DALLAS — This story originally appeared in the Dallas Business Journal, a WFAA news partner.
There’s still a long way to go, but the prospect of a flashy, arena-anchored entertainment district rising in Dallas with a resort-style casino — a dream envisioned by Mavericks owner Mark Cuban and other deep-pocketed backers — is generating a lot of conversation.
Such a project would be transformative for the city, dramatically raising nearby property values and reenergizing wherever it gets built, real estate professionals who work on similar grand designs say.
“Project ideas like this are exciting because in many ways, it’s about the art of the possible,” said Barry Hand, a principal in the Dallas office of architecture firm Gensler, as well as its regional mixed-use practice area leader.
This idea for Dallas is back in the spotlight because Cuban plans to sell a majority stake in the Mavs to the family that owns Las Vegas Sands Corp., which runs casinos around the world. Cuban has been vocal about partnering with Sands on a casino project.
Cuban would remain a minority owner in the Mavericks and retain operational control of the NBA franchise. But the deal, which still needs the approval of the NBA Board of Governors, would merge the interests of one of Dallas’ most prominent businesspeople with those of the Adelson family who control the Sands.
“Imagine creating a Venetian or Bellagio that you’ve seen in Vegas … in Dallas, in Austin or in Houston,” Cuban said Dec. 1 at an event in Austin.
Of course, gambling would have to be legalized in Texas first, which would be no small feat. Lobbyists have tried for years to build momentum for the effort at the Capitol, without much success. While Cuban admitted changing the law would not be easy, he indicated he partnered with Sands because “they know this stuff. And I’ve been working with them on trying to get resort gaming legalized for the past several years.”
While discussions are still in early stages, Dallas Business Journal reached out to several architects who have helped design and create sports- and tourism-focused facilities around the nation to ask what such a project could mean in the Big D.
Mark Williams, a partner and global sector director for Dallas-based architecture firm HKS, called the potential for an arena connected to a casino resort “an incredible opportunity.”
“It’s all about designing the integration of those two components so that they’re done in a sophisticated way. It’s not just, ‘they’re next to each other’ or ‘turn left or turn right.’ It’s really taking it to the next level [and figuring out] a very high-level way to design those two components,” said Williams, who has helped design some of the sports world’s most-recognized arenas including AT&T Stadium and Globe Life Field in Arlington, the game-day venues of the Dallas Cowboys and Texas Rangers, respectively.
Williams was also instrumental in the design of SoFi Stadium in the Los Angeles suburb of Inglewood, California, and Chengdu Phoenix Hill Sports Park, a major global sports venue in China, among other sports-anchored mixed-use developments worldwide.
Hand, whose career spans large, aspirational projects in Dallas-Fort Worth and other domestic as well as international markets, said a sports and entertainment complex of the type Cuban envisions would be similar to the L.A. Live event venue in downtown Los Angeles or Deer District in downtown Milwaukee. The NBA’s Los Angeles Lakers and Los Angeles Clippers play at Crypto.com Arena in the 27-acre L.A. Live development and the Milwaukee Bucks play at Fiserv Forum in the 30-acre Deer District.
Designed by Gensler, the Deer District includes a two-acre public plaza, three buildings with retail and entertainment tenants and a large, all-seasons beer garden. The plaza features modern design elements and materials that pay homage to Milwaukee’s industrial heritage.
Gensler also designed the dual-branded Ritz-Carlton Hotel & Residences and JW Marriott next to Crypto.com Arena. The 54-story tower has an 878-key JW Marriott hotel and a 123-key Ritz-Carlton boutique hotel along with Ritz-branded condos on the tower’s top 25 floors. The tower serves as the visual anchor for the larger, six-block L.A. Live sports and entertainment district, Hand said.
The scale and scope of the development Cuban apparently envisions is impressive, Hand said.
“Sands and Mark Cuban and basically the Dallas Mavericks operation, if they are to do this larger, mixed-use project, you’re probably talking 25 to 40 acres to fully co-brand and maximize that brand experience,” Hand said. “To really maximize a big idea, you would need to get up around something like that.”
A development of that scale would take seven to eight years to complete, Hand estimated. “By the time you get a project like this envisioned and planned and drawn and built, it would probably take until 2030 or ’31.”
That sort of timeline could mesh well with how long it might take to legalize gambling in the state. Plus, the Mavericks’ lease at the American Airline Center runs through July 2031.
Within North Texas, The Star in Frisco is the best comparison to what Cuban has loosely proposed, Hand said. The Star, built around the world headquarters and practice facilities of the Cowboys, features a 12,000-seat indoor multipurpose events center, a 300-room Omni Hotel, retail and restaurant space. Gensler led the design on the development.
“Obviously, that’s a football complex where the real estate requirements are a little bigger,” Hand said. “But it’s an interesting analog because they’ve integrated hotel [and] office headquarters-type facilities. The block that The Star sits on is about 27 acres and then if you roll in that retail complex below it, it gets up to about 40 acres.”
Arena-centered projects like the one Cuban envisions motivate a fan base, build meaningful memories, bring exposure to the city they’re in and can connect disparate districts or neighborhoods within the city, among other benefits, Williams said.
“Whether it’s where you stay, where you eat, or maybe where you live — all these other things can happen that are connected to and tangential to the sporting venue,” he said. “The beauty of it is that for us, this building type has always been that way.”
“The Roman Colosseum was the social gathering hall for Rome,” Williams added. “Whether it’s the American Airlines Center or AT&T Stadium or a new venue somewhere in Dallas, that will be one of the social gathering halls and all of those things can happen and should happen in it and around it.”
Williams pointed to U.S. Bank Stadium, the HKS-designed home of the Minnesota Vikings in the NFL, as an example of the economic impact a successful sports-centered venue can bring. Since U.S. Bank Stadium opened in 2016, more than $2 billion in private and public investment has been injected into its surrounding neighborhood, according to information on the HKS website.
“The existing buildings that were around that are now the hottest properties in Minneapolis,” Williams said. “They’re all full, they all have been purchased and developed, and they’ve doubled and tripled in value.”
Hand and Williams agreed that such a project could land next to downtown Dallas’ convention center — itself slated to be demolished and rebuilt as part of a voter-approved $3 billion plan.
“There’s not that many parcels in Dallas proper, especially downtown, that has access and the availability without some major work,” Hand said. “That becomes really strategic. If they would want to do something around the convention center and if you could somehow build a synergy around all of this happening together, that can be amazing.”
Beyond that, there’s only a handful of other sites within Dallas city limits that might fit the bill. They include the former location of Reunion Arena, which was demolished in 2009, and the Cedars district south of downtown and Interstate 30.
Any of those could be a huge boon for business on the southern side of downtown Dallas, according to the architects.
“Some of the criticism that downtown Dallas gets is that there’s nothing to do there,” Hand said. “We’ve tried with projects like Discovery District, and that’s helping a lot. But to do something that’s 20 to 40 acres somewhere around the south end of downtown Dallas could be transformative. It could transform the way this part of downtown is viewed in the real estate industry.
