With Baby Doe's Down, Marketing Talk Begins

DALLAS-With the dust barely settled on the demolition, the marketing push has begun for the five-acre site of the last of seven Baby Doe’s Matchless Mine Restaurants in the US. The timeline for the sale of the famed Goat Hill tract is still being mapped out.

“It has been encumbered for many, many years with the operational lease of Baby Doe’s,” says David Glasscock with Colliers International Inc.’s Urban Advisory Group in Dallas. “It’s always been a premier site that was underutilized, but it was not developable because of the existing lease.” Cienda Partners of Dallas bought the land at 3305-33 Harry Hines Blvd., the highest point in Dallas, about two years ago, but just managed to get the 30-year-old restaurant building razed this week.

The property is one of the city’s most recognizable–an escarpment overlooking the Downtown, bounded by the Katy Trail and directly connected to American Airlines Center and Victory. As would be expected, the land is coming to market without a price. “I think the ownership would like to see a price north of $14 million,” Dustin Schilling, also with Colliers’ urban investment group, tells GlobeSt.com. “And, I think they’d like it sold as soon as possible at the highest price.”

Glasscock and Schilling say several brokerage houses were in the competition for the listing. The site contains about four acres of developable land and still holds a 28,500-sf warehouse at the base of Houston Street. But, the key to the sale is the in-place zoning, commanding views from a hilltop overlooking the city and the ability to go vertical up to roughly 20 stories. The brokers say it’s destined to end up residential, office or mixed use.

The marketing package and timeline are being refined, but local developers already are putting their names into the hat. “We’ve had very strong initial interest,” Schilling says.