An Arlington real estate firm has sold the 111-year-old Hughes Brothers Candy Factory in Dallas to a Kansas City-based development group that focuses on restoration projects. SkyWalker Property in Arlington was planning 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. “Flint Hills Development Group has experience redeveloping projects with national and state historic tax credits and wanted to take on this project,” Clint Holland, acquisitions director for SkyWalker. “We are pleased the buyer appreciates and understands preservation.” Christopher Gibbons of Venture Commercial represented the buyer.
The property’s address, 1401 S. Ervay St., is in the Cedars neighborhood on the south side of downtown Dallas. “The location and robust redevelopment activity in the Cedars neighborhood clearly worked to our investors’ advantage,” he says. “The offer was such that it made sense to sell.” The Hughes Brothers’ candy factory opened in 1903 and closed during the Great Depression, later becoming a production site for ice cream cones. The building was closed.
The property’s potential for residential use became evident with the area’s gentrification into a busy 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 for Historic Places. SkyWalker Property, led by managing partner Gary Walker, is no strager to adaptive reuse project. It 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. Now a multi-tenant office and retail property, the Vandergriff Building also serves as SkyWalker Property’s headquarters and the main office for its affiliate, Coldwell Banker Commercial Alliance DFW. – Robert Francis Â