As Lakewood property values began to climb after the recession, rumblings about the Faulkner Tower on Gaston began, says Darlene Ellison, chairwoman of the Greater East Dallas Chamber of Commerce. Ellison says “word on the street” was that the circa 1967 building had plenty of interested buyers, but the owner “was not budging for a reasonable amount of money” and “just waiting for someone to completely overpay for the property.”
That owner is Jerry Biesel, a longtime Dallas defense attorney who has officed in the building since 1988. Biesel says he bought the building in 2002 (the “owners” are actually his children, he notes) when Dallas County Appraisal District records show the property was worth about a third of its current appraised value, $1.6 million.
But what is Faulkner Tower actually worth today? That’s the question Biesel is mulling as offer after offer comes in for a property that he has never listed for sale.
“Let me tell you something — Marilyn Monroe couldn’t get more offers than we’ve had,” Biesel says.
Despite what a potential buyer is telling neighbors, “we’re not under contract right now,” Biesel says, though later in the discussions, he adds that the building “might be” close to selling.
“If we get an offer we can’t refuse, we’ll take it.”
And what’s the magic number Biesel is looking for?
“The market’s so crazy right now, how can you tell? It’s just out of sight. We own quite a bit of real estate,” he says, referring to his family’s holdings, “so it’s not like we’re newcomers in the market. There’s no finite number — tomorrow it might be different.”
Lakewood Heights neighbor Jeff Sheehan knows what it would take to at least bring the building up to snuff — roughly $1.5 million, he says. Sheehan is a senior vice president of Preston Center-based Site Selection Group, which provides location services, analysis and more for corporations, and he has a client wanting to rehab Faulkner Tower and use it as a corporate office building. When Site Selection’s engineers checked it out in 2014, they came up with that price estimate, along with a one-inch-thick manual detailing the needed renovations.
And that was on top of the $4 million-plus Biesel was asking at the time, Sheehan says.
“The only way this thing could sell would be to scrape it, because you couldn’t get your money back for what he was wanting for it,” Sheehan says.
It sounds as though the developer who may have come closest to getting Faulkner Tower under contract wants to do just that: a mixed-use project with retail space on the ground floor and residential units on top. Biesel’s family also owns the large parking lot on Paulus south of the tower, and the developer hopes to construct a low-rise residential project on that land, according to Junius Heights neighbor Rene Schmidt, who is working with the developer to arrange a community meeting.
In addition, an office building on Paulus just south of the parking lot has been listed for sale at $1.3 million. If these properties could be aggregated into a cohesive project, “that would be ideal,” Sheehan says.
Throw in the Jack in the Box opposite Faulkner Tower at Paulus and Gaston, and it would be “a home run,” he says.
The Lakewood Theater in the adjacent Lakewood Shopping Center goes before the Dallas Landmark Commission this month to be designated a historic property, with an ad hoc committee working in conjunction to help the theater owners hammer out parking and infrastructure issues. Are we about to see an overhaul of adjacent Paulus, perhaps one that better connects “downtown Lakewood” with surrounding residential neighborhoods?
It’s too soon to say. Real estate sources tell us that Jack in the Box has a ground lease until at least 2020. Plus, on Paulus between Faulkner Tower and the parking lot owned by Biesel’s family is a historical home housing the Clements & Clements law office. When we called, the receptionist told us offers have been made on the property but “the attorney is not accepting offers.”
The sale of Faulkner Tower would be the largest domino to fall, but even that doesn’t seem to be a given.
“We might end up just holding onto it,” Biesel says. “We’re not in any big rush to do anything with it.”
