Please don’t turn around and stare, but suddenly another entire office tower in the Energy Corridor has become available for lease — all 20 floors of it. Any takers?
So far, only one of the 2 extremely available towers appears to qualify as a genuine see-through building — that would be the 22-story completed-but-never-occupied Energy Center Four, at N. Eldridge Pkwy. and I-10, which back in June ConocoPhillips announced it was giving up on moving into but hoped some other company (or 32) would sublease from them. And now from Nancy Sarnoff comes the other dropping shoe: energy company BP, announcing that by early next year it plans to vacate Four Westlake Park, aka WestLake Four, a little more than a mile west along the freeway feeder road, at 200 Westlake Park Blvd. BP has 7 years to go on its lease for that 22-year-old property from New York-based Falcon Real Estate Investment Management.
- BP puts more office space onto crowded sublease market [Houston Chronicle]
- ConocoPhillips offers up Energy Corridor tower as sublease glut grows [Houston Chronicle]
Photo of Westlake Park Four: Steven Baker
Sounds like some of the office workers at 4 will finally be getting moved into Helios plaza where the dress code is strictly metrosexual. NYC in the Katy prairie. It will be an adjustment that will be made up for with a sweet cafeteria.
What about Energy Center V? It was built spec and doesn’t have any tenants. Same goes for the former ExxonMobil Chemical campus.
Public Storage?
Sounds like it’s time to dust off my copy of The See-Through Years, a pictorial account of the disaster that was 1980s real estate in Texas, for another reading.
Thanks for the classy link GM, I’ll be picking up a copy of that ;)
This all makes me sick. The hubris of the oil companies building office space that was not needed…except for their egos. Another capital investment arms race that leaves Houston and lenders holding the bag.