Sharen Dougherty

I-beam Sculpture Brings Focus to Asset

DALLAS-When Cushman & Wakefield of Texas Inc. executive assistant Sharen Dougherty saw a 33,000-square-foot building tear-down, she thought of an immediate use for the i-beams tumbling down. Now the i-beams are a sculpture that sits in front of Commerce Plaza, a class B, 203,000-square-foot office complex.

Commerce Plaza Sculpture

"This has focused more interest on the property," explains Eric Rutledge, Cushman & Wakefield's leasing agent for the 30-year-old asset at 12800 Hillcrest Rd. "We're always competing for tenants and competing against others along (Interstate 635). This has definitely helped."

The building in question wasn't torn down for the sculpture, however. The situation began when the Texas Department of Transportation, in conjunction with a massive renovation of nearby Interstate 635, took a chunk of land from the 10-acre complex through eminent domain law. Rutledge tells GlobeSt.com the result was the loss of a substantial amount of parking. In response, building owner UBS Realty Investors LLC of Hartford, CT decided to tear down one of the buildings.

Along with the tear-down came property refurbishment, including a redo of ingress and egress to the modified parking lot. The project left an area that Dougherty thought might be the perfect place for a sculpture of some kind.

"When we tore down the building, Sharen came up with the idea. I kind of pooh-poohed it, not having a creative bone in my body, but was overruled by the asset manager," Rutledge acknowledges. Aguirre Roden Construction, the general contractor supervising the tear-down, supplied a welder to turn i-beams into Dougherty's ideas.

Dougherty acknowledges she's not an artist, but an art enthusiast, and the i-beam sculpture is her first work. She was inspired by the i-beams as they came off the building, she notes, saying she was able to visualize the pieces coming together to make various angles. "I'd done a drawing and had a mock-up of the sculpture," Dougherty says, adding that she'd also been inspired by some of the sculptures she had seen around Dallas.

Rutledge says the sculpture led to new landscaping to show it off. The result has been a new view of an older property. "The front of the buildings look so different," Rutledge comments. "People familiar with the area who travel buy there tell us how different it looks, how refreshing it is."

Though Dougherty's sculpture has brought positive attention to the 75%-occupied office complex, neither Dougherty nor Rutledge are planning more of the same for other properties Cushman & Wakefield is leasing. "This was a situation that afforded itself to this type of thing," Rutledge comments. "Sharen had the foresight to see it and do something with it."