A division of Toyota will occupy Dallas’s first mass timber office building after signing one of the largest leases in the Dallas-Fort Worth region in recent years – a deal that marks a major green shift for the Lone State. Wood Central understands that Toyota Financial Services signed the lease, taking a seven-floor, 242,000-square-foot mass-timber building built by Crow Holdings off the market.
The building – located at 4401 Cirrus Way in Frisco, Texas, 30 miles from downtown Dallas, is the most significant lease to land in the Dallas-Fort Worth region in two years, with CoStar’s Director of Market Analytics Bill Kitchens adding that the deal signals rising demand for timber construction.
“When we began developing The Offices at Southstone Yards, our goal was to build a welcoming, collaborative, sustainable space for a forward-thinking tenant like Toyota Financial Services that wanted to create an elevated workplace for its team,” said Cody Armbrister, managing director for the Crow Holdings’ Development team in an email to CoStar News. “We see Southstone Yards as emblematic of the future of what the office can be — specifically a place where people want to spend their day.”
“This is one of the largest office leases to be completed in 2025” in Texas, according to Steve Triolet, senior vice president of research and market forecasting for real estate services firm Partners, who said every major Texas city now has a mass-timber building on the ground or space available for lease:
“The appeal of mass-timber could shake up Texas cities weighed down by steel and concrete construction of 1980s-era.”
Steve Triolet, senior vice president of research and market forecasting for Partners on the new wave of timber buildings rising across Texas.
“Only time will tell if mass-timber is a driver of office leasing, but it doesn’t seem like there’s much downside risk to it,” Mr Triolet told CoStar News. “From a political and environmental standpoint, it makes sense for new office buildings to use more environmentally friendly materials.”
Last year, Wood Central revealed that more than 2,000 mid-rise and high-rise mass timber buildings have been designed, under construction, or constructed across the United States, with the number of buildings growing by 114% during the Covid years alone. And whilst mass timber only makes up 0.4% of the US softwood industry (or 0.362 million cubic metres) right now, it has the potential to grow to 9-15 million cubic metres per year and provide 9.9-16.5 million tones of “carbon benefit” fuelled by a wave of projects in the American South.
Toyota’s big move came after Walmart moved into its ‘New Home’ – North America’s largest mass timber campus last month. Using more than 1.5 million cubic feet of timber, Walmart acquired a major stake in a mass timber factory to bring the new Arkansas headquarters to life.
