Unfazed by the harsh light cast on the shared-office sector following industry giant WeWork’s botched effort to go public, the Chicago-based duo announced they’ve inked a 15-year agreement with shared-office provider Firmspace for almost 35,000 square feet at 145 S. Wells St.
Austin, Texas-based Firmspace will move this fall into the top three office floors of the 20-story, 210,000-square-foot building that Chicago-based Moceri & Roszak just finished at the corner of Wells and Adams streets, the companies said in a statement.
The developers still face plenty of competition to fill the rest of the building, especially from new West Loop and Fulton Market buildings that have been proposed or are under construction. Working in their favor: They have space ready now, and Chicago just capped off its best year of office demand since 2007. Plus, fast-growing tech companies have shown more interest in updated Central Loop buildings over the past couple of years.
In Firmspace, Moceri & Roszak has landed a new competitor in the highly fragmented local landscape of shared-office providers, which offer low-risk, flexible space that users can rent by the month.
Three-year-old Firmspace, which has opened just three locations to date—in Austin, Houston and Denver—frames itself as a high-end provider with tight security and privacy for its large number of users from the legal field.
Firmspace CEO and former real estate lawyer Anish Michael said Chicago’s corporate diversity made it a logical place to expand the brand, and 145 S. Wells “made a lot of sense for us with convenient access and walkability” to public transportation. “It was a good fit, and we thought it was our opportunity to enter the market.”
Michael said his company aims to differentiate itself in the co-working sector by providing a more upscale design in a single location rather than opening several around the city like the industry’s largest players, such as WeWork, Industrious and Spaces.
Rapid expansion by those bigger firms and other competitors has brought the total amount of co-working space downtown to around 3.2 million square feet, up from 2.2 million just more than a year ago, according to brokerage Newmark Knight Frank.
Firmspace hasn’t established its rents for Chicago users yet, but Michael said starting rents in other markets range from $500 to $750 per month for a one-desk interior office of 60 to 70 square feet.
Moceri & Roszak has been busy in the heart of downtown over the past few years. Riding the wave of demand for rental units in the city, the firm opened a 33-story, 265-unit apartment building at 215 W. Lake St. in 2017 and cashed out in late 2018, selling it for $121 million. Late last year, the developer broke ground on a 25-story, 215-unit apartment building at 50 E. Randolph St., a block from Millennium Park.
Business is still buzzing in the Bayou City. Despite the much-maligned office market sitting at an overall vacancy rate of 21.6%, deals are still getting done. As Houston looks to turn over a new leaf in 2020, we look back at the largest deals of 2019 that helped Houston’s absorption stay in the black.
Houston’s second-largest deal of the year is actually 30 miles north in The Woodlands, where the payroll and cloud solutions tech company Alight Solutions struck a deal with The Howard Hughes Corp. for a new four-story, 180K SF office building to be rented and solely occupied by the firm. The build-to-suit office joins a smaller office park along New Trails Drive, where Alight will soon move its employees from its current home on Technology Forest Boulevard when the project is completed early next year.
HONEYWELL, 114K SF, CITYWEST, WESTCHASE
CityWestPlace, a 1.5M SF office campus, is getting in on the leasing action with a large deal with Honeywell. The new 114K SF lease will accommodate up to 750 employees for the tech firm, which quickly outgrew its location just to the north of its new home. The deal brings CityWest to 88% leased, anchoring a resurgent Westchase District.
UNIVERSALPEGASUS INTERNATIONAL, 113K SF, 4848 LOOP CENTRAL, BELLAIRE
ENGIE, 110K SF, POST OAK TOWER, GALLERIA
Engie North America, a Houston-based subsidiary of the French Utility company Engie, signed a deal to move its Galleria HQ from Post Oak Central to Post Oak Tower, BHP Billiton’s former HQ. The deal was a threeway transaction, according to the lease. The space, up for sublease, was surrendered to the landlord by BHP and leased directly to the tenant. Even with the deal, tens of thousands of square feet of BHP’s lease remain functionally vacant, up for sublease.
FORUM ENERGY TECHNOLOGY, 109K SF, SAM HOUSTON CROSSING II, WEST BELT
Direct Energy took advantage of the leasing market to downsize its Houston footprint. The electricity retailer is in the process of moving from its 191K SF space in Greenway Plaza to its new 105K SF space at 2 Houston Center. Brookfield Properties’s Houston Center is in the midst of a renovation, adding glass facades, new finishes and redesigned common spaces. Gensler, the architect behind the renovations, is also designing its own new office at 2 Houston Center.
Julio Laguarta, one of Houston’s strongest supporters of ongoing education in commercial real estate, died Jan. 3. He was 86. Born in Galveston and raised in Houston, Laguarta graduated from the University of Texas at Austin business school in 1956 with a Bachelor of Business Administration. He began working in the commercial real estate sector shortly after graduation and co-founded a land brokerage firm, Laguarta, Gavrel & Bolin, in the early 1960s. “Beyond being the only Houston Realtor in our history to ever go on to serve as president of the National Association of Realtors and being the driving force behind the creation of the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M University, Julio was a true gentleman in every sense of the word,” Houston Association of Realtors CEO Bob Hale said. Laguarta’s son, Kirk, who works in commercial real estate as a broker with Land Advisors Organization, called his father an advocate for the profession. “My father was a true leader in the Houston real estate community for many years. He was never too busy to help with forwarding the causes of the real estate community as is evidenced by his long-standing involvement with HAR, TAR, NAR and the Real Estate Research Center at Texas A&M University,” Laguarta said. “He will be greatly missed by our family and the many folks he touched in the Houston community.” In 1969, Laguarta and his partners were hired by Texas Eastern Corp. to assemble 75 acres in Downtown Houston. That land today includes iconic developments including the Houston Center, the George R. Brown Convention Center and Discovery Green. Beyond his firm, Laguarta had a vision for boosting research and ongoing education within the Texas real estate landscape. That vision evolved into the Texas A&M Real Estate Center, the largest publicly funded organization devoted to real estate research in the U.S. Inspired by the Center for Real Estate and Urban Economic Studies at the University of Connecticut, Laguarta set out to create a Texan equivalent. After approaching multiple universities with his proposal, an agreement was finally reached with Texas A&M University, and the Real Estate Center was established in 1971. Laguarta was appointed to a six-year term on the Center’s first advisory committee and was also elected its first chairman.
Texas A&M, which refers to Laguarta as the father of the Center, went on to establish the Julio S. Laguarta Professorship in Real Estate Scholarship in 1981 to honor his achievements in the field and key role in furthering real estate education. The endowed professorship is within the Mays Business School at the university. Among his many accomplishments, Laguarta held both SIOR and CCIM qualifications and was highly involved with HAR. He became president of HAR in 1967 and was Houston Realtor of the Year in 1968. Laguarta continued to oversee several notable organizations during his career. He became president of the CCIM Institute in 1973, president of TAR in 1975 and president of NAR in 1982. He was also a co-founder of the Houston Realty Breakfast Club, which started in 1967 and is still in service today. Alongside his many professional achievements, Laguarta helped launch the careers of many figures active in the Houston commercial real estate community today. “Julio helped me get my first job out of law school in 1969 at the Texas Association of Realtors. He was my mentor, adviser and most importantly best friend,” Hale said. “I, along with the other 40,000 members of HAR, are better off for having his leadership, and worse off now that he is gone.”
JLL Capital Markets announces that it has closed the sale of Harms Road Business Park, a five-building industrial park totaling 124,000 square feet in Houston’s highly sought-after Northwest Industrial submarket.
JLL marketed the property along with NAI Partners on behalf of the seller, United Equities, Inc. Finial Group, in partnership with Senterra LLC, purchased the asset.
Completed in phases between 2014 and 2018, Harms Road Business Park comprises five single-tenant, crane-served industrial buildings. The park features clear heights ranging from 28 to 30 feet, 22 overhead doors, overhead cranes with capacities ranging between 10 and 20 tons and high-quality office space. Situated on 9.37 acres at 7204-7214 Harms Road, the park is less than 2.5 miles from the U.S. 290 and the Sam Houston Tollway (Beltway 8) interchange, which provides tenants with easy access to the Houston MSA. Harms Road Business Park is within Houston’s Northwest submarket, the largest of Houston’s submarkets.
The JLL Industrial Capital Markets team that represented the seller was led by Managing Director Trent Agnew, Director Charlie Strauss, and Analyst Ethan Goldberg as well as NAI’s Travis Land.
“Harms Road Business Park is a highly successful development located within the core of Houston’s Northwest submarket,” said Agnew. “Our JLL team, in partnership with Travis, were able to put together an off-market trade that highlights the desirability of opportunities that offer some additional leasing upside in today’s capital markets environment.”
About United Equities, Inc.
United Equities, Inc. was founded in 1971 as a small brokerage, management and leasing company. Today, the company’s portfolio has grown to include over three million square feet of retail and industrial space. United Equities is a full-service commercial real estate organization providing development, redevelopment, build-to-suit, acquisition, management and leasing services across Texas, in addition to nationwide tenant representation. The Austin office opened in 2004, followed by the Dallas office in 2006, to better meet the needs of an expanding client base. Visit unitedequities.com for more information.
About Finial Group
Finial Group is a full-service commercial real estate firm that provides service focused, turnkey solutions to their client’s commercial real estate needs. The Finial Group offers investment, development, leasing, asset management, and construction management services all under one roof. The Finial Group’s team members are dedicated to building the most revered brand in commercial real estate and maintaining an unrivaled reputation for the quality of service and ability to execute. For more information please visit finialgroup.com or contact the Finial Group by email at info@finialgroup.com or by phone at 713-422-2100.
About JLL
JLL (NYSE: JLL) is a leading professional services firm that specializes in real estate and investment management. Our vision is to reimagine the world of real estate, creating rewarding opportunities and amazing spaces where people can achieve their ambitions. In doing so, we will build a better tomorrow for our clients, our people and our communities. JLL is a Fortune 500 company with annual revenue of $16.3 billion, operations in over 80 countries and a global workforce of more than 93,000 as of September 30, 2019. JLL is the brand name, and a registered trademark, of Jones Lang LaSalle Incorporated. For further information, visit jll.com.