Midway is preparing to develop a sixth office building and a second hotel at its CityCentre office, retail and residential complex in west Houston.
The Houston-based developer will soon begin tearing down the vacant Four Points by Sheraton Hotel at the southeast corner of Interstate 10 and Beltway 8 to make way for the project. Demolition is expected to take about six months.
In its place will rise a six-story office building, similar in scale to the others in CityCentre, and a 216-room hotel affiliated with a yet to be determined flag, said Robert Williamson, senior vice president, investment management for Midway.
CityCentre Seven will contain close to 147,000 square feet, including 27,000 square feet of retail space on the ground floor. Both the office and hotel buildings, which will surround a one-acre park, will be completed in late 2023.
The development comes as approximately a quarter of the office space in Houston is vacant and companies are scaling back as more employees work from home. However, newer office buildings in walking distance to restaurants and shops have outperformed older, remote ones.
Midway is moving ahead with the project before lining up any tenants after strong leasing momentum throughout its 2 million-square-foot CityCentre. It’s skipping over CityCentre Six, a proposed 300,000-square-foot building next to Marathon Oil’s new campus, until it finds an anchor tenant, Williamson said.
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CityCentre’s office space is 96 percent leased and the retail space is 97 percent leased. About 60 percent of CityCentre, which opened in 2009, is office space, including three coworking operators.
When a large insurance broker vacated CityCentre Two, the building at 818 Town and Country Blvd. got a makeover with a new lobby and custom rotating artwork curated by Weingarten Art Group.
Infosys, a provider of digital services and consulting, relocated from Westchase to the top floor of the building this year. Jacobs, a Dallas-based professional services firm, recently signed a full-floor lease to consolidate some smaller offices. Amazon Web Services will expand within CityCentre to a full floor in CityCentre Two in early 2022. Pin Oak Group has also leased space.
Thanks to its open air center design, foot traffic at CityCentre has returned to pre-COVID levels of 120,000 visitors per week, according to Midway.
Lacee Jacobs, vice president, strategic leasing & advisory for Midway, said the development is drawing new to Houston stores such as a Starbucks designed for digital and to-go orders. As space becomes available, Midways aims to attract more brands with a focus on online sales such as Warby Parker.
Candytopia, an experiential retailer that took over space previously occupied by H&M in July, is drawing crowds.
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/real-estate/article/CityCentre-project-brings-new-office-building-and-16534958.php
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