Trammel Crow, Principal Sign ConocoPhillips to 850 KSF Lease in Houston’s Energy Corridor

By Barbra Murray, Contributing Editor

The glory days of million-square-foot office leases may not be back yet, but you would never know it by the latest news from Houston’s Energy Center office campus. Trammell Crow Co. and Principal Real Estate Investors have landed ConocoPhillips to take a total of 850,000 square feet at two trophy towers. 

The energy company will be the sole tenant of Energy Center Three, a 550,000-square-foot tower now under construction. ConocoPhillips will also take half the space at Energy Center Four, a 600,000-square-foot building scheduled to get under construction during the fourth quarter.

Located in the heart of the city’s bustling Energy Corridor, Energy Center Three and Four will bring ConocoPhillips’ Lower 48 Business Unit together at a single address. The new buildings will be within easy reach of the company’s corporate headquarters campus.

Balfour Beatty Construction, the general contractor for Energy Center Three, kicked off construction in January and is on track to complete the project by the second quarter of 2015. Trammell Crow and Principal have a helping hand from Wells Fargo Bank and U.S. Bank, which are providing construction financing.

Signing on in advance for a new development has become one of the best bets for securing large Class A office accommodations in Houston’s central business district. Big blocks of premier space are at a premium, as Jones Lang LaSalle Inc. notes in a recent report. Only three blocks larger than 200,000 square feet were available in the submarket during the first quarter. “Until new developments slated for delivery in 2014 and 2015 come to market, availability within sought-after submarkets such as The Woodlands, Energy Corridor, and CBD will continue to tighten,” the report predicts.