HOUSTON – Kiran’s Indian Restaurant signed a new retail lease for 6,548 square feet at Kirby Grove, 2925 Richmond Avenue in Houston’s Upper Kirby area.
Kirby Grove, a Midway Cos. development, will combine Class-A office space, dining amenities and high-end lofts to create an Inner Loop mixed-use environment. Coupled with the redeveloped Levy Park, Kirby Grove is expected to be a community focal point for the surrounding Upper Kirby neighborhood.
Located just west of Kirby Drive and north of the Southwest Freeway, the new 16-story office tower is substantially leased.
The fine-dining Kiran Indian restaurant, will bring its fare to the new mixed-use development from its previous Galleria location at 4100 Westheimer Road. Kiran’s is expected to reopen at its new location in the third quarter of this year.
JLL Senior Vice Presidents Don King and Mark Raines represented the tenant in the transaction.
“Kirby Grove is an ideal fit for Kiran’s as the surrounding development will match the restaurant’s reputation for inventiveness, sophistication and hospitality,” said Raines. “The new location will position Kiran’s within what is to be an exciting regional destination, at the center of Houston’s desirable Upper Kirby District.”
The 11-acre Kirby Grove project is centered around the Levy Park, which is being reoriented and rebuilt by the Upper Kirby Redevelopment Authority. Levy Park had been encircled by increasingly dense urban development over the years and was underutilized and dominated by a softball field.
Richmond Avenue, on the north side of the park, was the selected in the 1960s by Gerald Hines and Kenneth Schnitzer – young, up-and-coming developers at that time – for the site of smaller office buildings, some of their first developments.
Schnitzer, leader of Century Development, moved to the west of Buffalo Speedway, just a mile or so from Kirby Grove, to develop one of his master works – Greenway Plaza. Hines shifted his focus further to the west and cranked out The Galleria and graduated to major downtown skyscrapers.
The Kirby Grove area, Upper Kirby and the Richmond Avenue corridor are poised for more dense development in the next cycle. Kirby Grove, pushed ahead by Houston-based Midway, will be transformative.
Nearby, New York developer Joe Sitt of Thor Equities, is developing the 1 million SF Kirby Collection mixed-use project on the west side of Kirby Drive, just north of Richmond.
After 2020, the entire area, including frontage on Richmond Avenue and Kirby Drive, will see significant redevelopment. Development sites will be created as older buildings are demolished.
Perhaps, the bulldozers may claim some of Gerald Hines’ early works. That’s Houston, isn’t it? Bulldozer City. Not something to be proud of.
April 12, 2016