Granite Properties’ Factory Six03 Breathes New Life into Dallas’ Historic West End

Granite Properties has redeveloped and restored Factory Six03, an iconic 114-year-old warehouse, formerly known as West End Marketplace in Dallas, Texas’ historic West End, into a creative workspace with modern fixtures while preserving many of the building’s historic assets.

The warehouse on 603 Munger Street is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and stood empty for almost a decade, with many of the surrounding buildings underutilized. Granite bought the building in 2015, when the West End began growing as an innovation and knowledge district, with the plan to redevelop it into a modern workspace with a historic look and feel designed to appeal to younger generations and creative users.

Factory Six03 offers 215,000 rentable square feet of modern office space. The company added two floors with Dallas skyline views; an eighth floor with a tenant lounge, outdoor patio and conference center called “The Stack” and, a fifth floor on another portion of the building with a glass office and a terrace. Granite removed the interior escalators and revamped the famous atrium that was built in the 1980s. Other new additions include contemporary furniture throughout the building, underground parking, a modern glass vestibule, an outdoor plaza, a community lobby with a coffee lounge and ground floor restaurant space. Its first tenant, C1 Innovation Lab by Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Texas moved in this summer.

Granite kept and restored many of the building’s historic features inside the structure including the original exposed brick, a two-story biscuit brick oven from its days as a cookie maker, a one-ton scale and the original hardwood floors. Granite restored the historic metal-framed windows and repurposed old doors found in the building into doors or beams. The company also refurbished the three iconic rooftop cylindrical water tanks and that remain on the roof.

The building has new plumbing, new elevators and new, exposed HVAC. It also showcases many pieces of art including a multi-color installation designed by End Design, a sculpture of a mockingbird designed by artists Sergio Garcia and Micah Smith and a restored Buddy Holly statue from Planet Hollywood.

Granite partnered with architect GFF, historic preservation architect Architexas, general contractor DPR Construction and landscape architect Mesa Design Group to redevelop Factory Six03.

The original structure was built in phases, starting in 1903, when it was home to the Brown Cracker & Candy Co. It became the Sunshine Biscuit Company in 1926 and a furniture distributor in the 1960s. It is most recently known as the West End Marketplace, which was established in 1985, and was home to a 10-screen movie theater. Planet Hollywood moved in on the first floor in 1991. The movie theater closed in 2000, Planet Hollywood left in 2001 and the building had been vacant since 2006.

Renderings courtesy of Good Fulton Farrell.