HOUSTON – (Realty News Report) – The office-to-residential conversion trend has spread to the Houston’s suburbs.
DeBartolo Development is transforming a 20-story Energy Corridor skyscraper into 300 apartments, the first major suburban office to jump on today’s conversion movement.
Located just south of Interstate 10, the Westlake 3 building, developed by Hines in the early 1980s, was once home to the offices of BP and ConocoPhillips.
The 428,000-SF tower has been empty since 2019.
In downtown Houston, Tampa-based DeBartolo is wrapping up conversion of the 1801 Smith tower into an apartment community branded Elev8.
Every conversion reduces unneeded office inventory and replaces emptiness with human activity.
A Fannie Mae study says the nation’s top 75 markets have a shortfall of 4.4 million housing units.
With the nation having an oversupply of office space and a shortage of housing, the “office-to-resi” option has attracted a lot of attention around the nation. But in Houston, the conversion projects in recent years have been mostly focused on downtown. A number of downtown buildings were transformed into hotels in prior years. A number of years ago, the City of Houston instituted a “Downtown Living Initiative” which provided a $15,000 per unit tax break for developers willing to construct new apartment towers in Downtown Houston. The program was credited for increasing downtown”s population and economic vitality. A similar program for conversion of office towers to residential has been discussed.
The DeBartolo organization is led by Eddie DeBartolo, the former owner of the San Francisco 49ers which were defeated by the Kansas City Chiefs in the Super Bowl on Sunday.
Feb. 12, 2024 Realty News Report Copyright 2024
Rendering: Courtesy: Arc3 Architecture
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