There’s simply too much local entertainment value packed into this 10-minute video promoting Generation Park, a proposed 3000-acre office-campus development that’s gonna grow just like the Texas Medical Center, except it’s real close to the airport and Summerwood and Fall Creek and the Ship Channel, on land where McCord Development has planted thousands of trees over the years, and it’s responsible- or renewable-energy companies they’re looking to fill it out, not nonprofit hospitals. Here’s the company’s plan of the site, ideally located between Lake Houston and Beltway 8:
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Office Space
An email sent out early this morning to all U.S.-based ExxonMobil employees provides the first acknowledgment by the company’s management of what’s been a remarkably open secret: that the oil giant is building a giant new office campus south of The Woodlands. Actually, the email simply announces that the company is “proceeding with construction” of the project — a fact that should have been apparent to anyone who’s explored a Google map of the area recently, or driven past the small army of construction cranes visible from behind a mask of trees on the western edge of I-45 near the start of the Hardy Toll Rd. and the likely path of the Grand Parkway. (The reader photo shown above dates from several weeks ago.)
Ever wondered what a little duplex on Dunlavy might look like done up as . . . say, a personal injury law office? So, apparently, did the folks at the Manginello Law Firm. Thanks to the go-getters in that firm, all the heavy furniture lifting has been done for you. And now, thanks to the partners’ apparent eagerness to move on to a different sort of space, the firm’s bang-up legal interiors work is on display. It’s all featured in this new for-sale listing:
While thousands of ExxonMobil employees wait patiently to hear confirmation from the oil giant’s tight-lipped management about their rumored “possible” consolidation in a brand-new enormous office campus just south of The Woodlands, aerial photos that show work proceeding on the site have shown up in an update to Google Maps. The photo update appears to be relatively recent; it shows a level of clear-cutting similar to what was evident in the images leaked to Swamplot last month, which dated from March 12:
Moving into the site of the 7-story Compass Bank building demolished a year and a half ago at 2200 Post Oak Blvd., a block north of the Galleria: the bank’s new corporate parent, BBVA Compass. The subsidiary of Spanish banking giant BBVA will be leasing at least 6 floors of a new 20-story tower being developed on that location by the Redstone Companies and Stream Realty Partners. Not officially announced but still apparently planned for the northern portion of the same 6-and-a-half-acre parcel (the grassy area in the foreground of the rendering above, along Guilford Ct.): a second office building, hotel, and more structured parking. Redstone and Stream Realty had previously been marketing the mixed-use property as The Perennial.
What’s been going on deep in this pine forest north of Houston, behind the fencing and security guards, where all those trucks have been driving in and out for months? A whole lot of logging at least, it looks like. While ExxonMobil continues to tell its employees that no decisions have yet been made about whether to consolidate approximately 17,000 of them from Houston and Virginia into a new 3 million sq. ft. office campus just south of The Woodlands, contractors working for the company have been stripping what looks like thousands of trees from its 359-acre property and preparing the site for construction of as many as 2 dozen office buildings, 4 enormous parking garages, and several other structures. These aerial photos of the site sent to Swamplot are dated March 12th.
A show of hands, please: How many of you knew about the public notice posted by the Army Corps of Engineers this January asking for comments on environmental issues related to the new 389-acre office campus that ExxonMobil plans to build for its employees north of Houston, just south of Spring Creek? If you heard about the permit application before the February 17th commenting deadline, please let us know — just add a comment to this story.
Why is Swamplot asking?
So far, ExxonMobil hasn’t revealed any specific information about the new 389-acre North American headquarters just south of The Woodlands it’s apparently already begun sitework on. According to reports, all contractors working on plans for the enormous campus have been ordered to keep their work on the project secret. The new campus is meant to bring together somewhere between 15,000 and 17,000 employees now working in various locations around the Houston area and in Virginia. But documents submitted to the Army Corps of Engineers provide some detail on the plans for an enormous office park near the Harris County-Montgomery County border. The site is bounded by Spring Creek to the north, I-45 to the east, and the proposed 1,800-acre mixed-use development called Springwoods Village to the west and south. The plans were submitted by Palmetto Transoceanic, a mysterious entity that has been viewed as a proxy for the oil company in this area.
The HBJ’s Jennifer Dawson picks up an interesting detail about Springwoods Village, the mysterious eco-themed community being planned by a mysterious company for 1,800 mostly forested acres just south of the Woodlands, at the intersection of I-45, the Hardy Toll Road, and (someday) the Grand Parkway. Coventry Development, still won’t talk about the project’s connection to the rumored but not-yet-announced corporate campus ExxonMobil appears to be building next door, which is expected to consolidate most employees currently based in Houston and Fairfax, Virginia. But it sure looks like Coventry is banking on something big close by: Development director Keith Simon tells Dawson that
Coventry will develop commercial parcels in Springwoods before the residential acreage. The company’s strategy is to build commercial first to create tax value that will funnel money through the tax district to fund infrastructure.
Building standalone office parks and strip centers in the middle of a forest is, of course, a time-honored Houston development tradition. More often these days though, the sprawling houses go in first. But if the major centralized campus of the second-largest publicly traded company in the world is going to bring in thousands of workers nearby pretty soon anyway, yeah — what’s the point?
A small fleet of modified shipping containers outfitted with adjustable solar panels will soon serve as mobile emergency power supplies for the city of Houston. City officials are currently negotiating a contract to purchase 25 of the units, which are based on a prototype originally deployed as the green-themed sales office of a Montrose condo project. The solar-powered containers, called SPACE (“Solar Powered Adaptive Container for Everyone“), were created by a joint venture of local architecture firm Metalab, Joey Romano’s Harvest Moon Development, and design firm ttweak (best known for the popular “Houston. It’s Worth It.” marketing campaign). City sustainability director Laura Spanjian announced at the opening of the University of Houston’s Green Building Components Expo last month that SPACE and energy company Ameresco had been selected through a public-application process to supply the city with the mobile “solar generators.” Spanjian now tells Swamplot the contract should be complete “in a few weeks.”
SOME PLANS IN THEIR WRENCH 
And who thought a building shaped like a pipe wrench wouldn’t attract a natural-gas firm as its lead tenant? Hines announced yesterday that UK-based BG Group will move its Houston offices from the Panhandle Energy Tower where Westheimer hits Alabama in the Galleria to MainPlace, the Pickard Chilton-designed spec building still under construction at 811 Main St. Downtown. The company will take over floors 29 through 34 in the 46-story tower, but may fill up more later. And it’s changing the building’s name — no, not to Pez Tower — but to BG Group Place. KPMG put dibs on the building’s top 4 floors more than 2 years ago. [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Skyscraper Page user Johnme
The development director of the New York-and-Denver-based firm that just announced it would be creating a new eco-themed 1,800-acre community immediately south of The Woodlands — and directly adjacent to a 400-acre parcel Exxon Mobil has been eyeing for a giant new consolidated corporate campus — is sure being kinda vague about the identity of the property’s owner, Springwoods Realty. Keith Simon tells the HBJ‘s Jennifer Dawson that Coventry Development and Springwoods Realty share some officers (including him), but that the two companies are “not affiliated.”:
Coventry handles all of the real estate holdings for a privately held umbrella organization that Simon would not name. Springwoods Realty is under that umbrella.
Other entities under the umbrella own approximately 1,000 acres of undeveloped land by Baybrook Mall. Coventry has developed approximately 1 million square feet of retail property around the mall over the past 25 years.
“It’s really a confusing puzzle,†Simon admits.
Adding to the mystery surrounding this corporate . . . uh, “shell” game: Simon’s statement earlier in the week that Springwoods Realty had sold off approximately 400 acres of its holdings — not to Exxon Mobil, but to an entity named Palmetto Transoceanic.
- Coventry developing new community near likely Exxon campus [Houston Business Journal]
- Springwoods Village coverage [Swamplot]
Site map: Coventry Development
Coventry Development’s senior VP Keith Simon wouldn’t answer media questions today concerning the possibility that the new 1,800-acre mixed-use community his company wants to develop just south of The Woodlands might have the newly consolidated headquarters of the largest oil company in the world as its very first neighbor. In January, the Chronicle‘s Nancy Sarnoff reported on plans shown to her — apparently prepared for Exxon Mobil — showing an “elaborate corporate campus, including 20 office buildings with 3 million square feet, a wellness center, laboratory and multiple parking garages” on a 400-acre site near the intersection of I-45 and the Hardy Toll Rd.
Meanwhile, an informant tells Swamplot about a real-estate “study” Exxon Mobil has reportedly been conducting of all the properties it owns and leases in Houston: “the old Humble building at 800 Bell downtown, the Chemicals complex at Katy Fwy. and Eldridge, the lovely Greenspoint campus across from Greenspoint Mall, the research facility on Buffalo Speedway, and others.” The company is considering vacating all these sites — as well as its large and valuable Fairfax, Virginia campus outside Washington, D.C. — and consolidating all employees in the new megacampus just south of The Woodlands. (Baytown refinery employees, don’t worry — you’d get to stay put.)
Writes our informant:
Although the company is telling its understandably concerned employees who happen not to live in Spring or The Woodlands not to worry, that this is still just a study, there is already work being done to prepare the site for building.
Where might have Exxon Mobil have come up with those 400 acres?
METRO’S NEXT REAL ESTATE DEAL 
A tidbit from interim president and CEO George Greanias’s presentation to Metro’s new board yesterday: 2 entire floors of the transportation agency’s headquarters building just north of the Pierce Elevated at 1900 Main St. Downtown have been sitting vacant. For how long? That isn’t clear; the building was completed in 2005. Greanias’s suggestion: the floors “could be leased or occupied by Metro services now housed in other locations.” [Houston Chronicle; Hair Balls] Photo: Wikimedia Commons
That’s 4,000-sq.-ft. of art-gallery space on the second floor of M Fifty-Nine, a new 13-story office building Midway Companies is planning for the northeast corner of Montrose Blvd. and the Southwest Freeway. This view is from the southwest, looking toward Downtown (in the lower left, you can see the ghostly image of a portion of the Montrose Blvd. bridge that would actually be in the foreground). The design, by local architects Muñoz + Albin, includes 64,000 sq. ft. of office space and 7,000 sq. ft. of “restaurant ready” retail on the ground floor facing Montrose. Behind the gallery space: an enclosed parking garage for more than 200 cars. Midway Companies, the developers of CityCentre, hopes to begin construction on the project early next year.
What’s on the site now?
