Office Buildings

Commercial Real Estate
02/27/14 11:00am

New 6 Houston Center Tower Will Put Another Notch in the Downtown Skyline

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Downtown, Office Buildings, Proposed Developments
10 Comments

Proposed Design for 6 Houston Center Office Tower, on Block Surrounded by Walker, Caroline, Rusk, and San Jacinto Streets, Downtown Houston

Mimicking the pipe-wrench-jaw-like multistory balcony near the top of BG Group Place (seen in blocky form at right in the rendering above), there’ll a tree-toothed notch carved into the eastern edge of the top floors of the just-unveiled design for 6 Houston Center. But this new $250 million spec office tower won’t just be a little more roughly cut than its neighbor — it’ll be a bit shorter, too. The 30-story structure is planned for the block surrounded by Rusk, Walker, Caroline, and San Jacinto streets, directly north of the LyondellBasell Tower at 1 Houston Center, on what’s currently a surface parking lot.

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Tree-Lined Sky Views
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Featured Posts
02/14/14 3:30pm

Work Is Beginning Now on Greenway Plaza’s Next Office Tower

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Greenway Plaza, New Construction, Office Buildings, Proposed Developments
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3737-buffalo-spdwy-fence

Construction and don’t-touch-these-oaks fencing have gone up at the corner of Richmond and Buffalo Speedway, where the PM Realty Group has been planning to build a new 18-story office building attached to a 7-level parking garage on the open space and parking lot at the northern end of the site. The site plan shows retail space — likely for a restaurant — fronting Buffalo Speedway; the development is being called 3737 Buffalo Speedway.

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3737 Buffalo Speedway, Going Up
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Featured Posts
01/30/14 4:30pm

Memorial City Bally, Blast! Site Will Become Air Liquide Office Tower Sandwich

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Memorial City, Mixed Use, Office Buildings, Proposed Developments, Retail
5 Comments

Proposed Air Liquide Center, 9811 and 9807 Katy Fwy., Memorial City, Houston

Former Memorial Location of Bally Total Fitness, 9801 Katy Fwy., HoustonThat new office tower slated for the site of the 12-year-old Bally’s, then Blast! Fitness building  (pictured at left) at the northeast corner of the Memorial City Mall will be the new American corporate headquarters of industrial gas manufacturer Air Liquide. And it’ll be 2 buildings, actually: A 452,000-sq.-ft. 20-story tower designed by Morris Architects in back, and a 145,000-sq.-ft.12-story office building designed by Gensler in front, facing the I-10 feeder road. It’ll be called Air Liquide Center, but as shown in the rendering above, the core of the 2-building sandwich will be an 8-level parking garage.

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Gas HQ by the Katy Freeway
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Featured Posts
01/17/14 12:15pm

The Scene on San Felipe: Hines’s Friendly Neighborhood Skyscraper Is Going Up Now

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New Construction, Office Buildings, Vermont Commons
10 Comments

Construction of 2229 San Felipe Tower, Vermont Commons, Houston

Aerial View of Proposed 2229 San Felipe Office Tower, Vermont Commons, Houston“They are definitely moving forward” on construction of the office tower at the corner of Spann St. and San Felipe between Kirby and Shepherd, a Swamplot reader reports from the scene across the street from River Oaks. Neighborhood complaints or no, Hines is ready to roll on its 17-story 2229 San Felipe development (portrayed in an aerial view among its low-rise neighbors at right). “They have scraped the land, built a cover over the neighbors garage, and fenced this property,” our correspondent reports. And oh, yeah: A crane has arrived.

Photo: Loves Swamplot. Aerial View of 2229 San Felipe: Hines

Sticking Up, for River Oaks
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Demolitions
01/08/14 10:30am

The Crane for the Crane for the Texas Building Demo Is Here

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Downtown, Highrises, Office Buildings, Redevelopment
15 Comments

Crane for Demolition of Texas Tower, 608 Main St. at Texas, Downtown Houston

What’s that giant red crane looming downtown on the block surrounded by Main, Texas, Fannin, and Capitol? Assembling another crane. Which, in turn, will do all sorts of nasty business to the 21-story Texas Tower, which happens to be in the way of the shiny new 609 Main St. office tower that Hines plans to build on that block. The Texas Tower’s original Art Deco details were removed in the 1940s; back then it was known as the Sterling Building. It went up in 1931.

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Knock-em-Down ’Scrapers
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Commercial Real Estate
01/07/14 10:30am

Central Square Plaza’s New Green Graffiti Defense

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Midtown, Office Buildings, Security
7 Comments

Central Square Plaza, 2100 Travis St., Midtown, Houston

Central Square Plaza, 2100 Travis St., Midtown, HoustonA new green-screened construction fence has gone up around the perimeter of the Central Square Plaza building at 2100 Travis St., a reader reports. But the barricades aren’t an indication of impending renovation or demolition work on the long-vacant property. They’re part of an effort to secure the buildings and keep taggers and other would-be occupiers out.

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Midtown Wrap-Up
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Cancellations and Delays
12/20/13 10:00am

Chevron Won’t Reconsider Plans for New Downtown Tower on Old YMCA Site Until 2015 at Least

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Downtown, Highrises, Office Buildings
25 Comments

Proposed Chevron Tower at 1600 Louisiana St. and Pease, Downtown HoustonThe tallest, least-curvy tower in the trio pictured at left won’t be built any time soon, Chevron declared yesterday. The new 50-story structure, which the oil company announced over the summer and planned to combine with the 2 structures passed down to it from Enron into a consolidated Downtown campus, had been scheduled to begin construction shortly after March of next year. A spokesperson for the company tells the Chronicle‘s Nancy Sarnoff it won’t even make a decision on whether to proceed with the now-on-hold project until 2015. The 1.7-million-sq.-ft. building on a parking-garage plinth at 1600 Louisiana St. had been designed by architecture firm HOK for the former site of Houston’s Downtown YMCA.

Rendering: HOK

On Hold
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Demolitions
12/19/13 10:30am

Courtyard on St. James Place Wedding Venue To Be Replaced By PoMo Office Wedding Cake

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Galleria, Office Buildings, Proposed Developments
9 Comments

Rendering of Proposed Office Building at 1885 St. James Place, Houston

Wedding, Courtyard on St. James Place, 1885 St. James Pl., HoustonThis striped confection is what developers are planning to put in place of the Courtyard on St. James Place, an ivy-bedecked wedding venue beloved — or at least remembered — by hundreds of Houston spouses and divorcees and tucked into the southwest corner of the office-building complex near the corner of San Felipe and Yorktown, northwest of the Galleria. Though the rendering doesn’t reveal much about the surfaces planned for the new structure, a comment from Jones Lang Lasalle’s Chris Decker, in charge of marketing the 13-story office building, says that “upper-level floors will feature exterior balconies and decorative masonry that will complement the sophisticated look of the limestone aggregate block window wall.” A colleague refers to it as a “niche-type jewel.” The 135,000-sq.-ft collection of offices — with what appears to be an attached 2-story segment modeled after a smaller groom’s cake — will sit on top of a parking-garage-podium base.

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Fondant Memories
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Featured Posts
12/17/13 10:45am

The Mixed View of Hughes Landing from ExxonMobil’s New Woodlands Campus Corner Conference Room

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Leasing, Office Buildings, Proposed Developments, The Woodlands, The Woodlands Hughes Landing
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View from Corner Conference Room, Proposed ExxonMobil Office Building, Hughes Landing, The Woodlands, Texas

A couple of renderings are out of the 2 office buildings in Hughes Landing ExxonMobil has signed up to lease as part of the oil company’s surprise second new Houston-area campus. And the one above shows a broad-ranging view of the Hughes Landing development — as the office buildings’ architects at Kirksey see it. Judging from the renderings and the Hughes Landing site plan posted on the Woodlands website (below), the 2 buildings will not sit directly on the Lake Woodlands waterfront but along Hughes Landing Blvd., 2 parking garages south of the previously announced Two Hughes Landing. The view out of the corner conference room shows off the overall development’s mixed-use cred: To the left is the 175-room hotel shown on the plan, fronting Hughes Landing Blvd. and a fountained inlet of Lake Woodlands; beyond and to the right of that is the 8-story, 390-unit apartment building that sits behind a row of inlet-side restaurants with dummy names. At the far right of the image is an 8-level parking garage with a waterside grill on the ground floor (somehow obscuring the expected view of the Two Hughes Landing office building). That’s quite a view, but it’s a well-chosen one.

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Off the Waterfront
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Demolitions
12/13/13 10:45am

How the End Is Coming for Downtown’s Texas Tower

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Downtown, Office Buildings, Proposed Developments
7 Comments

Texas Tower, 608 Texas Ave., Downtown HoustonDemolition crews have begun working at the base of the 21-story Texas Tower at 608 Fannin St., which will be taken down floor-by-floor. The 85-ish-year-old structure, formerly known as the Sterling Building, stands in the way of Hines’s new, now-47-story 609 Main St. office tower (below), for which excavation and foundation work is scheduled to begin next March. A spokesperson from Hines says there are no plans for an implosion.

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Bit by Bit
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Featured Posts
12/11/13 10:30am

Where on Richmond Ave That New Greenway Plaza Office Tower Is Going

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Greenway Plaza, Mixed Use, Office Buildings, Proposed Developments
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Demolition Work at Richmond Ave and Cummins St., Greenway Plaza, Houston

This was the scene yesterday on the southeast corner of Richmond Ave and Cummins St. near Greenway Plaza, where the Redstone Companies and Hansen Partners are planning to build a new 11-story office building and 5-level parking garage with — if a Planning Dept. staff report describing the project is correct — an attached 5-story retail center. The development received planning commission approval last week for a reduced setback along the 2 streets that meets with planned but not-yet-approved standards for transit corridors; if Metro’s stalled University Line ever gets built, it’ll make its get-off-of-Richmond turn at this same corner. Accordingly, in documents submitted to the city, the developers appear to be holding out the undescribed retail portion for some later date: [Only] “the office building and related parking garage to be built on this site are nearing the time that a building permit will be required,” the variance application reads.

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5-Story Retail?
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Featured Posts
12/10/13 12:00pm

ExxonMobil Setting Up a Separate Second New Campus for Itself — in The Woodlands

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Office Buildings, Proposed Developments, Taxes, The Woodlands, The Woodlands Hughes Landing
33 Comments

Rendering of Proposed Developments at Hughes Landing, The Woodlands, Texas

Yes, ExxonMobil has been constructing an enormous new 20-building corporate campus on 386 acres near the intersection of I-45 and the new Grand Parkway, where it plans to consolidate approximately 17,000 employees from several Houston-area and out-of-state locations. But the oil company is apparently planning a bit of a move in the opposite direction at the same time. It now has plans to lease more than 480,000 sq. ft. in 2 new office buildings in a new separate “satellite campus” 7 miles north. This won’t be a contrasting urban setting for workers seeking something similar to the company’s longtime Downtown Houston tower. It’ll be in Hughes Landing (pictured above), the new mixed-use development on the shores of Lake Woodlands in The Woodlands.

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When 386 Acres Is Not Enough
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Featured Posts
12/06/13 2:30pm

Flushing Away Allen Stanford’s Legacy at 5050 Westheimer

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Galleria, Office Buildings, Quicklink, Renovations
1 Comment

FLUSHING AWAY ALLEN STANFORD’S LEGACY AT 5050 WESTHEIMER Former Headquarters of Stanford Financial Group, 5050 Westheimer Rd., HoustonNoting the extensive changes to the office building at 5050 Westheimer across the street from the Galleria that once served as headquarters for the Stanford Financial Group but has since been taken over completely by real estate firm Keller Williams, Real Estate Bisnow’s Catie Dixon zeroes in on the big news: “Stanford’s gigantic personal bathroom is gone.” Reuters reporter Chris Baltimore described the rarely seen first-floor spectacle back in 2009, after an exclusive crime-scene tour, as “a chamber of black granite and mahogany, with a gigantic mirror and granite countertop, flanked with shelves of fluffy white towels and toiletries, including a bottle of ‘Brilliant Brunette’ shampoo.” Notable features: the separate black-toilet room, the huge walk-in shower, and the blank door next to it which served as Sir Allen’s private escape route to the parking deck. Stanford’s entire personal magnet-key-access-only first-floor domain has now been replaced by the offices of KW-affiliated lender and title companies; the Gensler redo of the building has kept some of the green marble but added some red walls, replacing stone-carved messages like Stanford’s HARD WORK, CLEAR VISION, VALUE for the CLIENT with “inspirational and wacky sayings like ‘Complaining=garbage magnet.'” [Real Estate Bisnow; Reuters; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Flushed
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Buying and Selling
11/18/13 11:46am

Apartment Developer Buying Montrose Blvd. ‘Skybar’ Building

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Commercial Real Estate, Montrose, Office Buildings, Redevelopment
19 Comments

3400 Montrose Office Building, Montrose, HoustonSnooping around county records, HBJ reporter Shaina Zucker discovers that apartment developer Hanover Company has placed the long-vacant 10-story office building at 3400 Montrose Blvd. under contract. The developer wouldn’t respond to Zucker’s questions, but an officer of the Montrose Management District hints strongly that Hanover plans to tear down the structure across Hawthorne St. from Kroger and build — surprise! — “luxury apartments” in its place: “There’s no way they could remodel.” Scott Gertner’s Skybar — and Cody’s before it — once occupied the building’s top floor.

Photo: Swamplot inbox

3400 Montrose
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Downtown
11/11/13 10:00am

Redo of Classic ExxonMobil Tower Downtown Will Eat Fins, Fatten Up

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Houston Landmarks, Modern Design, Office Buildings, Office Space, Proposed Developments, Uncategorized
41 Comments

An entry posted over the weekend to the website of Ziegler Cooper Architects indicates that the local firm has won Shorenstein Properties’ invited competition to remake the soon-to-be-former ExxonMobil Building (at right), a prominent, bristly, and standoffish figure on the southern edge of Houston’s Downtown since 1962. The redo, which will be far more extensive than a simple reskinning, removes the most distinctive feature of the building, originally designed by L.A. architects Welton Becket for Humble Oil: the 7-foot-deep shades, cantilevered from marble-clad columns, that help shield sunlight from all but the top of the tower’s 44 stories.

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