Downtown News

Owners of Dallas' Reunion Tower plan to develop long-vacant land nearby

Reunion Arena

RadicalBender at en.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0

More than 15 years after Reunion Arena in downtown Dallas closed, the owners of the surrounding property are plotting a massive development on the land.

Hunt Realty Investments, which owns Reunion Tower and more than 20 acres surrounding it, tells the DMN in a subscription-only story that it's planning to build a dozen new high-rises, with apartments, offices, retail, a convention hotel with 600 to 1,000 rooms, and a park.

Phase one will comprise hotel, retail, dining, and entertainment. The project will include up to 3,000 apartments, some of which they say will be set aside as "affordable" workforce housing for nurses, firemen, and such.

They also have aspirations to redevelop Union Station, a train stop for DART, the TRE, and Amtrak which opened in 1916.

Reunion Arena was razed in 2009. Hunt has owned the property since the '70s and let it sit vacant all that time, despite offers from others willing to develop it.

"I cannot tell you how many inquiries we have received to buy 2 acres or buy this or that," Hunt Investment Holdings CEO Chris Kleinert says to the DMN. “We’ve heard more than once, you guys haven’t done anything down there in decades. ... We think the timing is right with what’s happening at the convention center."

They say they've brought the city millions, with the Reunion development contributing $350 million in taxes to local governments, and predicting millions more over the next 20 years.

"Hunt has owned that land for 50 years," says Hunt Realty Investments president Colin Fitzgibbons. "They waited patiently for something to come around to accelerate redevelopment, and here comes the convention center."

The project would join other convention-center-profiteering developments in the area such as the former Dallas Morning News building being redeveloped by Ray Washburne.

Construction on the new convention center is supposed to start next year and be complete by 2028. A deck park connected to the convention center and extending over I-30 is scheduled to open by 2030.

Other Hunt Realty projects include the NorthEnd project on Field Street north of Woodall Rodgers Freeway consisting of an office campus for Goldman Sachs, high-rise residences, a hotel, and retail; and the Fields development in Frisco with 10,000 homes and apartments, commercial districts, and the Universal theme park, being built around the PGA headquarters and golf resort.

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Dallas Got Robbed

The richest small town in Texas is surprisingly not in Dallas

Facebook / City of Bellaire, Texas

Houston neighbor Bellaire is the richest town in Texas.

A survey of affluent small towns has found one town in Texas to be at the top of the list, but shockingly, it is not in Dallas. The town of Bellaire, a small enclave within the Houston metro area, has earned the top spot as the richest small town in Texas for 2025. Boo.

The report, "The Richest Small Town in Every State," from GoBankingRates, selected one city from each state, using data from the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey to determine the 50 richest small towns based on their median household income.

Describing Bellaire as a "small town" might be a misnomer. It's located less than 10 miles from downtown Houston and is fully surrounded by the City of Houston. It's really more of a wealthy enclave within Houston, with a population of just over 17,000 residents.

Those affluent citizens earn a median $236,311 in income every year, which GoBankingRates says is the 11th highest household median income out of all 50 cities included in the report.

The average home in this city is worth over $1.12 million, but Bellaire's lavish residential reputation often attracts properties with multi-million-dollar price tags.

Bellaire also earned a shining 81 livability score for its top quality schools, health and safety, commute times, with an abundance of exceptional local amenities.

Those include conveniently located grocery stores, coffee shops, diverse dining options, and spacious parks.

It's not the first time that Bellaire has caught the eye of GoBankingRates, which previously ranked it as the No. 23 wealthiest suburb in America, and it's been named on similar lists comparing the richest American cities.

Dallas can take comfort in the fact that a different survey found Lewisville to be of the cities attracting the most high-income households, meaning those that make more than $200,000. However, census data places the most recent median income in Lewisville at $85,002 — so it's nowhere close to catching up to Bellaire.

suburbs houston bellaire affluent households