In Bustling Houston, It's A Case of 'Build, Baby, Build!'

"It made more sense to create a new home," said Keith Gray, manager of BP's High Performance Computing unit. "It became clear that a freestanding building was needed to address growth needs."

Other oil and gas companies with buildings under construction or in preliminary stages in Houston include BHP Billiton Petroleum, Anadarko Petroleum Corp, Royal Dutch Shell and Chevron Corp, which plans a 50-story tower downtown.

One building which started on spec - meaning banks loan money for construction even if a tenant isn't lined up - is the 550,000-square-foot Energy Center Three in west Houston.

Principal Real Estate Investors, part of Principal Financial Group, and developer Trammell Crow Co started the building with a loan of roughly $100 million from a Wells Fargo-led syndicate.

Within four months, oil company ConocoPhillips signed a lease for the entire building and half of Energy Center Four, which is not yet under construction, said Aaron Thielhorn, managing director of Trammell Crow's Houston business unit.

Brian Stoffers, president of CBRE Capital Markets, said spec building in Houston in many ways makes it an outlier.

"The dynamics of the Houston market are so robust right now that it's the exception to the economic rule around the rest of the country," he said.


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