Houston’s Next Office Tower, Market briefs

In Houston, Chemical company Dow will be moving into Houston’s newest office building, the CityCentre Six tower.

In The work start was held recently on a site in the CItyCentre mixed, use development. The 19-story tower is slated to completed in 2026.

Houston-based Midway, is developing the office tower, another component at its 47-acre CityCentre a landmark multi-use project in West Houston. The name “CityCentre” is considered apropos because the development’s location near the intersection of the Katy Freeway and the Sam Houston Tollway is near the center of the Houston metropolitan area.

Dow will be moving to CityCentre from a building on the Enclave Parkway in the Energy Corridor. The new CItyCentre building is about three miles east of Dow’s Energy Corridor building.

Dow leased 65 percent of the 320,000-SF CityCentre Six building.

CityCentre is a multi-use project with 375,500 SF of retail and dining, a 245-room hotel, 1,155 multifamily homes, and several office buildings totaling 630,000 SF of Class-A office. Occupancy is high in the CityCentre office space.

“Dow’s commitment as the anchor tenant has been a driving force behind the project’s strong momentum and underscores the strong leasing demand for CityCentre office space, which remains 100 percent leased,” said said Chris Seckinger, Vice President of Investment and Development at Midway.

The CityCentre Six planning team includes Kirksey, Architect of Record; Munoz + Albin Architecture and Planning, Design Architect; and OJB Landscape Architecture, Landscape Design. Rendering: Courtesy Midway

In CityCentre Six will offer 308,000 SF of office space above a nine, level podium parking structure, approximately 12,000 SF of ground-floor retail and dining options.

The CityCentre Six planning team includes Kirksey, Architect of Record; Munoz + Albin Architecture and Planning, Design Architect; and OJB Landscape Architecture, Landscape Design.

The CityCentre Six is not just an office building. It comes with plans for a sizable open-air plaza.

CityCentre Six and the adjacent Marathon Oil office tower (which opened in 2022) have been large-scale planned around a new half-acre urban plaza that will serve as “a sophisticated new entrance” to the original CityCentre development. Designed by OJB Landscape Architecture and curated by Midway’s Urban Park brand, the space will have built-in assembly seating overlooking the area. CityCentre Six’s retail fronts and patios will spill out onto the landscaped plaza, maintaining the view corridor and providing a natural pedestrian-focus.

The development of CityCentre, which has been recognized for its mixed-used placemaking by the global Urban Land Institute, represents a long strategic journey for Midway at the site.

At one time, the property was a regional mall that eventually began to struggle despite its prominent location near the southeast corner of the Katy Freeway and Beltway 8, in the Memorial area.

It was called the Town & Country Mall and competition was fierce even before the enclosed regional-mall genre began to lose favor with many American consumers.

“Town & Country Mall is not just a dog, it’s a dog with fleas,” Blake Tartt III, retail expert and New Regional Planning President, told former Houston Chronicle reporter Ralph Bivins over two decades ago.

Midway bought the old Town & Country Mall in 2004. The mall was demolished and soon replaced with the beginnings of Midway’s open-air, walkable, live/work/play environment called CityCentre. In The CityCentre Six building is a continuation of that trend, setting vision.

Michael Anderson and Connor Saxe of Cushman & Wakefield have been handling office leasing of CityCentre Six, which has 100,000 SF of remaining space after Dow’s move.

Dow’s corporate headquarters remains in Midland, Michigan. That’s where Dow was founded in 1897 by chemist Herbert Henry Dow.