HOUSTON – (Realty News Report) – Medistar Corp. has appointed Cushman & Wakefield to provide leasing services for Horizon Tower, a 485,000-square-foot life sciences building currently under construction at Texas A&M Innovation Plaza, adjacent to the Texas Medical Center.
Previously, JLL had been announced as the leasing agent last July. That arrangement has changed: a Cushman & Wakefield leasing team will now represent the building, led by veteran leasing specialist Tim Relyea, who has closed more than $47 million in transactions over his career.
Medistar’s development will be a notable addition to the Texas Medical Center, the largest medical center in the world, which supports a workforce of more than 100,000 people.
Set on five acres at the intersection of Holcombe Boulevard and Main Street, Texas A&M Innovation Plaza includes Discovery Tower, an 18-story, 280,000-square-foot academic building anchored by Texas A&M’s Engineering-Medicine (EnMed) program, and Life Tower, a 19-story, 714-bed student housing community. The campus is centered around nearly an acre of open-air greenspace.
“Horizon Tower and Texas A&M Innovation Plaza are ideally positioned to attract life sciences and medical device companies of all sizes,” said Craig Laher, Senior Vice President for Development at Medistar. “The distinctively designed campus creates spaces inspired by research and discovery, while Horizon Tower’s flexible infrastructure will support a broad spectrum of life sciences uses—from computational analytics to wet labs, vivarium facilities, and everything in between.”
Horizon Tower will feature 17 stories of life sciences and medical space. Three of those floors will offer approximately 38,000-square-foot floorplates, while the remaining 14 stories will provide roughly 28,000-square-foot floorplates. All floors will have visibility and direct access from Main Street, Holcombe Boulevard and Fannin Street.
The medical and life sciences floors will sit above a 13-story parking structure with about 2,700 spaces and will include roughly 15,000 square feet of ground-floor retail.
A Cushman & Wakefield team representing Medistar in leasing Horizon Tower includes Executive Vice Chairman Tim Relyea, Executive Managing Directors William Hartman and Morgan Colt, Managing Director Michael Baraldi, and Associate James Gale. The team is targeting life sciences and medical device/technology tenants. Horizon Tower is currently under construction and is scheduled for delivery in early 2023.
Houston’s life sciences ecosystem is robust: the region is home to more than 1,760 life sciences companies and roughly 360,000 healthcare and life sciences workers, including over 18,000 biotech specialists and 25,000 leading medical researchers and scientists. In 2019, more than 5,000 clinical trials were active in Houston—about 14% of all U.S. clinical trials—and the region attracted nearly $180 million in life-sciences venture capital. Institutions such as Baylor College of Medicine and the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center remain research leaders, with substantial life sciences research expenditures and significant NIH funding.
Founded in 1974 by CEO Monzer Hourani, Medistar is a Houston-based national real estate company focused on developing medical and healthcare-aligned projects.
Jan. 29, 2021 Realty News Report Copyright 2021
File: Medistar Selects Cushman & Wakefield
Rendering courtesy Cushman & Wakefield
File: (2) Texas A&M. Horizon Tower. Medistar Selects Cushman & Wakefield