ALL THOSE NEW ENERGY CORRIDOR OFFICE BUILDINGS “Among projects slated to begin construction soon are the 477,000-square-foot Energy Tower III from Mac Haik Realty Ltd. on the Katy Freeway, the 170,000-square-foot Enclave Corporate Center and the 230,000-square-foot Energy Crossing II, developed by Phoenix-based Opus West Corp. on the Katy Freeway. Currently, 13 new office buildings are being constructed in the Energy Corridor, according to the Energy Corridor Management District. Major developments coming online in the near future include the 300,000-square-foot Three Eldridge Place at 737 North Eldridge Parkway being developed by Dallas-based Behringer Harvard; the 447,000-square-foot Energy Tower II, which is expected to be completed this fall and will be occupied primarily by Technip; and Eldridge Oaks I, a 350,000-square-foot building at 1080 Eldridge Parkway being developed by Transwestern. In all, the market will gain an estimated 1.25 million square feet of new space, of which about 33 percent is pre-leased. Class A vacancy is expected to increase by about 50 percent this year, its highest rate in five years, according to market experts.” [Houston Business Journal]
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Office Buildings
What’s happening to this brick office building on West Dallas, just east of Dunlavy? The Houston Business Journal‘s Jennifer Dawson reports it’s getting an energy-conscious renovation — overseen by Bailey Architects, designer of the original building in the early eighties.
The West Dallas building used to house local advertising firm Sachnowitz & Co. The vacant site of the former Aquarium Lounge is next door.
Early next year, the Royal Norwegian Consulate General will be moving in. The consulate general currently occupies offices in a tower on Allen Parkway.
- Consulate recruits original architect to recycle building [Houston Business Journal]
Photo: Swamplot inbox
Diehard Modernist architect Charles Gwathmey, dubbed one of the “New York Five” (along with Peter Eisenman, Michael Graves, Richard Meier, and John Hejduk) in the early 1970s, passed away yesterday in Manhattan of esophageal cancer. Gwathmey, who was 71, was probably most famous for his addition to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim Museum, which his firm, Gwathmey Siegel & Associates Architects, completed in 1992.
Gwathmey-Siegel was no stranger to Houston. In the late seventies and early eighties, the firm designed a series of 4 spec office buildings that line the south side of this city’s North Belt, just southeast of the Greenspoint Mall.
Photos: LoopNet (400 N. Sam Houston Pkwy. E) and Feagins Interests (Damson Oil Bldg., 260 N. Sam Houston Pkwy. E)
A reader sends in a photo of the Arch-Con tilt-up office building going up at 1335 West Gray just west of Waugh, across from The Tavern on Gray — and asks:
This has got to be the first ever tilt up building inside the loop, right?
The 21,000-sq.-ft. building was planned to house the Houston headquarters for general contractor Arch-Con on the third floor, next to the terrace. Scraped bungalows will make room for an adjacent surface parking lot. The architect’s website notes there will be “additional parking on the first floor.” Stream Realty has two 7,466-sq.-ft. floor plates listed for lease.
Renderings of the finished building, from Ziegler Cooper Architects:
The fog cuts both ways: Reader Stephen Cullar-Ledford sends in this view looking back at Downtown, taken from the AIG American General building on Allen Parkway yesterday morning.
. . . Along with yet another economy/fog/building metaphor, ripe for the captioning:
Reader Mary Ellen Arbuckle sends in a few shots of the beleagured AIG American General building on Allen Parkway, which she snapped earlier this morning from a perch on the 36th floor of the KBR Building Downtown. “Could this be forefogging?” she asks.
It might be a bit tough for anyone see a way through this mess. Do things look any better if you take the long view?
This weekend’s Galleria-area bank implosion won’t be televised nationally, but you should be able to watch it happen live if you wake up early enough on Sunday. Preparations for the dynamite-fueled takedown of the Compass Bank building at 2200 Post Oak are just about complete.
A notice sent out last month to area businesses by Cherry Demolition says the implosion is scheduled for approximately 7:45 am on March 15th — which happens to be the 2,053rd anniversary, give or take a calendar adjustment, of the Julius Caesar demo. A few details:
Adjacent streets will be closed at approximately 6:00 am and re-open at 9:15 am. Streets to be closed are Guilford and Post Oak Boulevard between Westheimer and Ambassador Way.
So where’s the best vantage point for viewing this cathartic form of timely public theater gonna be?
A major downturn in the economy tends to make it a bit easier to happen upon images of developments that have been planned in secret — though finding them can be somewhat less exciting than unearthing plans that are actually likely to happen. A tipster reports HAIF user lockmat’s discovery of two images of Brookfield Properties’ planned Five Allen Center office tower Downtown. We saw one hazy picture of this building back in June. But is there any more to it now than just a few pretty pictures?
Five Allen Center is marked “pre-development” on the Brookfield website: a 50-story, 1.2-million-sq.-ft. office tower planned for a 2.5-acre site at the northwest corner of Downtown — at the northeast corner of Houston Ave. and West Dallas. That’s a rather prominent position:
Hot off the Swamplot tipline: Discovery Tower, going up across McKinney St. from Discovery Green Downtown, has its first tenant — and it’ll be taking the whole building.
Beginning in late 2011 — about the time Hess’s current lease at One Allen Center expires — the 30-story tower with the wind turbines on top will be renamed Hess Tower.
After the jump, details from an email announcing the move — sent out to Hess Corporation employees late this morning:
Hmmm . . . What’s going on in Houston real estate today? How about . . . the continuing construction of MainPlace! It’s the day before Christmas, and it’s still going on!
Scope out the scene yourself with the D.E. Harvey MainPlace webcam! Five-minute camera takeovers accepted.
- Live Video [Harvey Construction Cameras, via HAIF]
WHERE THERE’S SMOKE That fire in the atrium office building at 9343 North Loop East almost 2 years ago still heats up the Houston real estate scene: “An insurance company with a potential $25 million liability from a 2007 Houston office fire is claiming smoke that killed three people was ‘pollution’ and surviving families shouldn’t be compensated for their losses since the deaths were not caused directly by the actual flames. Great American Insurance Company is arguing in a Houston federal court that the section of the insurance policy that excludes payments for pollution — like discharges or seepage that require cleanup — would also exclude payouts for damages, including deaths, caused by smoke, or pollution, that results from a fire.†[Houston Chronicle]
NOT GOING WEST The Energy Corridor won’t be extending to Katy just yet. KBR’s big move to a new 8-building campus a mile east of the Katy Mills Mall has been scrapped — “for now”: “‘We hope it is a delay, not a change in plans,’ said Will Holder, president of Trendmaker Homes. The development division of the company is building Cross Creek Ranch, a 3,200-acre master-planned community in Fulshear. KBR announced its project in May, saying it wanted to be closer to its growing employee- and customer-base in west Houston, where it would be joining the likes of BP and ConocoPhillips. The campus was designed to include more than 910,000 square feet of space in a series of low-rise buildings at the southwest corner of Interstate 10 and Grand Parkway. Construction was expected to start by year’s end, with estimated completion in 2010. The company was going to lease the facility from developer Trammell Crow Co., which was going to build it on a 123-acre parcel along with shopping centers, restaurants, additional office buildings and hotels.” [Houston Chronicle]
A reader wants to know about the 4-story office building Stream Realty is claiming it can fit on a couple of recently demo’ed lots on W. Gray near Waugh:
Hadn’t driven by this part of town in a while. Is this the sort of thing that went out the window when all the credit froze up, or did this sign just go up?
A listing on the Stream Realty website indicates that 1335 West Gray is supposed to contain 22,392 sq. ft. of space, with a third of it (on the top floor) apparently already spoken for. The first floor looks open for parking.
The HBJ’s Allison Wollam reports that the Westgate Houston Preview Gallery, a large timeshare sales center in the JPMorgan Chase bank building on Richmond at Sage, has closed:
The gallery, located at 5177 Richmond Ave., offered a full-size model with a living room and kitchen styled after Central Florida Investments’ timeshare properties.
The Houston location, which opened in 2004, was the first offsite sales center for Orlando-based Central Florida Investments. The company owns Westgate Resorts, which operated the preview gallery.
Almost 3 weeks ago, CFI founder and CEO David Siegel told the Orlando Sentinel that financial troubles had recently begun at the company — with the suddenness of “a heart attack.”
Until that time, Siegel apparently thought he was doing pretty well.
