Work will begin this week on the most expensive downtown Dallas development in more than a decade.

The $250 million Hall Arts Residences condominium tower and Hall Arts Hotel will be a major addition to downtown Dallas’ Arts District.

The 44 condos in the 25-story tower on Flora Street will start in price at $2 million.

“We are doing a very relatively small number of very high-end homes,” said developer Craig Hall. “It will be a very special, exclusive place to live.”

The condominiums will average in size just under 4,000 square feet with the two-level penthouse containing more than 10,000 square feet.

Hall said that the residential tower will be aimed at people now in traditional homes that want to be in an urban environment in the Arts District.

“When your kids are grown and gone, it’s a lifestyle decision for people like me,” Hall said. “I want a nicer home in a better location, so we are building it.”

The glass and metal tower will be across the street from the Winspear Opera House and will include retail space on the ground floor along Flora Street.

It’s right next door to Hall’s 18-story KPMG Plaza office tower — the first phase of his two-block Hall Arts development.

“The Arts District has made a lot of progress, and what we are doing is to try and take it to the next level,” Hall said. “We are building a project that we hope will complement the very beautiful public buildings there.

“It fits into the neighborhood, which is a hard place architecturally to build.”

Dallas architect HKS designed both the condo tower and the hotel. Austin Commercial is the general contractor.

The luxury hotel will be built on the north side of Ross Avenue.

Hall said the 183-room Hall Arts hotel will be operated by Virginia-based Crescent Hotels & Resorts, which also has downtown’s historic Adolphus Hotel.

“The hotel will bring more people and vibrant nightlife to the area,” Hall said.

Both the hotel and the condo tower will open onto Hall Art’s sculpture garden, which runs between Ross and Flora Street.

“The hotel will be different from the Ritz or the Mansion in that it’s going to be more arts-oriented,” Hall said. “It’s a boutique and intended to be intimate with more a residential feel.

“There will be a really heavy emphasis on the artwork.”

Hall said that the condo tower will include two-level units and will have a separate entrance on Leonard Street.

The building will have four swimming pools, entertaining rooms for the residences, a fitness center and wine storage room.

“We are doing 60 percent of the units finished out and offering 40 percent as shell space,” Hall said. “I see so many buildings where people buy two finished units and put them together and end up spend a fortune tearing things apart and putting them back together.

“We want to avoid that.”

He said that the units in the Hall Arts Residences will be larger than most condos.

“People don’t really want to move out of an 8,000-square-foot house into a 1,500-square-foot condo,” Hall said.

Along with HKS, Summers Design Associates is doing the residential building interiors. And New York-based Bentel & Bentel did the hotel interiors.

Hall said the entire project will take just over two years to complete.

The development is the first such combination luxury hotel and condominium tower since the W Dallas-Victory and Ritz-Carlton towers were started more than a decade ago.

“Craig Hall’s new addition will add another level of luxury and culture to the Arts District and all of downtown,” said John Crawford with the economic development group Downtown Dallas Inc. “His unique style, quality and approach to development expands the reach for those who want to be part of the changing face of downtown creating new opportunities as part our revitalization.”

Hall has owned the development site for the condo tower and hotel for more than 20 years.

Hall Group and previous owners proposed a series of skyscraper projects for the properties before settling on the current project.

“I’m going into this with my eyes wide open,” Hall said. “If I wait to start construction I could be waiting another five, six or seven years.

“Prices of construction are high today but likely to get higher,” he said. “I’m not sure there is much benefiting to waiting to build — I’m going ahead.”