how the property could be used for a branch bank.

With more than 50,000 cars a day passing by on Northwest Highway and 20,000 or so on Preston Road, the corner gets a lot of notice.

So the location doesn’t come cheap.

"We have two opportunities," said Venture partner Mike Geisler. "The first would be a ground lease starting at $275,000 a year.

"The second is that we could build to suit for a tenant, " Geisler said. "Obviously that would be a higher rate, which we estimate to be $80 per square foot" a year.

That’s more than three times the rent in some neighboring office buildings.

But there are retail rents in that range already in the surrounding Preston Center business district, he said.

Realtor Ebby Halliday’s landmark Preston Hollow building is just across the street. And dozens of high-dollar retail tenants fill the surrounding shopping centers.

Venture reports that the average household income in the surrounding North Dallas neighborhood is more than $180,000 a year — stout demographics for any type of retailer.