Sublease Available at Air Liquide Center — Flexible Lease Options
Air Liquide Center
HOUSTON – FairfieldNodal, an energy exploration company, has signed a sublease for 46,720 square feet at the Air Liquide Center, a recently developed office building in the Memorial City area of west Houston. Located at 9811 Katy Freeway, the Air Liquide Center was built by MetroNational approximately three years ago and offers Class A office space in one of the city’s growing submarkets.
Representing Sugar Land–based FairfieldNodal in the transaction were NAI Partners’ brokers Jon Silberman, John Ferruzzo and Nick Peterson.
“As FairfieldNodal has continued to expand in Sugar Land, opening a Houston office became inevitable,” Silberman said. “We’re pleased to have partnered with them to secure prime Class A space in a fast-developing submarket. This transaction also reflects encouraging trends in the office market, as sublease inventory continues to decline. Our recently published NAI Partners Sublease Index — an important gauge of market health — has fallen to 15 percent, signaling a continued reduction in available sublease space in Houston that began in the third quarter of 2016.”
Houston’s sublease market peaked at more than 12 million square feet in 2016 but has eased over the past year. Current sublease availability is roughly nine million square feet. However, the market saw a notable increase earlier this month when TechnipFMC listed about 376,000 square feet for sublease at Energy Center II on the Katy Freeway in the Energy Corridor.
The sharp decline in oil prices — West Texas Intermediate crude dropped from around $107 per barrel in June 2014 to a low near $26.21 per barrel on Feb. 11, 2016 — had a pronounced impact on Houston’s office market, especially in Downtown, Westchase and the Energy Corridor. During that downturn, many energy companies reduced headcount and placed excess office space onto the sublease market, contributing to elevated vacancy levels. At one point, a national real estate firm cited the Energy Corridor as one of the weakest submarkets in the country.
While the surge in sublease space weighed on the market’s perception, it created opportunities for companies seeking affordable, high-quality space. FairfieldNodal, which designs and manufactures nodal seismic data acquisition systems, was able to take advantage of that environment to secure office space at favorable terms in the Air Liquide Center.
