S2 Capital CEO Says New Tower Will Give Company ‘Top Notch’ Site To Recruit Younger Workers
A national apartment investment firm has decided to more than double the size of its corporate headquarters in Dallas with a new office lease at a yet-to-be-built tower near the city’s bustling Uptown neighborhood with plenty of planned amenities, which its CEO says should attract talented young executives to the growing firm.
S2 Capital, which has made a name for itself investing in value-add apartments but has recently acquired newer and higher-end real estate, has leased 25,000 square feet of office space, the entire 18th floor, at Harwood No. 14, a new office tower landlord and developer Harwood International is building at 2801 N. Harwood St. between Victory Park and Uptown. The firm is only the second tenant to lease space in the tower after global law firm Haynes & Boone signed a lease for 125,000 square feet in August.
“We felt Harwood did everything top notch and did it the right way,” S2 Capital CEO Scott Everett told CoStar News, adding the city’s Knox-Henderson neighborhood was also considered during the nine-month real estate search. “This fit into what we were looking for and felt like we found a place we could truly grow into in the next 10 to 20 years. This is a place a younger person would want to be, and we felt it would help us attract talent.”
The 32-year-old chief executive said the office tower’s site provides proximity to both Uptown and downtown Dallas without having employees travel through the city’s busiest business districts thanks to the nearby Dallas North Tollway. He said employees can also easily catch concerts and Dallas Mavericks games at American Airlines Center just blocks away, making it even more appealing to a younger crowd.
Bret Hefton, a managing director with JLL who represented S2 Capital in its search for a new headquarters, said amenities to attract and retain employees were imperative in that search.
The 27-story, 360,000-square-foot office tower’s design is heavily influenced by nature, according to architect Kengo Kuma, with a two-story lobby that blends indoor and outdoor features. The tower’s amenities include a rooftop and sky garden, open-air pocket gardens and about 17,000 square feet of retail space at street level.
The new Harwood office space is also more than double the size of S2 Capital’s current corporate office in Dallas’ Preston Center. That gives the firm, which employs roughly 40 workers, room to grow with enough space for more than 100 executives, Everett said. His team is already looking for some temporary space to lease to help it accommodate its growing workforce until the new tower is built and the office space is built out, he said.
The decision to lease space at Harwood No. 14 comes as S2 Capital, which has invested $6 billion since it was founded in 2012, is nearing the end of what has already been a busy trading year. By year-end, the firm plans to sell 21 properties in Florida, Texas and Arizona and buy eight properties, including five scheduled to close this week, in Austin, Dallas-Fort Worth and Phoenix.
S2 Capital expects to move into Harwood No. 14 in May 2023, months after construction is scheduled for completion in January 2023.
For the Record
JLL’s Bret Hefton represented S2 Capital. Kelly Whaley and Hannah Mesh of Harwood International represented the landlord and developer Harwood International. Tokyo-based Kengo Kuma & Associates is the design architect for the building, with Corgan and HDF also serving in various capacities.
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