HOUSTON AND THE WOODLANDS, TEXAS — The Howard Hughes Corp. (NYSE: HHC) has acquired Century Park in Houston and The Woodlands Towers at The Waterway in The Woodlands, a master-planned municipality just north of Houston. HHC paid $565 million for the 2.8 million-square-foot office/industrial portfolio, nearly all of which is Class A office space.
Century Park is a 17-building, 1.3 million-square-foot office park in Houston’s Energy Corridor. The Woodlands Towers at The Waterway is a three-building campus that includes two office buildings totaling 1.4 million square feet and a 125,000-square-foot warehouse. The purchase also includes 9.3 acres of developable land adjacent to The Woodlands Towers at The Waterway.
The seller of the portfolio, Occidental Petroleum Corp. (NYSE: OXY), will fully lease back the 32-story, 808,000-square-foot office building and warehouse at the Woodlands property. The tower was built in 2002. Both leases are for 13 years.
HHC announced in October that it would relocate its corporate headquarters from Dallas to The Woodlands Towers at The Waterway, where it will occupy the 595,000-sqaure-foot building at 9950 Woodloch Forest Drive, which was built in 2014. The 31-story building features a rooftop garden, fitness center, basketball court and conference rooms.
The Woodlands is a 28,000-acre, master-planned community located 30 miles north of downtown Houston. More than 117,000 people live in the area and 68,000 people work in the area.
“The sale of office complexes in the Houston Energy Corridor and The Woodlands is part of our plan to divest non-core assets and continue to improve the strength of our balance sheet,” says Vicki Hollub, president and CEO of Occidental. “It was important to us, and many of our employees, to maintain a presence in The Woodlands and we are pleased to have signed a 13-year lease to remain in the community.”
Brandon Clarke, Jared Chua and Steve Hesse of CBRE represented the seller in the transaction.
HHC’s stock price opened Thursday, Jan. 2, at $126 per share, up from $96.62 per share one year ago. Occidental’s stock price opened Thursday, Jan. 2, at $41.63 per share, down from $62 one year ago.
— Alex Tostado