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]
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A drawback to having a nice completed freeway coupled with a much harder credit market.
With I-10 in completed mode, travel times have been drastically cut. This alone will help prevent increased office space far out west even in a time of easy credit.
I never could figure out how this deal made sense in the first place. Highway 99 is WAY too far out for a company like KBR, who has lots of suburban employees living in Montgomery County, Fort Bend County and Northwest Houston (Jersey Village, etc.) in addition to those living in Katy. They don’t HAVE to be downtown, but somewhere around Westchase would make A LOT more sense.
I’m sure this was cancelled because the petrochem industry in Houston is collapsing. By 2010 KBR won’t need this space.