The Ralph Bivins Project: Podcast Guest Tim Relyea

HOUSTON – (Realty News Report) – Tim Relyea, executive vice president at Cushman & Wakefield of Texas, has represented major corporations with their office needs in Houston for more than four decades.

One of the nation’s top office brokers, Relyea has completed in excess of 60 million square feet of transactions with a total aggregate value of more than $47 billion since beginning his career in 1978.

Over the years, Relyea has represented Vinson & Elkins, Apache Corporation, BG Group, Chevron, Devon Energy, Hess Corp., and Continental Airlines, to name a few.

He was a recent podcast guest on the Ralph Bivins Project. Excerpts follow.

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Ralph Bivins: Welcome. This is Ralph Bivins with the Ralph Bivins Project. We’re here today to talk to Tim Relyea. He has some interesting news about downtown Houston. He’s working on the newest skyscraper in one of the most prominent locations in downtown Houston. Tim, Welcome.

Tim Relyea: Thanks, Ralph.

Bivins: Tell us about what’s cooking with this new tower.

Relyea: Yeah, Ralph. You and I even talked a couple of months ago and I indicated that after a pretty long dry spell in Houston of any new construction, I told you I thought there was going to be at least a dozen new buildings built in the city. Our list is currently, I want to say 17 or 18. That does include a couple of single-tenant, build-to-suit buildings. But new construction … helping GCs, helping base building architects, good for the city. But I knew in the back of my head, what I know could be the highest profile building of all of those options, which is coming up on the city’s purchase last year of 1600 Smith (about a 1 million SF building), with their idea of moving the city operations out of 611 Walker as well as the Police Department out of 1200 Travis, that would free up those two buildings.

It’s interesting. I read someone quoted in one of the original stories just in the last week, they didn’t think there was much value to those buildings in thinking they were going to be renovated and redeveloped. And in my mind, it’s not what you see, it’s what you can see. Especially 611 Walker. In the last 50 years, nothing like that site has come available.

Bivins: 50 years.

Relyea: When this building is finished it will have been 50 years. Because One Shell – I still call it One Shell Plaza – was Hines’ first major high-rise. The Duncan family owns it now. They’re doing a great job renovating it, but was finished in 1971.

Pennzoil Place, early ‘70s. And then Hines built almost simultaneously what was Interfirst Plaza, now 1100 Louisiana, and what was Texas Commerce Tower, now it’s back to home of JPMorgan Chase Tower. Both of those buildings were built in ’80-’81. And then the other buildings on the skyline Heritage Plaza … and TC Energy, formerly Republic Bank Plaza, were all built in the early ‘80s. Like I said, when this new building is finished, it will be almost 50 years.

Bivins: It’s about time.

Relyea: Finally. Now, there’s been some buildings built in the last 20 years. Texas Tower being the most recent and I would say the best building in downtown because it was built under more current state of the art design criteria. The earlier buildings were typically all stone clad, punched window buildings, which doesn’t have the natural light, doesn’t have the right core to window depths in my opinion, the right slab to slab heights. There’s just a new design theory out there that major law firms and corporations and financial institutions want to be in.

So, with those design elements available now, and with this site, and with that unobstructed view to the west, Ralph, you been doing this as long as I have or longer even maybe, you’ve probably reported on every single one of those.

Bivins: We’ve seen the skyline grow, man. You’ve leased a ton of space in downtown Houston. When you’re talking about that site from the west, I was just thinking about when you see the Houston Texans NFL team on TV, they show some clips from the city and it’d be coming down Buffalo Bayou which is green and beautiful with the skyline in the background and bam, right there that first row on the western side of downtown is kind of the showcase from the city. And this site you’re talking about, 611 Walker, is right there. Dead center, front and center stage.

To listen to the Entire Podcast Click Here for YouTube or Click Here for Spotify

Relyea: I think it gives a great corporation great visibility, recognition. It will be now, like you said, as the new label of Houston. Super exciting. I love being around that type of development. I want to see this through. I want to see the right companies picked there. I want to see the right developer be involved. The right architect. Jon Pickard who has already helped me do a lot of massing models, examples of maybe if it’s not an office, is it a high-end hotel with residential or is it a three-way component of office, residential and hotel. We’ve looked at all those. Jon is like one of the best that there is in the country.

Bivins: You and the architect Jon Pickard have been involved in big corporate projects. The Devon Energy Tower, the most prominent building in Oklahoma City, you see a picture of downtown Oklahoma City and there’s one superior building you go “wow,” that’s definitely it.

Relyea: Not only the skyline presence of the building, if you go into it, I’d say it’s one of the finest buildings in America. If you are just visiting Oklahoma City, I’d say it’s worth just going into the lobby and looking. I worked with Jon on that for three or four years at least. That’s kind of what he does. As you know here locally, he designed Exxon’s headquarters in north Houston.

Bivins: That’s the global Exxon headquarters. There’s three million square feet of space total if you count everything. That’s a prominent headquarters right there.
Relyea: They interviewed all the prominent base building architects and then selected Jon. As we did with Devon, we interviewed several other architects as well, but Jon won the day on that as well. So, he did 811 Louisiana downtown and 609 Main. I worked with him on Amegy Bank Tower in the Galleria area, as well as what is now Woodside. He’s a generational premiere architect. He’ll go down at that level of many of the names that have been in history … Philip Johnson, the Skidmore firm, César Pelli.