Farmers Market partners form a new firm
Two commercial real estate veterans have left Avison Young, a national real estate services firm, and formed a business to focus on leasing and sales in the industrial, self-storage and retail sectors.
Todd Mason and Jeff Lindenberger, who co-founded the new firm, MLB Commercial Real Estate, are also partners in an affiliated entity that owns the Houston Farmers Market near the Heights and other Houston properties.
Mason, who has worked in the commercial brokerage industry here for more than three decades, founded Mason Partners with Lindenberger in 2010. They sold the company to Avison Young, where they joined as principals, two years later.
The split from Avison Young was amicable, Mason said. The
pair had planned eventually to go out on their own again, but the pandemic accelerated it. The pair brought several clients and a five-person team to the new firm.
“It made us re-examine our lifestyle and our business plan,” he said. “It was the best thing for us from a business and personal lifestyle standpoint.”
Among its portfolio, the new company will handle leasing for 130,000 square feet of retail space at the Houston Farmers Market at 2520 Airline Drive.
MLB Capital Partners, which includes Fred Baca as a partner, bought the 18acre market three years ago and announced plans to redevelop it into a culinary and entertainment destination.
The project has experienced a number of delays stemming from storms — Hurricane Harvey happened just a few months after MLB closed on the property — and the pandemic. Now, however, there are four new buildings on the site, and construction of a large open-air pavilion where merchants will sell fresh produce is imminent.
“We’ve made good progress,” Mason said. “Sadly, it took us three years.”
Mason’s group partnered with Houston chef Chris Shepherd, who plans to develop a new concept for the market and to consult on the project. Since then, Mason became a partner in Shepherd’s restaurant group, Underbelly Hospitality.
One of the recent headwinds to the project has been the pandemic, which has slowed leasing.
Restaurants and startup food vendors that had signed early commitment letters for space in the market pulled back.
“They were mostly letters of intent with a lot of really good people who said, ‘We still want to do it, but don’t know what our financial future looks like,’” Mason said.
Some of those talks have been revived, he said.
The market continues to operate with about 70 tenants from the previous operation. They include small retail stalls and larger wholesalers.