Crystal Wise
Mike Hoque is helping Dallas reimagine its southern quadrant, and he is helping Fort Worth reimagine her southeast corridor at Evans and Rosedale.
At a conference table in Mike Hoque’s office on the 56th floor of a stately high-rise in downtown Dallas sits the CEO of Hoque Global — a real estate development company — a top aide, and a visitor from Fort Worth. The wide window opening to the south is more than an opening for the impassioned summer sunlight that has seemingly never heard the word quit.
The window doubles actually as a frame for Hoque’s vision now put to action for Dallas’ southern quadrant, including two near downtown.
Hoque, who made a serious leap into the commercial real estate market with the purchase of the Adolphus Tower in 2015, is the business brawn behind the Newpark development, just south of Dallas City Hall, which promises to remake the southern part of downtown.
At the heart of the estimated 825,000-square-foot, hyper-tech, mixed-used development on steroids, which when fully developed will include three schools, is One Newpark, a 38-story tower consisting of office, retail, and living accommodations, both in the form of hotel rooms and apartments.
The development will be a key connector to Dallas’ planned new convention center.
The first phase of the project, estimated to cost in the neighborhood of $400 million, is so important to Dallas city leaders that the council voted to provide up to $96.1 million in economic incentives to see that blueprints become reality.
Roughly 15 miles beyond, in what seems to be green forest for as far as the eyes can see, is another of Hoque’s signature developments. It sits near the intersection of Interstate 20 and Lancaster Road. Emerging from this undeveloped land will be a large-scale mixed-used community, the 270-acre University Hills. Surrounded by a large town center, University Hills will consist of hundreds of single-family homes, 1,500 multifamily units, millions of square feet of commercial space, and more than 50 acres of green space.
It will sit near the DART Blue Line and merely a short drive from the University of North Texas at Dallas campus. The Dallas City Council is invested in this, too, providing up to $31.4 million in tax increment financing for the first phase.
The project aligns perfectly with a Hoque Global mission statement, focusing on investing and developing in projects that benefit traditionally underserved communities. His focus and investment, Hoque is convinced, will bring along other investors and other projects.
The winners will be the residents who have lived there for generations but that development and prosperity forgot. Following the successful development, Hoque insists, will come along jobs and business growth to the area, affordable housing, and everyday conveniences of living that most take for granted.
“The addition of this development near UNT Dallas and the DART Blue Line supports our goal to improve the quality of life in this corridor of the community and is a prime example of the growth, progress, and improvements taking place in District 8,” says Tennell Atkins, Dallas’ District 8 council member.
Hoque’s desk in his office sits to the west. It might be merely coincidental. It might be intentional. But it is most certainly symbolic.
Over the horizon sits the skyline of Fort Worth. You have to use your imagination to see it, the distance in mileage, and perhaps the reality of the residue that comes with being one of America’s largest metropolitan areas, too much for even vision corrected by spectacles.
But Mike Hoque can see it clearly, and his imagination runs wild with the potential of growth in Fort Worth, particularly in her underserved communities.
The Evans and Rosedale development east of Interstate 35, in a predominantly African American neighborhood, stretches 7.5 acres over separate east and west blocks, envisioned to include 27,000 square feet of commercial space at ground level and approximately 320 residential units above. Building design will take inspiration from existing structures in the area, such as Evans Plaza. Townhomes will line the eastern portion of the site, adjacent to the residential community; and larger structures will stand further west, with the apartments reaching four or five stories near South Freeway.
Groundbreaking is expected to take place in the first quarter of 2023 and take 18 months to complete, Hoque says.
“We’ve been very blessed,” says Hoque, whose entrepreneurial journey has taken him through the industries of transportation logistics and restaurants before real estate. “We focused on stuff no one else wanted to do. As you can tell, the world is changing on us. People are [recognizing] you have to help other people. You cannot just grow one-sided.”
This, too, is a public-private collaboration. The city is pitching in $13.2 million to support the construction, through funds it received from the American Rescue Plan Act, including $9 million in grants for Hoque Global, if it met certain conditions.
Those conditions include setting aside at least 20% of the planned 292 apartment units and 20 townhomes for affordable housing. Ten percent of the units will be set aside for households that make 80% or below the Fort Worth-Arlington area’s median income. The other 10% will be for residents making 60% or below the area median income.
Hoque Global is also required to invest $70 million in both phases of the project and 15% of contractors need to be minority- or women-owned businesses.
The Evans and Rosedale development is in ZIP code 76104, the area UT Southwestern found in a 2019 study, had the lowest life expectancy in the state.
The timing is good, too, as the renaissance on the Near Southside continues. The Evans and Rosedale project will connect that part of the South Side, separated by Interstate 35, with the Near Southside.
“It will demonstrate that, that part of the South Side can be developed and is open for business,” says Councilman Chris Nettles, who adds that the planned National Juneteenth Museum nearby will add to its prospects.
Nettles’ district also includes Renaissance Square, the 67-acre, more than 425,000-square-foot development on the site of the former Masonic Home at U.S. 287. It is anchored by a Walmart Supercenter. Nettles alludes to the national chains that followed Walmart into the development.
Lockard Development, based in Cedar Falls, Iowa, and Midland-based Moriah Real Estate Co. partnered on that development.
“It can be done,” he says, “when you bring investors in willing to invest.”
Fort Worth, say hello to Mike Hoque.
“I didn’t just wake up one day and decide to go to South Dallas, or Evans and Rosedale. A project like this, you have to have a different mind-set, a different set of capital. If you don’t have a like-minded broker or like-minded architect, you’re in trouble.”
When starting down the road to design, Hoque ran into obstacles. He couldn’t find an architect who believed in his vision for a mixed-used development. All they could envision were apartments.
“They started challenging me, and I don’t blame them. An urban village with shops and retail and people going to work down here … this won’t work down here. If we do this, it will never get financed or approved by the city. They’re thinking this guy is nuts!
“So, I had to change architects.”
In another project in Dallas, the 15-acre SoGood development, on the site of a former Pilgrim’s Pride chicken plant on Cesar Chavez Boulevard in The Cedars, another neighborhood south of downtown Dallas, Hoque has partnered with Global Silicon Valley, a growth investment platform based in the Bay Area.
GSV Labs at SoGood will serve as an incubator for local startups and entrepreneurs, providing them with business tools and resources needed for ideas and businesses to bloom.
“We look to be a magnet of talent not only in the Dallas marketplace, but really in the regional marketplace and, frankly, from a global perspective,” says Michael Moe, co-founder of GSV Ventures.
As an aside, Hoque believes the Dallas-Fort Worth region has a historic opportunity to lead on innovation and entrepreneurship, simply through the presence of the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. He scoffs at the idea of Austin being synonymous with “Texas innovation.”
“I don’t want to go to Austin to save my life,” he says, though he reminds that he does have a nifty little project down that way, a resort-style vineyard in Florence. “They don’t even have a true international airport.”
The Evans and Rosedale development will include a branch office of GSV, Hoque says.
The Dallas and Fort Worth projects “are a niche we created,” says Hoque.
“No one else wanted to go there,” he says, “but it is a purposeful project. You might not make a lot of money in the beginning, but eventually you will. And you help people.”
Hoque is Bangladeshi by birth. His father was selected by the Bangladesh government to help build a country after the 1971 Liberation War, a brutal armed struggle with Pakistan, which ended with Bangladesh a free and independent country.
Hoque says when he was home during the summer from boarding school in his mother country, he worked for his father in development.
“He was grooming me to take over his company,” Hoque says.
Those plans changed, however, at age 16. Hoque’s father sent him, unwittingly as it turned out, on a trip to New York City to explore the economic capital of the world. Hoque was supposed to come back and continue his education.
The lure of America and opportunity was love at first sight for this impressionable, young 16-year-old who just graduated high school.
“I told him I didn’t want to go back,” Hoque says.
How did he take that?
“He didn’t like it.”
That might be an understatement. Hoque’s father essentially disowned him. Cut him off and cut off the relative he was staying with. Talk about collateral damage.
“I was stubborn like he was,” Hoque remembers. “He thought cutting me off would bring me back home.”
It didn’t. Hoque truly started his American journey on the streets of Gotham, selling books on street corners. He had everything it takes to live the American dream: intelligence, work ethic, and a willingness to hustle and dive after loose balls, to borrow a sports analogy.
He heard a call to Dallas and took it.
Many of today’s great companies began in garages or spare bedrooms or some such other — Apple and Google come to mind. Hoque Global began in the back of his town car: He was a driver, and while doing that, he uncovered inefficiencies in the industry. He believed he could do it better. He has since pivoted, converting his transportation logistics company into a technology company when he saw Uber play its chess piece in the marketplace, but Ridecentric is still around, 75% owned by his employees.
DRG Concepts, a restaurant business, was his next venture. He knew nothing about the business of restaurants. It has been a success after he finally found the right fit at CEO. That is Nafees Alam, a UT Arlington alum.
Hoque dipped his toe into the Fort Worth marketplace with Wild Salsa, the Wicked Butcher, and the Chop House Burger. Wild Salsa was hampered by the pandemic shutdowns, while the Wicked Butcher opened in the Sinclair Hotel during the pandemic. DRG’s other concepts are the Dallas Chop House and Dallas Fish Market, which also limped out of the pandemic.
Other than his father’s tutoring, Hoque has no formal education as a developer. Some 10 years ago, he asked a noted developer to teach him the ropes of development. Rather, Hoque says, he was sent on “wild goose chases to do things.”
“It didn’t teach me anything. I was wondering, ‘Why am I doing this?’”
Yet, he did learn, which isn’t surprising. Hoque’s mind is seemingly never at rest.
“If I had formal training, I’d just be going north,” he says, poking fun at the conventional wisdom of the promised land of Plano and Frisco and other former parts unknown, “rather than where we’re going.”
The Newpark development, mostly empty parking lots now, took years to come together, starting with the acquisition of the property. It’s the same property that Amazon flirted with before “walking away from us at the altar,” Hoque says. The experience, however, taught him what big companies are looking for.
Hoque has office space rented in downtown Fort Worth to see through Evans and Rosedale.
He is well aware of the look of suspicion “Dallas guys” get on this side of the metroplex. But he says he is committed to the city and believes his three-year commitment, so far, without a shovel in the ground at Evans and Rosedale, is proof of that.
And like the Newpark development and Dallas’ new convention center, Hoque’s mind is working a mile a minute on Fort Worth’s new convention center area blueprint and how it connects with the intermodal transportation center and Texas A&M’s forthcoming downtown campus.
“I want people to understand, this guy has done it in Dallas, and he’s coming to us,” Hoque says. “And he wants to do the same things. He wants to create stuff.
“I love Fort Worth.”