Tag: Office Buildings

Buying and Selling
12/20/07 11:25pm

Younan Building Empire: Buy Low, Stack High?

by
Highrises, Office Buildings, Real Estate Investing
No Comments

Younan Tower, the former Northbelt Corporate Center, Houston

He boasted back in July that he would build the world’s tallest building — a 200- to 300-story tower in either Houston or Chicago. Meanwhile, Zaya Younan has been continuing his Houston-area office-building buying spree. Back in May, Younan told the Houston Business Journal‘s Jennifer Dawson that he’d own 5 million square feet of office space in this city by the end of this year.

So how much has he been able to buy?

Just 2.2 million square feet, according to a company press release dated December 18th — which ain’t bad. Even better: by confusing his Houston and statewide numbers, he’s been able to convince Globe St. that he’s bought much more — and actually exceeded his goals for the year. Plus, Younan tells that publication’s Amy Wolff Sorter, he plans to buy an additional 5 million square feet in Houston next year, which will help his company achieve the goal of being the largest office landlord in both the city and the state:

“Since the subprime and credit crunch happened in August, building contracts fell through,” he says. “We were suddenly inundated with calls from owners and brokers, so we bought a significant amount of assets.”

After the jump, some of the properties Younan’s snapped up lately, plus Younan Tower, revealed!

CONTINUE READING THIS STORY

, , , ,
Buying and Selling
10/30/07 10:03am

Sugar Land: New O.J. H.Q.

by
Commercial Real Estate, Fort Bend County, Leasing, New Construction, Office Buildings, Sugar Land
No Comments

Minute Maid is moving to Sugar Land. The Minute Maid Building near the Galleria has been sold.

Should we expect added sweeteners in our O.J.?

Cameron Management, Wachovia Bank and a group of local investors recently purchased the 351,000-square-foot office building at 2000 St. James Place for an undisclosed amount.

Minute Maid, a Houston-based division of Atlanta-based Coca-Cola, will lease back 150,000 square feet of space until its new home is ready in late 2008. Coca-Cola is negotiating a lease for 120,000 square feet in an office building that Planned Community Developers Ltd. began constructing last July in Sugar Land Town Square at U.S. Highway 59 and State Highway 6.

Why not . . . Pearland? Probably less appealing.

And what will happen to the empty building on St. James after the juice is gone?

In preparation for Minute Maid’s move-out, Cameron is marketing the 12-story building, located between Westheimer and San Felipe, as the largest block of contiguous office space in the Galleria area.

Sweet.

, , , , , , , , ,
Downtown
10/11/07 11:28am

Downtown’s New Tower of Parking

by
Highrises, New Construction, Office Buildings, Parking
No Comments

Heritage Plaza, Downtown Houston, TexasA new multistory parking structure is about to go up at the northeast edge of downtown, across the street from Heritage Plaza. A building permit for the parking garage at 1200 Bagby, which is classified as a “high rise” itself, was approved by the city yesterday.

“We’re going to offer suburban parking ratios in downtown Houston,” Russell F. Read, a principal at Goddard Investment Group, told the CoStar group two years ago. “That will be hard to beat.”

Photo: flickr user Corrine Martin

, , , , ,
Demolitions
10/05/07 9:16am

St. Luke’s: We’re Selling So We Can Renovate and Demolish

by
Highrises, Institutional Buildings, Medical Buildings, Office Buildings, Renovations, Texas Medical Center
No Comments

The O’Quinn Medical Tower at St. Luke’sWhy did St. Luke’s decide to sell the Texas Medical Center’s most recognizable building?

Once the tower sale goes through, St. Luke’s — which plans to lease back its current space on floors nine through 12 for continued hospital operations — plans to extensively renovate and update the 27-story patient tower, which opened in 1971. The original seven-story hospital building, built in 1954 and now used for administrative functions, will be torn down, and new facilities will be built on that space as well as possibly on other nearby undeveloped land owned by St. Luke’s, according to [St. Luke’s senior vice president David] Koontz.

“That is the ‘why’ behind the move to sell this medical building,” he says.

For sale: The Madonna tower. Designed by Cesar Pelli. Officially named only a couple of years ago for donor and breast-implant litigator John O’Quinn.

After the jump, a picture-postcard-perfect view of the original 1954 St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital building, not long for this world.

CONTINUE READING THIS STORY

, , , , , , , ,
Buying and Selling
09/28/07 8:41am

The 1031 Exchange Buyer Advantage

by
Commercial Real Estate, Financing, Office Buildings, Real Estate Investing
No Comments

Parkview II, 333 Cypress Run, Houston

Everyone knows having money gives you a big advantage when you try to make money. But think about the advantage already owning real estate gives you when you’re trying to buy real estate.

Imagine a buyer bidding against a crowd of competitors on a pair of fully-leased West Houston office buildings—say, Parkview I and II:

“They’re not active buyers and they had a specific need with 1031 exchange money,” says Marty Hogan, associate director in Houston for Holliday Fenoglio Fowler LP. Texas is a non-disclosure state so he won’t discuss the sale price of the 333 Cypress Run properties, but local experts confirm that similar class B buildings are trading for $110 per sf to $120 per sf.

Hogan says the assets attracted 10 offers, with a partnership from Greenwich, CT ending up with the deal because it offered a short due diligence and certainty of close. “The buyers also had a large amount of equity and the purchase wasn’t contingent on financing.” Hogan tells GlobeSt.com. “Given the market at this time, they weren’t high-leveraged buyers looking to get 80% to 90% of the purchase price financed so that was appealing.”

Sure, a lot of cash in the transaction is going to be pretty attractive to a seller. But other aspects of 1031 exchange requirements—if the buyer knows that’s what you’re doing—give like-kind-exchange buyers a decided advantage in any market: The seller knows you’ve got time constraints to complete the deal. And that you’ll likely have to pay a lot of taxes if you can’t pull it off. You look like a sure thing.

Of course, if the seller knows that you have no other 1031-exchange options available and the terms of your deal aren’t fully worked out yet, that’s another story.

Photo: Parkview II

, , , , , ,
Demolitions
08/24/07 7:43pm

MainPlace: Hines’s 46-Story Green Pipe-Wrench Dream

by
Downtown, Green Design and Development, Highrises, Office Buildings, Proposed Developments
No Comments

View of MainPlace, Hines’s Proposed 46-Story LEED Silver Office Building on Main Street in Downtown HoustonIt rises dramatically from the center of Downtown to face the morning sun. And the renderings sure make it look like a sleek, giant pipe wrench, the business end looking out over Houston’s industrial east side. Yep, there’s nothing the head office won’t be able to fix!

It’s MainPlace, a 46-story, one-million-square-foot green spec office tower, planned for most of the block surrounded by Fannin, Rusk, and Walker, at 811 Main.

The developer is the Hines CalPERS Green Fund, established by Hines and the California retirement fund to develop “sustainable” office buildings around the country. The core and shell, they promise, will be given a LEED-Silver rating by the USGBC. Don’t worry too much about all that, though: tenants will presumably be free to decorate their interiors with the usual endangered rainforest hardwoods and petroleum-based finishes.

That’s a five-story atrium up there on the 39th floor, facing a “sky garden.” Enjoy those trees in the rendering while you can; eventually, the engineers will start to think long and hard about hurricanes. More details and lots more zoomy pics, including closeups of that pipe-wrench jaw sky garden, after the jump.

CONTINUE READING THIS STORY

, , , , , , , , ,
Apartments
08/10/07 7:29pm

River Oaks To Move West, Add Hotels, Apartments, Offices, and Shopping

by
Commercial Real Estate, Condos, Highland Village, Highrises, Malls, Mixed Use, New Construction, New Construction: Residential, Office Buildings, Proposed Developments, Retail, River Oaks, Shopping Centers
No Comments

Street Perspective of Proposed River Oaks District Development by Oliver McMillan

Aerial View of Proposed River Oaks District Mixed Use DevelopmentThe Houston Business Journal gives more details on the River Oaks District, a 15-acre, $600 million mixed-use development proposed for Westheimer just inside the loop, on the site of the Westcreek Apartments, between Highland Village and the Galleria. It’s hard to imagine River Oaks moving further west than that. Once you get to the other side of the loop of course, you might as well call yourself Tanglewood.

Two luxury hotels are on tap. The five-star properties will have a total of 500 guest rooms, and 150 condominiums for sale at the top of one tower.

Another building will hold 300 upscale apartment units. A 10-story office building with 250,000 square feet of space also is part of the mix. And since the Galleria is synonymous with shopping, the developer plans 350,000 square feet of mostly ground-level retail space.

San Diego developer OliverMcMillan says groundbreaking is scheduled for a good year-and-a-half from now. So there’s plenty of time for this project to morph into a more typical Houston-style mixed-use project: maybe a stylish Sam’s Club next to some shiny new apartments?

After the jump, plans and more flashy drawings!

CONTINUE READING THIS STORY

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Commercial Real Estate
08/06/07 10:39am

Downtown Rents: Going Up

by
Downtown, Leasing, New Construction, Office Buildings
No Comments

5 Houston CenterLeasing rates at Five Houston Center downtown have reached $30 a square foot triple net, reports Globe St. That’s quite a jump from the building’s $18 rate a year ago. Other Class A buildings are not far behind.

Will prices stay high after all those new downtown buildings get built?

[Transwestern senior vice president David] Lee points out that when newer product comes on line, older buildings will work to catch up by making rates competitive. But with new buildings still 18 months to two years from completion in the CBD, current owners have an interesting advantage, he adds. “The guys that got their stuff in the ground a year and a half to two years ago and before are in great shape now,” he says. “In a two-year period, rates have essentially doubled Downtown.”

Photo of 5 Houston Center: HKS

, , , , ,
« Previous Page