tangledwoods

I like the fact that they are using stone on the facade, better looking than a glass box!

most everyone with access to renderings are under NDA agreements. What we really need is a disgruntled intern at HOK.

This conversation is downright hilarious.  Chevron has already selected a Contractor to build the tower.  Design is well into the Design Development Phase.  They have already added to the scope previously discussed here.  If anything happens to this building it will only get taller.

 

Ground breaking: March.

Nope, it will not break ground till Q3 or Q4.

From the Press Release:

Skanska is selling the office property at 3009 Post Oak Boulevard in Houston, Texas. The selling price amounts to USD 112 M, about SEK 730 M and the buyer is Post Oak Building LLC, a subsidiary of the anchor tenant alliantgroup. The transaction will be recorded in the third quarter 2013.

The 3009 Post Oak project is Skanska’s first completed commercial development project in Houston. It is a twenty story, 28,000 square-meter office building with 12 stories of office space sitting atop an eight story parking garage, located in the premiere Uptown/Galleria submarket of Houston.

The building is LEED pre-certified at Platinum level and includes high efficient glass façade, energy recovery wheel and occupancy monitoring systems that focuses on maximizing energy efficiency and operational savings. In addition, the building has a sophisticated lighting control system for the office and garage areas as well as water savings with a rainwater collection system used for landscape irrigation.

The building just sold. Hopefully this is positive news for their other projects moving forward.

On the topic of other land available in the area, I have heard that the property just north of the Skanska project is currently for sale.

may i ask how you know this information? it sounds pretty accurate to me, i just havent seen any numbers put out there before.

One of the elevator subcontractors that I work with told me.

The building is around 830 ft tall.

the prime contractor has not yet been selected. they also have a ways to go on finishing design. I think that a first quarter 2014 start is a bit too ambitious.

Chevron will be 800-850 ft tall.  I have no idea on Hines.

Are you referring to the hotel or to the parking garage project?

The Hotel Tower.

This rendering is beyond optimistic.  The reason they have been hiding it is that there is no way in the Houston tenant market that this thing will work financially.  The location isn't great and the design is way to expensive.  I wish these guys the best but this thing will never break ground looking like that. 

As a side note, this rendering doesn't even show you how complex the facade design really is.  There are more curves going on than this image shows.

This project bids to subcontractors tomorrow, so we should see activity start to pick up.

They now have a leasing website up:

http://www.5250aptshouston.com/5250-houston/

I spoke with some of my sources and no one has looked at pricing anything of this size.  So if it exist they aren't to the budgeting phase yet. 

None of the big local developers have anything like a 100 story in their projections.  There is no way the financing could come together with an office tower only design.  This would push the would be developer to go mixed-use, which is full of other challenges.  I really don't see any market demand or capacity to build something of this size in Houston.

It seems to me that the current trend is to put a higher emphasis on features other than exterior appearance right now, but that's strictly a layman's perspective. LEEDS certification and how "liveable" a building is inside, seem to be a much higher emphasis.

Asking that question to the pros in the room, is that an accurate assessment or am I way off base?

The problem with exterior features is all related to the cost of curtain wall.  About 5 years ago the bottom fell out of the glass market and something called unitized curtain wall started to become the norm.  Unitized curtain wall has a ton of benefits beyond traditional stick built glazing including: (energy performance, structural performance, keeping water out performance).

Once unitized systems became the standard, it became cost prohibitive to do anything else in the spandrel portion of the facade.  We can use metal panels, stone, etc but in order to keep cost down they are typically glazed into the curtain wall.  Combine that with the fact that there are less than 10 proven unitized designs on the market right now leads us to the era of "the boring glass box"

Architects are fighting this like mad but they are up against significant challenges from developers (cost).  We are seeing products start to compete but this glass box trend is going to be around for a while.

I am now hearing that the BHP tower (on the site of the old 24 hour fitness) will be breaking ground before thanksgiving. Uptown is booming!

Where did people get the 60 floors number from?  Everything that I have heard has placed it between 40-50 floors....

They will move forward this year on construction from what I have been hearing.

Here is another article on the project.  This thing is starting to get more and more interesting.  It sounds like the tunnels are going to get a big boost from this project.

http://houston.culturemap.com/news/realestate/06-01-13-progress-historic-houston-club-building-gives-way-for-a-gleaming-new-giant-office-tower/

The demolition of the old art institute building is almost complete. 

They now have a website up for the new apartments. It looks to be 7 or 8 stories.

www.1900yorktown.com

I have a dumb question, it seems that Astoria and the McDonald's are sharing a pretty small site.  Just south of this site are some crappy 2 story apartments.  Why isn't that parcel being redeveloped.... or is there a plan in the works that we don't know about.

Touché.

However, how much of a difference is there really among those things?

How would you rank the locations?

As for location Skanska wins in my book.  They will have five tunnel connections when they are complete.  Right next to the tallest building in Houston and easy walking distance to the theater district.

I believe HOK is the Architect...

HOK is the project architect, and Pickard Chilton will be the design architect.