HOUSTON – Street Level Investments is acquiring one of the largest infill sites in Houston for a mixed-use project that is expected to include a 400,000-square-foot Simon Premium Outlet retail center, 600,000 square feet of office space, 60 acres of multifamily development and a hotel.
The 192-acre site, with an enormous half-mile of frontage on the Southwest Freeway, has been the campus of Texas Instruments, which is vacating the property and selling it to Dallas-based Street Level Investments.
“We expect to start construction after the first of the year,” said developer Brian Murphy, a partner in Street Level, which will finalize the land deal with Texas Instruments shortly.
With Simon as the outlet mall operator, Street Level brings in one of the most formidable retail center developers in the world. Simon manages The Galleria and operates Houston Premium Outlets near Fairfield on the northwest side of Houston, Katy Mills mall in west Houston, plus about 300 other retail centers in North America, Europe and Asia.
Murphy said JBL Partners of Dallas is expected to develop multifamily in the project, which will have about 2,400 units when built-out years from now.
The development, which will be called “Legacy” is located near the 12200 block of the Southwest Freeway between Kirkwood Road and West Airport Blvd. The tract, located in the City of Stafford, also has frontage on Murphy Road.
Some 2 million people live with a 20-minute drive to the proposed project, Murphy said.
“I don’t know of another infill site with that kind of density,” Murphy said.
The site is just outside the Sam Houston Tollway. Much of the Texas Instruments’ land remains vacant and some of it is used for softball fields and recreation. Vacant land along the Southwest Freeway is a rarity.
In July, Texas Instruments opened a 160,000-square-foot building in Sugar Land, near the corner of University Boulevard and the Southwest Freeway. But the tech company retained some employees at the Stafford site for another couple of years.
Murphy says Street Level plans for Legacy to be a live/work/play environment that will appeal to the Millennial generation. The walkable development will have a “public green” and will retain many of the large oak trees on the property, he said.
Murphy is also a partner in the Edge Realty Partners, which specializes in retail center brokerage.
— By Ralph Bivins, Editor, Realty News Report