THE WOODLANDS– (Realty News Report) – Lancium Technologies Corp., an energy technology and infrastructure firm, will lease a full floor at The Woodlands Towers at The Waterway, occupying 26,530 SF at 9950 Woodloch Forest Drive.
Lancium’s corporate headquarters, power trading and engineering offices will be located in the building.
The new Lancium lease follows the full-floor lease recently signed at 9950 Woodloch Forest Drive by NYDIG, a bitcoin company.
Lancium was represented by Aradio Zambrano of Aradio Zambrano Real Estate Company. The Howard Hughes Corporation was represented by Bob Parsley, Norm Munoz, Jillian Fredricks and Connor Duffy with Colliers.
The Woodlands, located 27 miles north of downtown Houston, has been a stronger office leasing submarket in Houston, where vacancy has been increasing.
“The Woodlands office market continues to have a strong demand as companies look to locate in the growing Woodlands submarket,” said Colliers’ Bob Parsley. “The Woodlands office market vacancy rate was 16 percent in the third quarter of 2021, well under the Houston Metro and Houston CBD average vacancy rate of 26.4 percent.”
The 31-story office tower was formerly part of the headquarters campus of Anadarko Petroleum, which was acquired by Occidental Petroleum in 2019. The 601,159-SF building is currently 43 percent leased. Other tenants in the building include Western Midstream Partners LP (4 floors), Howard Hughes Corporation (its corporate headquarters and the Houston regional office on 2 floors). Other tenants include Colliers, Glenfarne Infrastructure Holdings and Banorte Securities International.
“The 9950 Woodloch Forest (once known as the Hackett Tower) is a Class AAA office building and is the crown jewel in The Woodlands submarket, offering high quality amenities that are not found in any other buildings in The Woodlands at a competitive value compared to any other buildings in the market,” Parsley said.
The buildingis adjacent to the 32-story 1201 Lake Robbins Tower, which was once named the “Allison Tower” after former Anadarko CEO Bob Allison. The buildings overlook the 1.8-mile The Woodlands Waterway. The Allison Tower has been called the tallest building between Houston and Dallas.
Signing two full-floor leases in the 9950 Woodloch Forest building is a significant amount of absorption in the Houston office market, which has suffered during the pandemic and an infamous decline in energy prices. West Texas Intermediate crude oil fell to a negative$37.63 per barrel in trading on April 20, 2020. A number of energy firms fell into bankruptcy in subsequent weeks and months.
“We are extremely pleased that Lancium has selected The Woodlands for their new headquarters,” said Jim Carman, President of the Houston Region for The Howard Hughes Corporation. “This innovative infrastructure and technology development company continues our strong leasing momentum and joins the growing number of renowned businesses which have chosen to make their home in The Woodlands.”
Last fall, Lancium announced it was breaking ground on a 100,000-SF “Clean Campus” data center in Fort Stockton in West Texas for bitcoin mining.
Lancium said in a September press release, the initial application at the Fort Stockton Clean Campus will be a 100,000-SF facility for Bitcoin mining and other high throughput computing workloads. The expected completion date for the first 25MW stage is first quarter of 2022 with the facility reaching full capacity of 325MW by year-end.
“Green energy is the future, but we need to rethink the grid in order to accommodate its growth,” said Lancium CEO Michael McNamara. “Lancium Controllable Loads act like large power stations in reverse by absorbing abundant renewable energy while simultaneously providing grid ancillary services. Climate change is a big problem, and Lancium is doing our part by working on large-scale solutions.”
In a statement relating to The Woodlands office lease, McNamara said: “As a leading company in the energy technology and infrastructure space, it made sense to locate our headquarters in The Woodlands—a community that is at the heart of the energy transition. The Woodlands is an ideal business community given the outstanding pool of talent, quality of life and amenities and will certainly be a draw as Lancium continues to grow and recruit from around the country.”
One of the largest master planned communities in the nation at 28,500 acres, The Woodlands is home to 119,000 residents, and over 66,000 people work there.
The Woodlands was founded by the late, Galveston-born businessman George P. Mitchell, who developed the fracking method for economic extraction of shale gas.
Jan. 4, 2022 Realty News Report Copyright 2022
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File: Major Leasing in The Woodlands