Real estate developer Monte Anderson, known for his transformation of the Belmont Hotel, recently purchased a 70-year-old former manufacturing plant in Elmwood.
Anderson and partners have plans to turn part of the 127,000-square-foot building at 1300 S. Polk into a co-working space for “creative industrial” makers — think furniture-making, woodworking, welding, machining and the like. They especially want to attract makers who reuse and repurpose materials.
The building originally housed a heavy-industrial plant that made ink for packaging such as chip bags and plastic cups. Later, it was used for rebuilding auto parts. Those uses polluted water, air and ground, Anderson says. Now he envisions it as a place where creative people will imagine new ways to keep reusable materials out of landfills.
Space for traditional office co-working also is planned, and eventually, if they can achieve rezoning, they plan to build new residential buildings along Cedar Creek.
Partner Gary Buckner will move his Stash Design from Lower Greenville to this space, which they named Tyler Station for its location on the DART rail line, at Tyler/Vernon station.
The building “walks right out” to the station, Anderson says.
It’s one of the only DART rail stop in Dallas that’s not connected to a big parking lot, “so it’s like we have our own private train station,” Anderson says.
They plan to keep the cavernous space open to encourage collaboration between maker tenants, who could pay as little as $600 a month to rent space there. That part of the development could be open as soon as four months from now, Anderson says.
Office space will follow, and then they’ll start working on “micro-residential units.”
“It’ll be a co-working village,” he says.
