Frisco Home to North Texas’ First Mass Timber Office Building

WFAA is highlighting (7-20-23) a new seven-story, 242,000 square-foot retail and office space building located in Frisco, Texas. It has been dubbed “The Offices at Southstone Yard,” and it is unlike any other building in North Texas.

The Offices at Southstone Yard is built almost entirely from environmentally friendly mass timber. Floors two through seven are made of mass timber, while the building’s core and first floor podium are concrete. The wood specifically used in the Offices project is southern yellow pine, which is harvested in Texas, Florida, and other southeastern states.

Jim McCaffrey is the managing director of Crow Holding Development and is overseeing the Offices project. According to WFAA, McCaffrey says the cross layers of wood help it withstand seismic and wind loads. Technological advances have allowed for the material to be mass produced and better utilized. “By taking these board and assembling them into panels and laminating them through a variety of methods you increase the strength of the wood.”

McCaffrey notes that the first question they receive is often about fire safety. The building is built to fire code, he told WFAA, explaining, “It’s engineered to all the same standards that any other building of other product types are.”