Sold: Coke’s Extremely Potent Property, Market briefs

In Houston, The old Coca-Cola site, located next to the uber-affluent West University Place community, began its mission as a place for pop and fizz 75 years ago.

Like a shaken can of hot Diet Coke, the 15.5-acre Coca-Cola site is poised to explode with redevelopment potential. With a location near the corner of Kirby Drive and Bissonnet Street, the property is a quick drive from Houston’s key employment centers, the Texas Medical Center, Downtown Houston and the Galleria area.

Since Coca-Cola Southwest Beverages reported in 2018 it was its selling bottling plant and offices there, speculation soared.

Could the Coke land become a place for high-rise offices and residences? A multi-use development? An entertainment and retail district?

Nope.

The abandoned Coke plant has been purchased by Methodist Hospital, a non-profit organization affiliated with the United Methodist Church. It’s unclear exactly what Methodist will do there, but as a non-profit, Methodist probably won’t even have to pay property taxes.

Houston Investors Frank Liu and Avi Ron

Methodist purchased the property in late March from a partnership controlled by two of Houston’s most experienced and savvy real estate investment and development achievers – Frank Liu and Avi Ron.

About six years ago, the Liu/Ron partnership purchased the Coke property bordered by Westpark on the north and Bissonnet on the south. Specifically, it’s at the northwest corner of Bissonnet and Wakeforest streets.

As owner of Lovett Homes and Lovett Industrial, Liu built thousands of Inner Loop townhomes and also redeveloped the old Franklin Street post office in downtown. Even though the Liu/Ron partnership held the Coke property for six years, Liu and Ron eventually elected to sell rather than develop.

Coca-Cola began assembling the land in the 1940s. A 10-acre tract was purchased for $35,000. Coca-Cola built a baseball park of the north part of the property where the company team, called the “Sprites” competed in old-fashioned hardball.

In June 1950, when the Coca-Cola bottling plant opened at 2800 Bissonnet, Coke executives boasted it was the most modern bottling plant in the world. Back then, the Coca-Cola property was considered a suburban site. Houston was a smaller place and the city’s population was 596,163.

Six decades passed and somehow Coca-Cola became determined to leave the Inner Loop and go suburban again. The soda-water king relocated to a new, 1 million-SF facility in Hines’ Pinto Business Park in north Houston.

When they left Bissonnet Street, Coke took a piece of Houston’s first-ring suburban history with them.