Office Buildings

77060, Bankruptcies, Demolitions, Greenspoint, Malls, Movie-Theaters, New Construction, Office Buildings, Proposed Developments, Renovations, TIRZs

Foreclosure

05/14/10 10:20am

Thank You for Leaving Your Place for the Bank in Such Good Condition

Leasing, Office Buildings, Quicklink, Tanglewood

6 Comments

THANK YOU FOR LEAVING YOUR PLACE FOR THE BANK IN SUCH GOOD CONDITION â€œWe mowed the lawn this weekend, so weâ€™re giving it to them in nice shape.â€ — Dougal Cameron of Cameron Management, leader of an investment group that delivered the freshly LEED-certified and entirely vacant 12-story 2000 St. James Place office building just south of Tanglewood to Wachovia Bank (now a part of Wells Fargo) in a sparsely attended foreclosure ceremony earlier this month. Minute Maid moved out of the building in February 2009 — about a year and a half after Cameron’s investment group bought it; the building has had no tenants since then. [Houston Business Journal]

77056, Foreclosure, Leasing, Maintenance, Office Buildings, Tanglewood

Houston Heights

05/04/10 4:25pm

Hooray for the Smallest Freestanding Commercial Office Building in the Heights?

Office Buildings

10 Comments

A reader wants to nominate the tiny offices of Marine Offshore Electric Services, at 226 W. 18th St., just west of Yale, for . . . what?

It’s so cute! And really, this has got to be the smallest freestanding office structure in the Heights at least. What about a wider area? Bellaire, you got anything like this?

And what about retail? If someone will promise me there aren’t any old Fotomats or Fedex kiosks out there ready to trip me up, I’d like to nominate this place for smallest permanent freestanding non-foodservice commercial structure too. Is that category available?

About Us [Marine Offshore Electric Services]

Photo: Swamplot inbox

77008, Houston Heights, Office Buildings, Small Buildings

Downtown

02/08/10 2:21pm

Slipping a Hotel Under the Slipcover: Plans from the New Owner of 806 Main

Hotels, Houston Landmarks, Office Buildings, Proposed Developments, Redevelopment

7 Comments

The Houston Business Journal‘s Jennifer Dawson is reporting that a hotel developer out of Fort Worth is purchasing the 22-story office building at 806 Main St. Downtown with plans to gut it, renovate it, and reopen it as a hotel. The building is approximately 100 years old, but its top 10 floors were added in the 1920s. The stone, terra cotta, and brick structure was dressed in a marble-and-glass slipcover about 60 years later. Directly across the street from the tower is the construction site of Hines’s MainPlace development.

The city has designated 806 Main as a landmark. It’s connected to the Downtown tunnel system, but has remained mostly empty in recent years. The last of 40 recent tenants is scheduled to move out this week. Building manager Betty Brown tells Dawson that only the Christian Science Reading Room and Domino’s Pizza on the ground floor will be left — their leases run out in 9 to 12 months.

With the exception of the Embassy Suites in downtown Fort Worth featured prominently on its website, Pearl Real Estate has built or redeveloped mostly suburban-style hotels. The 10-year-old company typically operates its own properties and serves as its own general contractor.

What kind of hotel is Pearl planning underneath this slipcover?

77002, Downtown, Hotels, Houston Landmarks, Office Buildings, Proposed Developments, Redevelopment

Buildings for Sale

02/01/10 1:49pm

Comment of the Day: Inside the Stanford Financial Group Offices at 5050 Westheimer

Comments, Galleria, Interiors, Office Buildings, Quicklink

3 Comments

COMMENT OF THE DAY: INSIDE THE STANFORD FINANCIAL GROUP OFFICES AT 5050 WESTHEIMER “I have been through this building and it is decorated entirely in a (expensive) mahogany-green marble color scheme, put in place about 10 years ago. There is a large Palladian skylight with an ornate stair connecting the upper levels. Sir Allenâ€™s office was huge with floor to ceiling wood paneling with some impressive wood coffers on the ceiling. Allen wanted all the offices around the world to look the same, so they all used this exact same color scheme. The furniture was of the not-so-inspiring big heavy mahagony type and the art on the walls were bad Audubon print reproductions. What was so wierd about the office was how empty it was. This was 2002 and there was almost noone in the building, despite the extreme amount of money that he spent renovating it. There were rows and rows of empty offices and the parking garage had the same empty feeling. There was a private dining room and a commercial kitchen in the building also, with a full time chef (food was great!). The whole building seemed as if it was supposed to present an image of old money grace and prestige, but somehow, it just wasnâ€™t quite right.” [mt, commenting on Westheimer Office Building and All: Allen Stanford Says Sell!]

77056, Allen Stanford, Buildings for Sale, Galleria, Interiors, Office Buildings, Uptown

Buildings for Sale

01/29/10 9:40am

Westheimer Office Building and All: Allen Stanford Says Sell!

Galleria, Office Buildings

4 Comments

The 3-story, 62,000-sq.-ft. office building across from the Galleria that was once the headquarters for the Stanford Financial Group will at last go up for sale. Accused Ponzi schemer Robert Allen Stanford, awaiting his trial in a Conroe jail cell, had opposed the sale of any real estate owned by the corporations he controlled until 2 weeks ago, but subsequently changed his mind. A court ruling last week makes it official.

The office building at 5050 Westheimer sits on 1.6 acres and includes a 285-space parking garage. Also to be sold by Dallas court-appointed receiver Ralph Janvey in “stalking horse auctions”: Stanford’s Sugar Land airplane hangar, as well as other properties in Michigan, Tennessee, North Carolina, Mississippi, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

What about those condos in the Stanford Lofts Downtown?

77056, Allen Stanford, Auctions, Buildings for Sale, Galleria, Office Buildings, Stanford-Lofts, Uptown

01/22/10 9:38am

Skanska Post Oak Tower: We Don’t Need a Bank To Build This

Financing, Galleria, Highrises, Land Sales, Office Buildings, Proposed Developments

2 Comments

An executive with Skanska USA tells the Houston Business Journal‘s Jennifer Dawson that the American subsidiary of the Swedish project development and construction company will build and finance this new freeway-side Galleria spec office building all by itself. Design work for the 14-story tower and 8-story parking garage, though, was farmed out to Kirksey.

Where will it go? The 2.3-acre former site of Tony’s Ballroom at 3009 Post Oak Blvd., across the street from the Water Wall Park. Metro will likely want a piece of that property too: A thin, mostly triangular sliver along the property’s western edge is needed to accommodate the new Uptown Line set to run down Post Oak.

77056, Commercial Real Estate, Financing, Galleria, Highrises, Land Sales, Office Buildings, Proposed Developments, Uptown

Downtown

01/19/10 2:32pm

One Shell Plaza: License To Cruise

Highrises, Houston History, Office Buildings

8 Comments

At the end of a long article chewing over the possibility that Shell Oil might move out of its longtime Downtown office-tower home, real estate writer and promoter and longtime mustache-wearer Ralph Bivins finally reveals why he likes One Shell Plaza so much: Long ago, the 50-story concrete building with the travertine facing saved him and his brother-in-law from a possible night in the slammer.

A few decades ago, the Houston Police Department employed some officers who had a sore spot against guys with long hair and other suspected hippies. Anytime, you could get pulled over because having long hair and a mustache was â€œprobable causeâ€ for HPD to make a traffic stop. I was in the passenger seat late one night when my slightly shaggy brother-in-law got pulled over in the Montrose area. Even though we were doing nothing wrong, the policeman gave him general hassle, scrutiny and in-depth questioning.

77002, Downtown, Highrises, Houston History, Office Buildings, One Shell Plaza

Comments

11/30/09 10:17pm

Comment of the Day: Commodity, Firmness, and Notoriety

Commercial Real Estate, Highrises, Medical Buildings, Memorial City, New Construction, Office Buildings, Quicklink

No Comments

COMMENT OF THE DAY: COMMODITY, FIRMNESS, AND NOTORIETY “The design canâ€™t possibly be that bad. People are talking about it. When was the last time anybody remarked on the designs of Energy Tower III or Energy Crossing II?” [TheNiche, commenting on There Will Be No Tours of the Death Star, and Other Details About the Hospital in the Belly of the Memorial Hermann Tower]

77024, Comments, Commercial Real Estate, Development Strategies, Highrises, Hospitals, Medical Buildings, Memorial City, MetroNational, New Construction, Office Buildings

11/30/09 9:55am

There Will Be No Tours of the Death Star, and Other Details About the Hospital in the Belly of the Memorial Hermann Tower

Highrises, Medical Buildings, Memorial City, New Construction, Office Buildings, Office Space

35 Comments

Hospital executive Adam Lane tells the Houston Business Journal‘s Jennifer Dawson that the easiest patients to move into the new Memorial Hermann Tower on I-10 will be . . . the babies, “because they donâ€™t know where theyâ€™re going.”

Also, it sounds like some of the interiors might prove a little disorienting for suburban kids:

A hospital floor dedicated to children has been elaborately designed as a town center. The hallway is made to look like a street with curbs, grass and storefronts.

Fortunately, more familiar surroundings will be nearby: the building is connected by skybridge to the Memorial City Mall.

77024, Commercial Real Estate, Highrises, Hospitals, Medical Buildings, Memorial City, MetroNational, New Construction, Office Buildings, Office Space

Buying and Selling

11/25/09 9:25am

Why Houston Needs More Ring Roads

Commercial Real Estate, Freeways and Toll Roads, Office Buildings, Westchase

No Comments

H. Dan Miller, senior managing director of the Houston office of Holliday Fenoglio Fowler, commenting on the sale he recently brokered of the fully leased 30,000-sq.-ft. office building and bank drive-thru on an L-shaped property at 10411 Westheimer in Westchase, which received 18 offers within a week:

You had an irreplaceable location at the corner of Westheimer and Beltway 8 and three streets of frontage. I wish I had 10 of these types of buildings.

30,000-SF Office Attracts 18 Offers [Globe St.]
10411 Westheimer Executive Summary (PDF) [Holliday Fenoglio Fowler]

Photo: Holliday Fenoglio Fowler

77042, Buying and Selling, Commercial Real Estate, Freeways and Toll Roads, Office Buildings, Sprawl, Westchase

11/20/09 2:52pm

The Surrender of Greenway Plaza: Morgan Stanley’s Great Houston Office Building Investment Flop

Downtown, Galleria, Greenway Plaza, Office Buildings, Real Estate Investing

4 Comments

What do all these Houston office towers have in common?

That’s right — they’re all part of the vast Crescent Real Estate Equities empire, which at the peak of the market 2 years ago comprised 54 properties in all, stretching from Texas to the California coast. That’s when Morgan Stanley snatched up the whole thing for a mere $6.5 billion, thanks in part to a little $2 billion loan from Barclays Capital.

Today, Morgan Stanley announced it is giving up on the whole thing. Back to the bank all those properties go. All of them. (Okay, minus a few that were jettisoned along the way.)

77002, 77046, 77056, Commercial Real Estate, Defaults, Downtown, Financing, Galleria, Greenway Plaza, Office Buildings, Real Estate Investing

11/16/09 1:03pm

Kiddie Party on the Plaza: A Discovery Tower Construction Update

Downtown, Green Design and Development, Highrises, New Construction, Office Buildings

No Comments

A reader sends in photos of the new Hess Tower, formerly known as Discovery Tower, under construction adjacent to Discovery Green Downtown.

You can see the tower isn’t quite finished yet but it sure looks like that plaza in front of it already is! Though really, all those office workers look a little young, don’t you think?

More pics:

77010, Commercial Real Estate, Discovery Green, Discovery Tower, Downtown, Green Design, Highrises, New Construction, Office Buildings

Houston Architects

10/26/09 4:01pm

The Westchase Spec Office Building That Ate Tinseltown

New Construction, Office Buildings, Redevelopment, Westchase

15 Comments

Not a fan of the “ugly uninspired office parks” that line Beltway 8 on the west side of town, radio geek and computer answer guy Jay Lee finds he has a few nice things to say — and photograph — about the recently completed first phase of Westchase Park, a Simmons Vedder office development that’s replaced the Cinemark Tinseltown Westchase just north of Westpark:

Thereâ€™s a water feature in the front of the building that sports a metallic sculpture which sort of reminds me of the contraption from the movie â€œContact.â€ Itâ€™s by far the most interesting piece of architecture I have seen out here on the west beltway.

The building itself is glass and chrome and glints in the daylight. I was kind of hoping the sculpture was a corporate logo of some kind and that this was going to be to world headquarters of some up and coming conglomerate or something. Alas, it is simply a business park and will soon be selling office space to those looking to setup shop in the Westchase District.

On the plus side, it looks pretty cool at night:

77042, Houston Architects, New Construction, Office Buildings, Redevelopment, Westchase

Downtown

10/12/09 10:40pm

The View from AIG: This Time We’re Sure Houston’s Never Gonna Flood Again