HOUSTON – Cousins Properties has agreed to make a Texas-sized office purchase, paying $1.1 billion for projects in Houston and Fort Worth.
Atlanta-based Cousins has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Greenway Plaza, a 10-building, 4.4 million-sf office portfolio in Houston, and 777 Main Street, a 980,000-sf Class-A office tower in Fort Worth for a total purchase price of $1.1 billion in cash from a joint venture operated by Crescent Real Estate Holdings LLC.
Greenway Plaza, located along Houston’s Southwest Freeway near Buffalo Speedway, is 92 percent occupied. Major tenants include: Occidental Oil & Gas, Transocean, Direct Energy, WT Offshore, Invesco and Parker Drilling.
The Summit arena was part of the Greenway project, which was completed in the 1970s, but the arena is now owned separately as the Lakewood Church.
Greenway Plaza was developed by the late Kenneth Schnitzer of Century Development. Schnitzer quietly blocked up ownership of scores of houses and turned the neighborhood into a Class A mixed-use project.
The 777 Main Street tower in downtown Fort Worth is 40-story tower with 72 percent occupancy.
“Greenway Plaza and 777 Main Street are an excellent fit with our portfolio as they are high- quality urban properties with embedded NOI growth and future development potential,” said Larry Gellerstedt, President and Chief Executive Officer of Cousins. “Not only do we expect this transaction to be transformative and accretive, it immediately expands our Texas platform and provides substantial geographic diversification at a significant discount to replacement cost.”
JP Morgan Securities, LLC served as the Cousins’s exclusive financial advisor on the acquisition.