Fifth Third Bank will vacate Comerica Bank Tower in Downtown Dallas within 90 days and relocate to the north side of the city at Preston Center, a spokesperson confirmed with KERA Wednesday.
The new headquarters at 8300 Douglas Ave. is a 300,000-square-foot office tower near the intersection of Dallas North Tollway and Northwest Highway, according to the spokesperson. Fifth Third will occupy 63,000 square feet of the building.
Ohio-based Fifth Third acquired Comerica Bank for nearly $11 billion earlier this year — a move that coincided with more than 200 layoffs in the region. Fifth Third told KERA at the time the company would also evaluate its "real estate footprint."
The relocation comes at a time when many large businesses have decided to leave Downtown Dallas for other parts of the region.
AT&T, which employs thousands of people in Dallas, announced in January it would be relocating its headquarters from the city’s core to a Plano campus. That move in particular sparked a lot of concerns about the future of downtown, which has a vacancy rate near 30%.
Internal emails reported on by The Dallas Morning News in March show AT&T executives had long standing concerns about the "effective/sustained governance" of the city.
Those woes are in sharp contrast to the financial boom happening on the north side of the city near Uptown — also known as "Y'all Street," a term used by politicians and business leaders for the rapidly growing finance sector in Dallas.
The owners of Comerica Bank Tower plan to redevelop the building to add residential and hotel space, removing more than half of the 1.5 million square feet of office space, according to the Dallas Business Journal. Comerica moved into the building in 2007 and was under an agreement to rent 222,000 square feet of office space until 2028 before Wednesday's announcement.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
Dylan Duke is KERA's Breaking News Reporter. Got a tip? Email Dylan Duke at dduke@kera.org.
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