HOUSTON – (Realty News Report) – Randall Davis, founder and owner of Randall Davis Company, is recognized as a leader in bringing adaptive reuse loft living to Houston. His adaptive reuse projects include historic buildings such as The Rice Hotel, Hotel Icon, and the Hogg Palace Lofts. He has built new condominiums across Houston, including Cosmopolitan, Astoria, London House, and many more. Davis has also developed condo towers in Galveston, Las Vegas, and South Padre Island. He has been at the forefront of the condominium market in Houston for decades. Excerpts from the podcast follow.
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Ralph Bivins: Welcome. This is Ralph Bivins with the Ralph Bivins Project. We’re here today to talk with Randall Davis. He’s a force in adaptive reuse. He’s a force in condominiums. He’s a force in multifamily in Texas, and especially in Houston. He’s been a real leader in making things better here. Welcome, Randall.
Randall Davis: Thank you, Ralph.
Bivins: I remember the first time I met you. I believe it was early 1990s, and you said, “Hey I’ve got this factory over here on William Street, just on the edge of downtown. It’s the Bute Paint Factory. I want you got come see it.” I walk in. It’s an old brick building, built in 1911 or something like that. It’s so fine. It’s so cool. And then, there were columns in the middle of the space that were just masses of wood, like somebody took a tree trunk and squared it off a little bit. And that was your first one, and it changed a lot of things. Adaptive reuse could work, and people loved it and wanted to move there. From there, you’ve done a lot.
Davis: That was a very difficult project. It had environmental problems, just about every one you could think of. And I didn’t know it when I bought it because I wasn’t allowed in the building by the seller to see the project, so I bought the building essentially sight unseen, except from the outside. Had I gone inside, I’d have never bought it. Never, ever.
Bivins: A lot of headaches. With the paint factory, you’ve got to figure, environmental issues kind of go hand in glove.
Davis: Hazardous waste, asbestos, lead paint and underground leaking storage tanks. Other than that, the building was just fine.
Bivins: But hey, at least you got the tenants. There is a market for cool old buildings that can be places to live. You kind of carved out a place in the market.
Davis: People ignored what was going on in other cities and that was, as you say, adaptive reuse. And so, I went downtown because that’s the only place they had old buildings. And decided I would do one. And the Bute Paint Factory, which became the Dakota Lofts, was the first one. But even after I finished all the remediation, the bank didn’t believe that I could lease it up. So, I built a model and pre-leased over half the building. And then they went, “Okay we get it. We believe it.” And they gave me a loan. That was Walter Johnson who is still around at Amegy Bank. He was the only one who believed.
Bivins: He made a good bet, man.
Davis: Yeah, he made a good bet. Yeah, I got to do a few more and they all came out great. Really, I didn’t get to do enough because lesson learned, and I doubt I’ll be able to ever apply it again, doing what I did raised the value of all the vacant buildings, and so people ran and bought vacant buildings all around me as I proceeded to do St. Germain, The Hogg, and The Rice. And they made a lot more money than I did, doing nothing. They just bought the buildings and let them appreciate.
Bivins: Who was that broker, Reggie Bowman?
Davis: Reggie Bowman. He was down there before me. He was a grand old man. I really liked Reggie.
Bivins: He was fantastic.
Davis: He had some second-class, third-class loft buildings, but he was doing it. He was the man downtown for a while. He knew every building that was available.
Bivins: Of course, you know, I was at the Houston Chronicle covering real estate, right across the street from the Rice Hotel. By the time I started working on it seriously, and you started working on it, it was around 1997. Our publisher Mr. Johnson’s office overlooked The Rice and he was very interested in it. “When’s something gonna happen?” Finally, I get an exclusive front page story from an anonymous source. Bam. Randall Davis to buy the Rice Hotel. It was a huge story.
Davis: It was a big deal. But that train was driven by Mayor Bob Lanier who believed, like I believe, that Houston had to have a vibrant downtown in order to be any kind of national city. And so he threw his weight behind it, provided financing through some housing association via Michael Stevens, and then arranged for me to get a loan from a bank to build the building, a loan that I could not qualify for. But the city was my partner and so I could qualify for anything because it was originally a 50/50 deal. I owned half, they owned half. It didn’t end up that way. The city, right before I started, sold their half, to a REIT connected to two pro football players from Dallas and then I became partners with the REIT people I didn’t know. But they were good people. They did the right thing, but they retained the right to buy me out. So as soon as I finished, they wrote me a really, really nice check, but I never ever wanted to sell The Rice. I planned to own it forever when I started it because it was the hardest thing I’d ever done. I was there every day for two years almost every day.
Bivins: It’s a 17-story building.
Davis: I think a little over 300 units and 30,000 square feet of retail on the first floor.
Bivins: Right now, you’ve got The Chaucer project in The Village, a condominium tower that’s under construction. Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Davis: The Chaucer is in a great position. It’s in Rice Village, next to Hungry’s. It’s 33 units. I have seven left to sell. The other 26 units are sold. I will be completed at the end of the year but I am essentially right next to what Rice University is doing, their great Gateway Project … In the center of Rice Village, a company called Fifth Corner bought the retail center that belonged to Julie Tysor’s group and it had been in their hands for 40 years. Fifth Corner is in the process redoing the center and bringing in all new tenants, a lot of them national. So, in the next two years when it’s all done, Chaucer will be an amazing place to live. It’ll be a true walking, shopping, dining area.
Bivins: You may think, “Why’d I only do 14 stories? I should have done 20.”
Davis: Oh yeah, I could have done more but I tried to be sensitive to the people over there. They want me to be no taller than the Hanover rental building, which is one block away. And I think I’m one story taller.
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Bivins: Tell me about Tribeca on the Bayou.
Davis: I’ve got an apartment project I’m opening in the next few weeks next to Brenner’s on the bayou.
Bivins: Rental?
Davis: Rental. 220 rental units. I haven’t done a rental building in forever.
Bivins: Yeah, I didn’t think so. Tribeca on the Bayou?
Davis: It’s essentially across the street from the new St. Regis high-rise condo. Since I’m on a dead-end street and I wanted a community feel, I built New York style East Side brownstones into the front of a building that looks like a big New York warehouse. It’s a really interesting looking building…My residents have a view. You just look out and you feel like you’re in a forest or a jungle. And then you can also see the River Oaks Country Club golf course. I mean, the views are beautiful and then you can look east and see downtown.
Bivins: How many stories is it?
Davis: It’s seven stories.
Bivins: What comes next for Randall Davis?
Davis: I don’t know. I have maybe one more project in mind. Small. I’m not going to do big projects anymore. These take too long, but I’m not really ready to do zero.
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Nov. 10, 2026, Realty News Report Copyright 2026
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THE RALPH BIVINS PROJECT PODCAST
LISTEN: THE RALPH BIVINS PROJECT with Randall Davis of Randall Davis Company
LISTEN: THE RALPH BIVINS PROJECT with Tim Relyea of Cushman & Wakefield
LISTEN: THE RALPH BIVINS PROJECT with Joe Rothchild and Jana Hayes with Keller Williams Houston Central
LISTEN: THE RALPH BIVINS PROJECT with Sam Scott of CommGate
LISTEN: THE RALPH BIVINS PROJECT with Stephen Meek of StreetLights Residential
LISTEN: THE RALPH BIVINS PROJECT with Mike Spears of Lee & Associates Houston
LISTEN: THE RALPH BIVINS PROJECT with Bob Parsley of Colliers Houston
LISTEN: THE RALPH BIVINS PROJECT with Mark Davis of Davis Commercial
LISTEN: THE RALPH BIVINS PROJECT with David Hightower of Midway
LISTEN: THE RALPH BIVINS PROJECT with Alex Kamkar of Bold Fox Development
LISTEN: THE RALPH BIVINS PROJECT with Brad McWhirter of Trahan Architects
LISTEN: THE RALPH BIVINS PROJECT with Lacee Jacobs of Rebel Retail Advisors
LISTEN: THE RALPH BIVINS PROJECT with Danny Rice of Colliers
LISTEN: THE RALPH BIVINS PROJECT with Trey Odom of Avera
LISTEN: THE RALPH BIVINS PROJECT with Kris Larson of Downtown Houston+
LISTEN: THE RALPH BIVINS PROJECT with Jim Carman of Howard Hughes Holdings
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