Upgraded Dallas Love Field tickets pricey real estate

DALLAS – The completion of a half-billion-dollar modernization project at Dallas Love Field may be almost complete, but is just beginning to drive development in the surrounding neighborhood.

Viceroy Investments — which owns the 244-room Wyndham hotel on Mockingbird Lane across from Love Field — has made major upgrades to the property, which will be rebranded as a DoubleTree by Hilton early in 2015.

Just to the west of the airport at Maple Ave., a drainage project will enable development of a 37-acre mixed-use project.

Balcones Realty Partners is planning to build an apartment project called West Love on the site. Construction is expected to begin early in 2015 and will eventually bring 1,100 apartments to the community.

Expansions at nearby Parkland Memorial Hospital and UT Southwestern Medical Center are an even bigger driver for real estate development and investment, according to Balcones’ Jorge Ramirez.

“If you take a one-mile radius of our property, there is over $3 billion of construction either just completed or underway,” Ramirez said.

Apartment developers either have completed or are still building more than 2,500 new rental units in the area between Love Field and Parkland. Encore Multi-Family just completed Encore 6162, a four-story, 233-unit project at 6162 Maple St.