The Ralph Bivins Project – Podcast Guest Jim Carman

HOUSTON – (Realty News Report) – RALPH BIVINS: This is Ralph Bivins with the Ralph Bivins Project. We’re here today with Jim Carman. He’s president of Howard Hughes Holdings in the Houston area where Howard Hughes has major developments including: The Woodlands, 28,000 acres; Bridgeland, on the northwest side, 11,500 acres and Woodland Hills, to the north of the Woodlands, closer to Conroe and Willis, 2,000 acres. All in all, Jim, you’re responsible for more than 40,000 acres. That’s 62 square miles, three times the size of Manhattan. And a lot of things are happening in these three communities and The Woodlands has reached a major milestone. (An excerpt from the podcast is below.)

To listen to the entire podcast CLICK HERE FOR Spotify or here for YouTube

JIM CARMAN: I’m very fortunate to be a part of it. We’re in our fiftieth year here in The Woodlands since it was started by George Mitchell in 1974. And while I’m certainly lucky to be running some teams helping to make this place better and better, there are a ton of folks who came before us that we don’t forget about. There was George Mitchell, of course, who was the prime mover, but he had a lot of teams that helped create what we take advantage of today. We stand on the shoulders of many giants in The Woodlands. If you’re in real estate in Houston, you recognize these people, and we keep honoring them at our company.

RALPH BIVINS: One of the new things happening in The Woodlands has been the development of the Ritz-Carlton residences. There’s not a hotel on the Ritz-Carlton property, but this new tower will have 111 high-end residential units. Sales in the condominium project has taken off with over $313 million in pre-sales.

JIM CARMAN: We announced $250 million in sales in the first week – really in the first couple of days. We had tremendous sales. Obviously, we felt this was the right project, the right brand, the right site and great architects. But you never know till you know with these projects. So, it was tremendous to see this success as we came out of the gate — and it has continued. For the most part, we are pulling most of the remaining units off the market and saving them for the completion of the project. We know how amazing the project will be when it opens. As amazing as it is on paper and in our sales office, I think when people get their eyes on the actual project, it will blow them away.

RALPH BIVINS: When we look back at the 1970s when The Woodlands were first being developed, we become aware of developer George Mitchell’s acute attention to preserving trees and forests instead of cutting down the greenery and replacing it with St. Augustine grass. He kept the lots natural. He left the trees and made sure there were plenty of green buffers to preserve the forest. Even in the retail areas, the streets are lined with trees. This earned him a reputation of being innovative.

JIM CARMAN: We know some of the specific things that he and his teams did in the way of forest and landscape preservation. At the core of it, George just had a vision — as he looked around the world and in the country in the ‘60s and early ‘70s – that he could build a community that was more thoughtful, more thoughtfully designed, a community that created a symbiotic relationship between nature and residents. Now, 50 years later, we note that The Woodlands has been named “Best Place to Live in America” several times. I live here and I raised my family here. My headquarters is here. I can walk my daughter to school in the morning and in five minutes, I’m sitting in this office building.

I also wanted to point out that George Mitchell supported fracking [hydraulic fracturing, a method of extracting oil and natural gas from shale and other tight rock formations]. Supporting both fracking and sustainability of nature was not a dichotomy, as some people may think. For us, we understood where he was at. He didn’t see it as a dichotomy. His outlook on this and his other development interests can be found in a number of books.

Jim Carman’s recommended reading: (With Carman’s comments.)

George Mitchell. Fracking, Sustainability And An Unorthodox Quest To Save The Planet by Loren Steffy. “This is a great read. It explains his beginnings.”

The Woodlands by James Barlow and Roger Galatas. “This is a wonderful book. It talks a lot about the master planning principal.”

How Mitchell Energy and Development Corporation Got Its Start And How It Grew by Joseph Kutchin. “This is another good read.”

Design With Nature by Ian McHarg. “George got a lot of his ideas from Ian, who was an original landscape architect. And George brought them down here.”

Jim Carman: These are examples of books we encourage new employees to read, and I read them when I came to the company 12 years ago. The books tell how things were done in the past – and these were good ideas. But please, understand, that the communities are developing now will be built in a different way – and with a different vision.

To listen to the entire podcast CLICK HERE FOR Spotify or here for YouTube

Jim Carman bio

Jim Carman is president of the Houston Region at Howard Hughes, responsible for leading the development of three award-winning master planned communities: The Woodlands, Bridgeland and The Woodlands Hills.

He joined Howard Hughes in 2012 and has overseen more than $2 billion in development projects within The Woodlands and Bridgeland. He was also responsible for leading multiple teams in the 79-acre development of Hughes Landing and recently announced the record-breaking sales achievement for The Ritz-Carlton Residences The Woodlands. In 2019, he led the team in a $565 million acquisition of The Woodlands Towers at The Waterway.

Jim has more than 20 years of construction and development experience on projects across all asset types of real estate. His work includes mixed-use and commercial projects such as The Ritz-Carlton Grand Cayman, The Hughes Center in Las Vegas, Nev. and the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts in Miami.

Mark Your Calendar

Downtown Houston + will present its State of Downtown Annual Meeting on Oct. 16 at 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at the Hilton Americas, Downtown 1600 Lamar St. Keynote speaker: General Stan McChrystal. Information:

THE RALPH BIVINS PROJECT PODCAST

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