[austlar1]

After Dallas lost most of it's local banking in the aftermath of the energy bust in the mid 1980s, there was little demand for large new office projects downtown. Most of the major corporations with HQs in the DFW area are located outside of downtown. Downtown was/is about banking, insurance, law firms, accounting firms, advertising agencies. Unlike downtown Houston, downtown Dallas was never HQ for major oil companies, at least not in recent times. Demand seems to have picked up downtown in the past decade or so. ATT relocated HQ downtown after moving from San Antonio. The successor banks in downtown (Bank of America, Chase/JPM, Wells Fargo, and others including a relocated from Detroit HQ for Comerica) have all solidified regional operations downtown and make good use of the giant towers built for local banks in the 1980s prior to the meltdown. Law firms, accounting/business services firms, and other downtown tenants have picked up activity. There is demand for high quality space now that so many outdated buildings are converting to residential. It is not likely that new office buildings downtown will be giants, but there has been some new development and more is likely to follow, mostly in the uptown mode of 20 floors or so.