DALLAS –SkyWalker Property Partners has sold the 111-year-old Hughes Brothers Candy Factory, a prime candidate for redevelopment, to Flint Hills Development Group.
The Hughes Brothers’ candy factory opened in 1903 and closed during the Great Depression, later becoming a production site for ice cream cones. The brick structure was shuttered in 2000.
The property’s potential for residential use became evident with the South Side’s gentrification into a bustling mixed-use corridor. Because it is a historic property, there is additional opportunity to tap into tax credits, including the recently enacted Texas Historic Preservation Tax Credit Program and a sales tax exemption on labor that’s available for work on any building listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The lure is the property’s address, 1401 S. Ervay St., right at the heart of the Cedars neighborhood on the south side of downtown Dallas with easy access to Interstate 30. SkyWalker Property was fine-tuning a plan to convert the five-story building, bought just one year ago, to residential units when Flint Hills Development Group made an offer to buy the site.
“The location and robust redevelopment activity in the Cedars neighborhood clearly worked to our investors’ advantage,” says Clint Holland, acquisitions director for the North Texas-based investment group. “The offer was such that it made sense to sell.”
The Cedars is one of the city’s oldest neighborhoods, with the shuttered factory sitting close to several entertainment destinations and a handful of properties recently scooped up by local and out-of-state developers.
“Flint Hills Development Group has experience redeveloping projects with national and state historic tax credits and wanted to take on this project,” Holland says. “We are pleased the buyer appreciates and understands preservation.” Christopher Gibbons of Venture Commercial represented the buyer.
SkyWalker Property, led by managing partner Gary Walker, has completed one adaptive reuse project of a historic property – the former Vandergriff Chevrolet dealership built in 1927 at 255 N. Center St. in downtown Arlington.