Energy Corridor

Demolitions
08/20/18 4:30pm

Crews of Excavators, Flocks of Birds Now Have Exxon’s Empty Katy Fwy. Chemical HQ in Their Claws, Talons

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Energy Corridor, Mixed Use, Office Buildings
11 Comments

A Swamplot reader noticed that demolition crews are now trashing the conference center at the abandoned ExxonMobil Chemical Company headquarters next to Terry Hershey Park, leaving a grizzly roadside scene along Memorial Dr. “More concerning,” writes the reader, “is that they drained the ponds and did not relocate the waterfowl.”

At least it’s still theirs to call their own — until PM Realty finds new tenants to replace the Exxon employees that left the property starting in 2014. Without anyone around to disturb the wildlife for now, “They are swimming in the tiny little bit of water left and otherwise just hanging out,” like so:

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Exxon Exodus
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Apartments
07/13/18 2:00pm

Pools and Ponds Back To Holding Water Again After Flood Repairs Subside on Parkside at Memorial’s Amenities

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Energy Corridor, Memorial, Openings and Closings
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See that faint watermark in the aerial photo taken from up on the balcony? That’s the lap pool at the Parkside at Memorial Apartments just south of Memorial Dr., buried under more water than it’s designed to hold after the release of the Addicks and Barker reservoirs last August. Throughout the first floor of the surrounding buildings, the tide peaked at over 5-and-a-half ft. Workers spent the last 9 months helping the 4-year-old complex make a comeback; its leasing center officially reopened late last month — and on-site amenities now look less divey and more like the refurbished lap pool shown in the photo at top.

Other aquatic areas that took on more than they could handle include the complex’s other pool:

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The Deep End
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Buying and Selling
03/28/18 12:00pm

Oxy In Talks To Buy ConocoPhillips’ Campus

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Energy Corridor, Office Buildings, Quicklink
9 Comments

OXY IN TALKS TO BUY CONOCOPHILLIPS’ CAMPUS Occidental Petroleum has its eyes on the 62-acre campus on N. Dairy Ashford off I-10 that ConocoPhillips has been planning to vacate since last year. In an email to Oxy employees, CEO Vicki Hollub said the company had found “a unique opportunity to acquire an office campus with the space and amenities to create a more modern work environment.” Oxy arrived in Greenway Plaza a few years after ConocoPhillips set up shop in its then-newly-built Dairy Ashford complex during the early 80s. Renovations made over the Conoco campus — pictured above — in 2008, but last year, the oil giant announced it’d be taking off for the 22-story Energy Center 4 building it had leased on the other side of I-10. The highrise neighbors the 2-stories-shorter Energy Center 3 tower, where employees of Conoco’s Lower 48 business unit are already stationed. [Previously on Swamplot] Photo of ConocoPhillips headquarters, 600 N. Dairy Ashford Rd.: W.S. Bellows Construction  

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Demolitions
10/23/17 4:00pm

Shell Now Breaking a Few Buildings on Its Woodcreek Campus

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Energy Corridor, Office Buildings
8 Comments

A reader shows us a few through-the-fence glimpses of the massive demolition project that now appears to be taking place on the Shell Oil Company’s Woodcreek campus, just south of the Addicks Dam: 7 connected triangular 5-story office buildings and a separate cafeteria structure on the west side of the campus at 200 N. Dairy Ashford are all on the crushing block, according to a demo permit filed a couple of weeks after Harvey hit.

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Energy Corridor Clearance
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Disaster Aftermath
10/19/17 3:30pm

What It Looks Like Inside the Barker Reservoir Now That All the Water’s Emptied Out Except for the Lakes

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Energy Corridor
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Venturing into the upper reaches of the now officially empty Barker Reservoir near Addicks Clodine Rd. and south of the Audi West Houston dealership on I-10, reader Kyle Steck finds a mostly dry landscape. (The pictured lakes in the images are features shown in maps of the area.)

“In a few weeks it will turn from brown dead apocalypse to green wonderland,” he predicts.

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After the Watering
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Disaster Aftermath
09/28/17 1:15pm

Main Office Tower at BP Energy Corridor Campus Will Remain Empty for Months

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Energy Corridor, Flooding, Office Buildings, Quicklink
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MAIN OFFICE TOWER AT BP ENERGY CORRIDOR CAMPUS WILL REMAIN EMPTY FOR MONTHS Major flooding after Hurricane Harvey knocked BP’s Westlake Campus out of commission for 3 weeks. Employees began moving back to their workspaces just south of I-10 between Eldridge and Hwy. 6 over the last few days, reports Collin Eaton — but only about a third of them: “BP executives still don’t know the full extent of the damage to its Westlake One tower, and they’re not sure exactly when it will reopen — although they expect that early next year. Floodwaters had risen to the top of the turnstiles in the lobby of the office building, filling the basement and bringing down the electrical systems. Contract workers piled thousands of sandbags around the building so they could start pumping out the rushing water.” [Houston Chronicle ($)] Photo of Westlake One, 501 Westlake Park Blvd.: Glassdoor

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Energy Corridor
12/14/16 12:45pm

BP Moving Onshore HQ Out of Houston, Way Further Onshore

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Quicklink
6 Comments

BP MOVING ONSHORE HQ OUT OF HOUSTON, WAY FURTHER ONSHORE Helios Plaza, Energy Corridor, Houston, 77079BP announced today that it plans to move the main office for its onshore oil and gas branch to Denver at the start of 2018, starting with about 200 employees (compared to about 450 currently in the Houston office). The company announced late this summer that it was pulling its employees out of the WestLake 4 tower (about 7 years before that lease would’ve been up); that news was followed up a few days later with an announcement that BP would also sell off its LEED-platinum Helios Plaza building (pictured above), which it built in 2010 as a trading office. The plan at the time was to lease back space in Helios from the new owner; the rest of the company’s Energy Corridor employees will stay in the WestLake 1 office tower, which BP also owns. [BP Media Affairs via Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot] Photo of Helios Plaza at 201 Helios Way: BP

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Buildings for Lease
08/02/16 3:45pm

Now a Second Entire 20-Story Energy Corridor Office Building Is Available for Lease on I-10

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Energy Corridor, Leasing, Office Buildings, Office Space
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Westlake Four, 200 Westlake Park Blvd., HoustonPlease don’t turn around and stare, but suddenly another entire office tower in the Energy Corridor has become available for lease — all 20 floors of it. Any takers?

So far, only one of the 2 extremely available towers appears to qualify as a genuine see-through building — that would be the 22-story completed-but-never-occupied Energy Center Four, at N. Eldridge Pkwy. and I-10, which back in June ConocoPhillips announced it was giving up on moving into but hoped some other company (or 32) would sublease from them. And now from Nancy Sarnoff comes the other dropping shoe: energy company BP, announcing that by early next year it plans to vacate Four Westlake Park, aka WestLake Four, a little more than a mile west along the freeway feeder road, at 200 Westlake Park Blvd. BP has 7 years to go on its lease for that 22-year-old property from New York-based Falcon Real Estate Investment Management.

Photo of Westlake Park Four: Steven Baker

Getting Lonely on the Katy Fwy.
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Briar Forest
06/14/16 4:45pm

Cameron’s Could-Have-Been Beltway 8 Oil & Gas Campus Back Up For Grabs

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Energy Corridor, Westchase
3 Comments

400 W. Sam Houston Pkwy., Westchase, Houston, 77042

The 24.5-acre plot along the W. Sam Houston Pwky. formerly snagged by Schlumberger’s Cameron International looks to be back on the market, a reader notes. Dow Chemical’s quadruple-decade-plus facility got cleared off the land at the end of 2009 following the purchase of the property by an entity connected to Apache Corporation; the spot was sold to Cameron in 2013, when rumor had it that the company would build a skyscraper’s worth of office space on the site. The property was listed afresh by Newmark Grubb Knight Frank around the end of April.

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Energy Corridor Fadeout
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Energy Corridor
07/09/15 2:15pm

A Park Row Hotel’s Long Burnout

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Fires, Hotels
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Fire at Courtyard By Marriott Hotel, 18010 Park Row Dr., Ten Oaks, Park Row, Energy Corridor, Houston

12 hours after the Courtyard by Marriott under construction at the corner of Park Row and Barker Cypress burst into flames, fire crews are still dumping water on the building, a reader reports. Here’s a post-conflagration view of the soaking going on at Texas Western Hospitality’s hotel project. The 135-room, 4-story hotel on a 5.2-acre site at 18010 Park Row Dr., next door to the West Campus of Texas Children’s Hospital, had been scheduled to open in October. No injuries have been reported.

Photo: Brian Walz

Courtyard by Marriott
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Energy Corridor
07/08/15 4:45pm

Energy Corridor Freddy’s Taking Over Lucky Village Site on Dairy Ashford Meat Row

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Memorial, New Construction, Redevelopment, Restaurants
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Construction Trailer for Freddy's Frozen Custard and Steakburgers, 1111 N. Dairy Ashford St., Memorial, Houston

From the street, a Swamplot reader notes, the roll-on vehicle pictured here looks just like your typical construction trailer. But come around the side you can see the banner pinned to it, announcing a new Freddy’s Frozen Custard and Steakburgers. The latest link in the growing fast-food chain is about to arrive on the former site of the Lucky Village Chinese Buffet that was torn down at 1111 N. Dairy Ashford last year. The new Freddy’s between St. Mary’s Ln. and Barryknoll will join a parade of beef purveyors (Sam’s Burgers, Lynn’s Steakhouse, Hebert’s Specialty Meats) and fast-food joints (Jack-in-the-Box, Sonic, and the Raising Cane’s right next door) lining the west side of Dairy Ashford, roughly opposite Spring Branch ISD’s AstroTurf-lined Darrell Tully Stadium.

Photo: Brian Walz

Steakburgers
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Development Patterns
04/24/15 12:00pm

Little White Church on Barker-Clodine Escapes from Marks LH7 Ranch, Shows Up in Yard of Katy Neighbor

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Energy Corridor, Katy, Religious Facilities
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Little White Church on Barker Clodine Rd. Being Moved to Iglesia Sobre La Roca, 433 S. Barker Cypress Rd., Katy, Texas

The white woodframe church that until recently stood with a collection of small buildings including the Barker General Store on the main, retracted campus of the Marks LH7 Ranch at 1010 Barker Clodine Rd. has been spotted nearby, fleeing encroaching apartment development along the far east end of Kingsland Blvd. at the northwest corner of George Bush Park. The church hasn’t traveled far: It’s arrived on the grounds of the neighboring Iglesia Sobre La Roca, aka Church on the Rock, at 433 S. Barker Cypress Rd. in Katy — just a quarter-mile to the north.

Here’s a photo of the church building as it was picked up from its previous home at 1010 Barker Clodine Rd., beyond the street-facing plaque that explains the remains of Houston’s last ranch:

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Last Roundup at Houston’s Last Ranch
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Energy Corridor
03/27/15 1:00pm

Site Work Underway for Proposed Mixed Use Center Between BP and Terry Hershey Park

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Landscape, Mixed Use, Proposed Developments
2 Comments

13501 Katy Fwy., Energy Corridor, Houston

Here are pics of some of the clearing work PM Realty Group has been orchestrating along the south side of I-10 between Eldridge and Hwy. 6. The company bought the headquarters of the ExxonMobil Chemical Company at 13501 Katy Fwy. in late 2013, and announced plans for a mixed-use development including office towers, apartments, a hotel, a fitness center, restaurants, and convenience retail” on the 35-acre site. ExxonMobil was scheduled to exit the building (pictured below) this year:

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Scrubbing ExxonChemical
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Apartments
03/04/15 11:45am

Trammell Crow Planning To Plant Another Alexan Apartment Complex on Former Cornelius Nursery Site on Dairy Ashford

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Energy Corridor, Redevelopment
11 Comments

Cornelius Nursery, 1200 N. Dairy Ashford Rd., Energy Corridor, Houston

Remember the Cornelius Nursery at 1200 N. Dairy Ashford Rd. just south of I-10, which closed down at the beginning of the year? (The photos here show the establishment, which sat at the corner of St. Mary’s Ln., just before its final uprooting.) The 3-acre property, it turns out, had been bought by an entity set up by Trammell Crow Residential in early December. A new complex called the Alexan Ashford Apartments is slated for the site. At least that’s the plan.

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Ashes to Ashford
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