Former Valley View Mall site.
Key figures behind the Dallas Mavericks’ planned arena offered new details about the multibillion-dollar district and insight into the deal the team has to purchase more than 100 acres on the city’s northern edge where the former Valley View mall once stood.
Las Vegas Sands Senior Vice President of Global Development Mark Boekenheide and Mavericks President Ethan Casson spoke for about an hour Wednesday during a lunch at the North Dallas Chamber of Commerce, just across the LBJ Freeway from the team’s planned arena site.
Boekenheide said the team would not purchase the land until the NBA franchise’s development team secured the necessary zoning approval. The Mavericks took the first official step in that process last month when representatives outlined a rezoning request seeking to amend an existing planned development district and create a new subdistrict that would allow a sports and entertainment campus on the site.
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Until then, the Mavericks will continue to make option payments to hold the site.
“It would be impossible for us to close on the site before we got a zoning approval,” Boekenheide said. “We’re not commercial developers. This is all contingent on us getting an arena approved as a use, along with the other sort of miscellaneous zoning modifications to support that kind of use on the site.”
The request covers 112 acres, which would include the entire mall site and additional parcels along Alpha Road and Montfort Drive. Boekenheide said the development team is “close” to submitting the full zoning request package
“We’re doing our final internal review,” he said. “We’ve been doing master planning so we can kind of understand what we’re asking for in terms of height and massing and a new road network. That’s taken a long time trying to create that vision from scratch.”
While the plan is still in the early stages, Boekenheide said a portion of the mixed-use district will include a 7-acre centerpiece park, at least one four-to-five-star hotel with about 300 rooms adjacent to the arena, basketball-related facilities and different zones for residential, office and retail pieces based on market demand. Residential development at the site is likely to be midrise, around 10 stories tall.
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A major planned north-south boulevard is expected to connect Alpha Road down to surface roads, and Boekenheide said he’d “love it” if the development team could convince DART to “maybe pull a station over” to Valley View. Conversations about the traffic plan are ongoing.
The development team has visited several sites across the country and drawn inspiration from others for the potential project. Miami’s Design District, New York’s Battery Park neighborhood and Bryant Park, and SoFi Stadium near Los Angeles were among the developments mentioned by Casson and Boekenheide.
Casson also played a significant role in the Bay Area’s Levi’s Stadium and Minneapolis’ Target Center projects, and Sands is known for its luxury resort, convention center and casino developments. The Adelson family owns the Dallas Mavericks and the Las Vegas Sands Corp., which operates five luxury resorts in Macao and one in Singapore.
One thing that’s not part of the plans in Dallas: a casino. Such gambling is not legal in Texas.
“We don’t want there to be even an inkling that gaming could be thought of on this [site]. We want approval on what our master plan is for, which is sports arena-centric,” Boekenheide said.
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The Mavericks announced in June that the team intended to build its arena at the Valley View site. The former mall is owned by Dallas-based Beck Ventures, Seritage Growth Properties and health club operator Life Time Inc. Beck purchased a majority of the site in 2012.
Beck Ventures CEO Scott Beck previously declined to provide details about the agreement with the Mavericks. While most of the option agreements remain private, filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission show the Mavericks would pay just under $51 million to Seritage for about 20% of the Valley View site.
The Mavericks-affiliated group made its first option payment of $169,200 after signing that option agreement. The NBA franchise will continue making monthly option payments. Monthly payments will be $126,900 for the remainder of 2026. The payments reach a high of $274,950 per month from Jan. 1, 2027, through Jan. 1, 2028, unless the purchase agreement is fulfilled or terminated.
The closing date for the sale would be Jan. 31, 2028, or 90 days after the entitlement period expires — whichever comes first. The full purchase price of the site has not been disclosed.
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It’s unclear when the zoning request could appear before Dallas’ city planning commission or the City Council.
“This will be the most transformative basketball arena in the world,” said Casson, the Mavs president, said. “This has the potential to be one of the most transformative arenas and development projects in the United States, maybe the world, but we can’t deliver that without the hospitality, the experience and that personalization.”
