HOUSTON – (Realty News Report) – Occidental Petroleum, the Houston-based energy company that has frequently adjusted its real estate strategy, has extended the term of its large office lease at Greenway Plaza.
Parkway Property Investments, LLC, owner of the 52-acre Greenway Plaza, announced Thursday that Occidental has agreed to extend its 972,145-square-foot lease covering the Five and Three Greenway Plaza buildings through 2031.
Occidental has been a Greenway Plaza tenant since 1987. Greenway Plaza is a roughly 5 million-square-foot business campus inside the Loop, featuring 11 towers near the Southwest Freeway and Buffalo Speedway.
Parkway handled the lease negotiation through its leasing leadership team: Rima Soroka, Director of Leasing, and Eric Siegrist, Managing Director of Leasing.
“Having Occidental as the campus’s largest tenant and maintaining the longest office lease on the property is gratifying,” said Eric Siegrist. “This transaction reflects Parkway’s continued investment in and reimagining of Greenway Plaza and further reinforces Greenway Plaza’s position as a premier business community in the Sunbelt region.”
Greenway Plaza sits on a land assemblage assembled about 50 years ago by Kenneth Schnitzer of Century Development. The development consolidated roughly 500 single-family parcels into a major office complex, a significant chapter in Houston real estate history.
Parkway has invested millions to modernize Greenway Plaza, adding restaurants, meeting facilities and a 150,000-square-foot Life Time fitness club branded as the “Diamond Club” Lifetime Fitness.
Occidental’s real estate activities have drawn attention over the past two years. After completing a $38 billion acquisition of Anadarko Petroleum in August, Occidental inherited Anadarko’s two 30-story office towers in The Woodlands. At the end of 2019 those two buildings were sold to Howard Hughes Corp.; Occidental still occupies one building while the other is being re-leased to tenants by Colliers International.
Also in 2019 Occidental purchased and subsequently sold the 70-acre, 1.4 million-square-foot ConocoPhillips campus in the Energy Corridor in West Houston. In July 2018 Occidental at one point listed 800,000 square feet of its Greenway Plaza space for sublease, but that sublease effort did not complete, and now the company has reaffirmed its commitment to Greenway by extending its lease.
The oil downturn and the global demand decline prompted by the coronavirus pandemic led Occidental and other energy companies to reduce headcount this year. Industrywide estimates have suggested large-scale layoffs across the sector in 2020, and while not all were in Houston, the city’s office market—long known as the Energy Capital—has felt substantial pressure.
Occidental’s stock traded around $20 per share on Thursday, well below its 52-week high near $54.
June 18, 2020 Realty News Report Copyright 2020
Image: Parkway Property