The Quiet Place — 2811 Maple Is No Screaming Show Tower, Instead Uptown Dallas’ Tallest Residential High-Rise Keeps It Intimate With Plush Perks Galore

2811 Maple, the newly-opened tallest residential high-rise in Uptown Dallas, lets the dream team of architect Richard Keating and interior designer Kelie Mayfield push the conventional limits to create a more intimate kind of vertical living. This is a show tower that doesn’t scream. Crescent Real Estate is raising the sky-high bar in the Dallas neighborhood it has fostered for more than 30 years and now it’s making a big move back into Houston for one of its most ambitious projects yet.

It is not an optical illusion, though renowned architect Richard Keating toyed with some of that too. This is no magic trick. The new Dallas high-rise 2811 Maple manages to be both the tallest residential tower in the entire Uptown neighborhood and somehow intimate feeling because of its scale. With only 177 residences, this is the fewest number of units that Crescent Real Estate LLC has ever done in a residential building.

Stepping into the lobby of this 31-story high-rise does not mean venturing into a showy place that hits you over the head. This tower is more indie movie in tone than exploding summer blockbuster. Kelie Mayfield, the interior designer behind Houston’s MaRS Culture, set about creating a serene place marked by its carefully-curated art. In the lobby, that tone gets set immediately by the striking hand-carved plaster wall relief from Austin artist Brandon Mike that looms behind the welcome desk, its maple branches stretching out wide, almost beckoning you in.

Walking around this lobby that shuns bright colors for subtler tones, Crescent managing director of development Joseph Pitchford sees Mayfield’s touch in almost every step. “We forged a great relationship with Kelie,” he says. “We definitely looked high and low for somebody that understood our vision, interviewed a boatload of talented interior designers, and Kelie was by far the best of the group.”

Keating, the skyline-shaping architect who’s helped define how people think of Houston and Dallas, attacked this new high-rise project with equal zeal. He pushed Crescent leadership to let him design the amenity-level pool deck as well, something that would not normally fall under a lead architect’s duties. Even getting into the landscaping.

“I can’t think of another superstar architect the caliber of Richard Keating who would do that,” Pitchford tells PaperCity.

Taller and Less Congested

Keating wanted to create a tower that stretched boundaries, often merging the indoors and out, including on the second floor amenities level. Using paths that let one stroll around the entire length of the level, inside or outside, with private gardens and poolside retreats beckoning along the way, helps set that stage. The views out the windows are not all that define a high-rise.

Especially not one that is trying to go both higher and more intimate, almost boutique hotel-like in scale on the individual floors. Below the penthouse levels, there are only four to seven units per floor.

“There are nice residential towers in this town that when you get off the elevator, it’s one long corridor,” Pitchford says.

Endless corridors fit for The Shining are not a thing at 2811 Maple. Keating designed the tower so that someone stepping off the elevator that their personalized key FOB calls for them will only pass at most one door before reaching their own. This is how you make the tallest high-rise in Uptown Dallas feel like a real home.

“Privacy is part of the luxury component,” Pitchford says.

This tower is more indie movie in tone than exploding summer blockbuster.

Pocket offices in the units build on this sense of personal retreats. Picture completely glass-enclosed areas with room for a desk and chair, almost little studios, some sticking out a little from the tower, providing some of the best views in the house. If you need to do a Zoom or record a podcast, why not at least make the setting memorable and sealed off from any noise in the rest of your apartment?

Yes, these are apartments for rent rather than condos for sale, with monthly rents ranging from $4,200 to $19,500 for a showcase penthouse. Though one could not tell this is a rental tower from the fixtures, from Bosch appliances to Italian cabinetry and closets large enough to make any Carrie Bradshaw devotee swoon. This type of blurring between what is for sale and for rent is something Keating’s seen for years in America’s most cosmopolitan cities.

“High-rise residential that I’ve done in either Los Angeles or Chicago, you can’t tell the difference between a condo and an apartment,” Keating tells PaperCity.

“In Dallas, there are nice luxury towers. But it’s time for the next level.” — Crescent managing director of development Joseph Pitchford.

Pushing For Houston

In some ways, this building is designed to be proof of what the ever-ambitious Crescent team can do. This real estate development firm founded 34 years ago with the purchase of The Crescent in Uptown Dallas have become the drivers of the neighborhood in many ways, responsible as developer, original owner or current owner of about 20 percent of the neighborhood’s now $9 billion in overall place value. Pitchford does not sound like he’s selling when he calls this “The golden age of Uptown Dallas.”

The statistics and construction cranes visible outside of 2811 Maple’s long windows say the same.

2811 Maple is the next generation tower of that push, one that will also see lauded Greek Mediterranean restaurant Avra open in a 14,000-square-foot showcase space in The Crescent by the end of the year. Another highly-anticipated New York import restaurant, the Australian food-centered Little Ruby’s, is headed into 23Springs, a nearby 26-story office tower.

“If the residents in this building drive to a restaurant, shame on them,” Pitchford laughs, noting the 80 restaurants within a four-block radius of 2811 Maple. “They don’t have to. They’re all here.”

The Crescent group will soon try to create that kind of endless-options feel in Houston’s own Uptown District. Crescent chairman John Goff, Doug Schnitzer and the Leslie Doggett recently purchased the coveted 6.3 acre former Apache site on Post Oak Boulevard and Boulevard Place, just south of San Felipe, to develop a large mixed-use land with residential tower, restaurant and office components.

“Our founder and chairman is from Houston,” Pitchford says of Goff. “And he’s always wanted to water his roots and do something great in his hometown. . . We’ve looked at Houston for many years.

“When I joined Crescent, something like 20 years ago, we were the largest Class A (office) holder in Houston. We owned Houston Center, a couple of other buildings. We were the biggest of the times. We sold all those properties over time. But we love Houston and it’s time for us to get back.”

Crescent will be making its Bayou City comeback on the heels of 2811 Maple splashing onto the Dallas scene. The first residents already have moved in. This high-rise takes advantage of Crescent’s partnership with Canyon Ranch, the wellness retreat experts, with the Canyon Ranch team consulting on every piece of equipment in 2811 Maple’s ultra-modern gym to make sure it fits with how people want to exercise today. The sheer amount of space given to the fitness center also can be attributed to Canyon Ranch influence.

With its limestone-geared exterior stretching up to the long windows and extra-wide balconies that protrude out of the tower, giving a very vertical building movement and accentuating the corner units (more than 60 percent of the apartments are corner units, another feature of the boutique vibe push), leading up to something of a canopy top, 2811 Maple already looks distinctive in the Uptown Dallas sky. Particularly when it’s lit up at night.

“In Dallas, there are nice luxury towers,” Pitchford says. “But it’s time for the next level.”

Now Houston may have Next.

2811 Maple is located on Maple Avenue, by the Uchi restaurant, just north of Cedar Springs. For more information, call (888) 548-2811 or info@2811maple.com.