"It’s the beginning of a process we actually started thinking about in late 2015,” said Craig Hall, chairman and founder of the Hall Group—parent company of Hall Park.
The Monarch’s Oct. 15 ribbon-cutting ceremony is one piece of a $7 billion redevelopment of Hall Park, one that will bring all-day spaces to a once strictly office park, Hall said.
“It’s a rather big investment in Frisco, and we’re very, very excited about it,” Hall said.
The details
Hall Park was always meant to be more than an office park, Hall said.
“It’s been nice to see the new vision of what [the Hall Group calls] Hall Park 2.0 start to come to life,” Mayor Jeff Cheney said.
The new phase of Hall Park, while not completed, should bring in more revenue to the city as well as help its existing businesses, he said.
"This phase of [Craig Hall’s] development is over $500 million of investment that he’s making,” Cheney said. “It will also bring ... more tax dollars to the city ... through the restaurant [and] retail sales.”
Restaurant spaces are planned for the ground floor of the Monarch as well as in surrounding spaces of Hall Park.
The all-day or “18-hour” spaces will include restaurants, a new park, a hotel and more, most of which is slated to open in 2024.
The push toward a fully mixed-use space in Hall Park will help it continue thriving in a changing economy and allow it to become one of many destinations in Frisco, Cheney said.
“It’s exciting to have people want to do things out [at Hall Park] because of all that we do have,” Director of Park Experience Barbara Milo said.
The first two residents of the Monarch moved in the first week of November, Hall Group Communications Director Shelby Abeyta said in an email.
As of Nov. 27, 24 leases have been signed, she said.
Current situation
Hall Park has been a cornerstone of Frisco for years, not just as an office park but as a recognizable landmark attracting both businesses and people to the city, Milo said.
“It helps people moving here,” she said. “They look and see all the things that they have to do right in the city, that they don’t have to go that far out [for].”
The spaces at Hall Park are used by Frisco residents, such as Frisco ISD students who take their homecoming or senior photos at the towers, Milo said.
“It’s gotten so big, I have to take reservations now,” she said.
Milo, board secretary of the Frisco Chamber of Commerce, said she believes Hall Park’s new projects will bolster its existing community while drawing in new businesses to the city.
Sorting out details
Nearly 200 companies call Hall Park home, said Kim Butler, Hall Group’s executive vice president of leasing. Continuing to improve the campus and adding amenities will keep it competitive, she said.
One piece of the updated Hall Park is Kaleidoscope Park, which will be open to Frisco residents and visitors in 2024, Cheney said.
“The Hall [Group] team [has] big plans beyond this,” Cheney said. “They’ve got multiple phases in the future, and everything they do is first-class.”
Projects like redeveloping Hall Park help push Frisco forward, Butler said.
“Frisco really ... is a complete city,” she said. “This just helps cement it as having urban areas in it as well as all the benefits of being in a suburb.”
The features coming to Hall Park come with their own set amenities.
Here are the details for some of the incoming projects:
- Monarch Tower: 19-story tower with planned 10 restaurants
- Office Tower: class AAA
- Hotel Tower: 224-room Marriott Autograph Collection Hotel with restaurant and lounge
- Kaleidoscope Park: Arts lawn, children’s area, garden, sport courts, performance pavilion, dog park and more
- Possible Performing Arts Complex: Tentative theater with 2,000 seats, local theater with 600 seats, community black box theater
Diving deeper
Hall Park’s stretch of the Dallas North Tollway, which includes Frisco Station and The Star, was once called “the $5 billion mile,” said Gloria Salinas, vice president of Frisco’s Economic Development Corporation.
“As we start to see more and more development taking place along with the [Dallas North] Tollway, we’ve just called it the ‘platinum corridor’ because it’s really hard to kind of quantify that and redo those projections every year,” she said.
Part of the corridor’s success with drawing in companies is due to its walkability, something Hall Park has invested in with its trail system and connectivity to nearby amenities, Salinas said.
Walkability is the reason many big-name companies with spaces in Frisco—such as McAfee and Boingo Wireless at The Star, Keurig Dr. Pepper Inc. at Frisco Station or Compass planning to move into Hall Park—choose the corridor, she said.
“[Those companies have] all picked our walkable districts,” Salinas said.
The connectivity is a highlight for the former office park’s new full-time residents, not just companies and their employees, Hall said.
“It’s all about experiences,” he said. “There’s going to be ... a wide range of experiences for people of a wide range of ages.”
Stay tuned
A second residential tower is already in the early stages of planning, Abeyta said in an email.
After that, there are tentative plans for adding more retail, restaurants, and eventually a grocery store, Hall said.
"I think what we’re aiming toward is a place where people can have a great cup of coffee from one of several different [restaurants] in the morning, and they can take a nice walk; they can meet their children or grandchildren and go to a park that’s fantastic,” Hall said. “They can walk to their office. They can ... walk to the performing arts center and see a Broadway show.”
