Tag: 77389

Landscape
06/07/11 2:03pm

Welcome to the Land of ExxonMobil: A Tour of the Company’s New North Houston Campus

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New Construction, Office Buildings, Spring, Springwoods Village
40 Comments

That floating central portion of the new gateway “Energy Center” planned for the entrance to ExxonMobil’s just-acknowledged new office campus in Spring only looks like it’s touching down after an outer-space tour of possible new energy sources. Or is the structure’s “Look, Ma, no feet” stance meant to communicate the company’s attitude toward whatever stuff might be lurking on the ground — or below it? The welcome center, which will include a reception area, training and conference facilities, and a formal restaurant, “has been designed to represent the ExxonMobil brand for the long term,” an internal company memo declares. Well, hello up there!

The campus was planned and designed by New Haven architects Pickard Chilton, with local firms PDR and the Houston office of Gensler. Hargreaves Associates created the landscape plan. More images of buildings now under construction by Gilbane and Harvey on the company’s 385-acre campus near the intersection of I-45, the Hardy Toll Rd., and the likely path of the future Grand Parkway loop road:

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Development Strategies
06/07/11 9:24am

ExxonMobil Fesses Up to Its Employees About That New North Houston Campus It’s Been Building

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New Construction, Office Buildings, Office Space, Spring, Springwoods Village
37 Comments

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.)

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Development Strategies
05/05/11 2:20pm

ExxonMobil’s Top Secret New Corporate Campus Now Hiding in Plain Sight on Google Maps

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Landscape, New Construction, Office Space, Online Resources, Proposed Developments, Spring, Springwoods Village
16 Comments

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:

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Comments
04/20/11 4:42pm

Comment of the Day: ExxonMobil Office Park Construction Report

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Landscape, New Construction, Office Buildings, Proposed Developments, Quicklink, Spring, Springwoods Village
3 Comments

COMMENT OF THE DAY: EXXONMOBIL OFFICE PARK CONSTRUCTION REPORT “On [my way] in to work this morning, driving south on 45 and going over the Rayford/Sawdust bridge, I could clearly see a crane poking out above the trees in the Exxon campus area.” [Jessie M, commenting on Aerial Views of ExxonMobil’s New Sprawling, Top Secret Houston Headquarters]

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Demolitions
04/15/11 8:55am

Aerial Views of ExxonMobil’s New Sprawling, Top Secret Houston Headquarters

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Development Strategies, Landscape, New Construction, Office Buildings, Office Space, Proposed Developments, Spring, Springwoods Village, Trees
39 Comments

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.

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Comments
03/30/11 9:50pm

Comment of the Day: This Land Is Their Land

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Development Strategies, Environmental, Office Buildings, Proposed Developments, Quicklink
5 Comments

COMMENT OF THE DAY: THIS LAND IS THEIR LAND “Heard about it. Shouldn’t matter who the purchaser is, in fact, after reading your comments, it is probably more fair all around if they do not disclose who they are. Posters on this site are quite amazing. I am astonished daily in what they seem to feel they are entitled to when it comes to property owned by others. And how much Swamplot originators do to creatively stir the pot.” [LudiKris, commenting on How Does a Public Notice About ExxonMobil’s Giant New Corporate Campus Stay Under the Radar?]

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Development Strategies
03/29/11 12:51pm

How Does a Public Notice About ExxonMobil’s Giant New Corporate Campus Stay Under the Radar?

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Office Buildings, Office Space, Proposed Developments, Spring, Springwoods Village
43 Comments

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?

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Comments
03/22/11 4:08pm

Comment of the Day: Heard It Here First

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Development Strategies, New Construction, Office Buildings, Proposed Developments, Quicklink, Spring, Springwoods Village
9 Comments

COMMENT OF THE DAY: HEARD IT HERE FIRST “Keep up the interesting news on the ExxonMobil property. I work for XOM and they’re telling us NOTHING!” [Insider, commenting on A First Look at the Plans for ExxonMobil’s Humongous New Corporate Campus North of Houston]

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Comments
03/18/11 1:41pm

Comment of the Day: Exit Strategy for ExxonMobil’s New North Houston Campus

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Development Strategies, Malls, Proposed Developments, Quicklink, Spring
No Comments

COMMENT OF THE DAY: EXIT STRATEGY FOR EXXONMOBIL’S NEW NORTH HOUSTON CAMPUS “Exxon has sufficiently resurrected the 1980s suburban mall layout. Congratulations. Now, when they decide to move even farther from the educational core of their hometown (read: Willis HQ 2025), they can create “Spring Creek Mall” and populate the landscape with a sampling of deep-discounted soft goods clothing, closeout electronics, and heavily salted/large portion family dining. Everybody wins here.” [jg, commenting on A First Look at the Plans for ExxonMobil’s Humongous New Corporate Campus North of Houston]

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New Construction
03/17/11 4:58pm

A First Look at the Plans for ExxonMobil’s Humongous New Corporate Campus North of Houston

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Office Space, Proposed Developments, Spring, Springwoods Village
33 Comments

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.

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Commercial Real Estate
01/28/11 10:16am

How Springwoods Village Will Earn Its Lunch Money, and other Secrets of the Great ExxonMobil Frontiers

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Development Stategies, Land Development, Master-Planned Communities, Office Space, Proposed Developments, Real Estate Investing, Springwoods Village
7 Comments

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?

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Development Strategies
10/08/10 7:02pm

Who’s Behind Springwoods Village, Anyway?

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Land Sales, Master-Planned Communities, Office Space, Proposed Developments, Springwoods Village
3 Comments

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.

Site map: Coventry Development

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Buying and Selling
10/05/10 2:56pm

Is Springwoods Village the New Exxon Mobil Eco-City?

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Development Strategies, Land Sales, Office Space, Proposed Developments, Springwoods Village
34 Comments

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?

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Green Design and Development
10/05/10 12:19pm

Spawn of the Grand Parkway: Huge New Woodlands-Like Development, Just South of The Woodlands

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Master-Planned Communities, Proposed Developments, Springwoods Village
61 Comments

A New York land development firm called Coventry Development has just announced grand plans to establish a giant eco-friendly, mixed-use development modeled heavily on the ecological principles first demonstrated decades ago by The Woodlands — on an 1,800-acre site just south of that community. It’s now a pine forest near the intersections of I-45 North, the Hardy Toll Road, and the projected path of the Grand Parkway, about 30 miles north of Downtown Houston. Some portions of that forest will remain: Plans call for a 150-acre nature preserve along one section of the community’s northern reaches, which stretch to Spring Creek. South of that, and along the northern border of the Grand Parkway, the developers are planning a town center with the hallmarks of major mixed-use employment centers: office space and retail, a medical district, townhouses and apartments, and single-family homes. But they’ve gone ahead and given the place a formula-tested suburban-housing name: Springwoods Village.

Springwoods Realty Company has owned most of this land since the 1960s. Why develop it now? Because it’s now pretty clear that the Grand Parkway will actually be built right at the property’s southern border, the developers say. Plus, there’s development on all sides now.

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