Greenway Plaza, designed to be timeless, was ahead of its time
Houston’s first mixed-use development continues to evolve with area’s needs
Executing the vision for Greenway Plaza involved one of the most onerous exercises a real estate developer can face when planning something big: assembling all the land to do it on.
Kenneth Schnitzer, the late Houston developer who built Greenway Plaza’s soaring office towers, condominium buildings and supporting retail, including a below-ground movie theater, had to buy out multitudes of homeowners who lived in the area along the north side of the Southwest Freeway near Edloe.
Schnitzer was successful in his efforts, an achievement noted in numerous news articles and in the developer’s New York Times obituary in 1999.
“Few homeowners held out in those negotiations, which his sons said he regarded as one of his proudest achievements,” the Times wrote.
What resulted became among the earliest examples of urban-style development that combined a mix of uses while being mindful of scale, landscaping and traffic.
“Greenway Plaza was really Houston’s first mixed-use development,” said Robert Boykin Jr., senior vice president of leasing with Cousins Properties, Greenway’s current owner. “The live-work-play that everybody talks about today started at Greenway.”
Schnitzer worked with the architecture firm of Lloyd, Morgan and Jones to design many of the buildings.
Greenway’s design offers connectivity, linking its buildings mostly by airconditioned sky bridges and tunnels. Plazas and green space punctuate the tall towers.
“Schnitzer sought to do a sort of spacially integrated development that was extremely consistent architecturally and incorporated substantial green space into the complex,” said Stephen Fox, an architectural historian and lecturer at Rice University.
Greenway’s impact spread beyond its boundaries.
The greater area adopted the name; “Greenway Plaza” is now a recognized submarket comprising millions of square feet of office space, thousands of apartments and countless retail establishments.
When Tony Vallone moved his signature restaurant to Greenway Plaza from Uptown in 2006, it was a “huge statement” for the area, Boykin said.
Tony’s, a fine-dining landmark, recently renewed its lease for another decade.
The draw is the location between Houston’s upscale inner-Loop neighborhoods and the proximity to corporate giants with offices in nearby towers.
From its earliest days in the late 1960s, Greenway Plaza housed leading businesses, including Eastern Airlines, Delta Airlines, Union Carbide, Travelers Insurance, Dresser Industries and Conoco.
Later, Occidental Oil and Gas, Transocean, Invesco and Direct Energy joined the tenant roster. Office tenants occupying more than 2 million square feet have been in Greenway Plaza for more than 20 years.
The mix of uses and level of amenities set a new standard for suburban development, said Neil Tofsky, who worked for Schnitzer and handled commercial leasing among other operations at Greenway for many years. “They brought all this infrastructure for the price of commercial office space,” he said. “You could have retail, a hotel for your visitors, you could take someone to a basketball or hockey game, and it was all part of the experience.”
Improvements have been made to the complex over time. Cousins recently completed a multimillion-dollar renovation to 3 Greenway Plaza, and additional upgrades are underway. The food court is being renovated and rebranded as “the Hub,” and a fitness center will fill the old cinema space.
In recent years, studies have envisioned what a future Greenway Plaza might look like.
Nick Hernandez, managing director at commercial real estate firm Transwestern, said Greenway Plaza was “cuttingedge” when it was developed for its mix of uses. But the project, which now encompasses 52 acres across several streets, is somewhat “siloed.” If Greenway Plaza were built today, Hernandez said, it probably would have the same amount of square footage, but a different arrangement of buildings.
“You’d have significantly more retail, and the mixes would probably be stacked on top of each other,” he said.
An early phase of the project had underground parking and retail space, including the cinema.
Longtime Houston developer Richard Everett, who joined Schnitzer’s company in 1971, said the Greenway buildings were designed to be “timeless.”
Much time and effort was spent on landscaping, traffic planning and architecture. “We wanted to have the best office complex, which meant you had to have the best amenities,” Everett said.
The Greenway Theatre became a public destination, but it closed in 2007 after 35 years.
Over time, two condominium towers were added to the Greenway complex, as was a hotel, a fitness and tennis club, and a sports arena that boasted a grand opening gala with Kirk Douglas, Andy Williams, Ed McMahon, Debbie Reynolds, Dyan Cannon and Roger Miller. The arena building now houses Lakewood Church.
Today, Greenway has 10 office buildings and 4.4 million square feet. Since they were built, the towers have “aged with extraordinary dignity,” Fox said.
“They have a longevity and architecturally have worn very well,” he said.
The complex has changed hands a few times. In its last sale, Atlanta-based Cousins Properties purchased Greenway in one of the largest single commercial real estate transactions ever conducted in Houston. In 2013, Cousins agreed to pay $950 million for the development from Crescent Real Estate Holdings.
At the time, Cousins identified four development sites within the 52-acre complex that could accommodate an additional 2 million square feet of office space over time.
The Houston economy then was soaring. Last month, Cousins announced a deal to merge with Orlando-based Parkway Properties and spin off its Houston assets, including Greenway, into a new company called HoustonCo.
The new company, to be focused on Houston, will be “positioned to take advantage of the expected recovery in the energy sector,” the companies said in a statement. .
Boykin said Schnitzer was ahead of his time in wanting to create an environment that encompassed not just work, but housing and entertainment. “Kenneth Schnitzer should be lauded for that,” Boykin said. “He was such a visionary.”