New tenant arriving on Loop
Texas Children’s Health Plan set to take top half of Bellaire building
Texas Children’s Health Plan will take over the top half of 6330 West Loop South and replace the WorleyParsons name on the 14-story building in a deal that will fill a bit of sublease space.
The company has signed a 10-year lease for 138,599 square feet and plans to move into the Bellaire building in February, owner Accesso Partners announced.
The space is being subleased from WorleyParsons, an engineering and construction consulting firm with new offices in the Energy Corridor.
“We selected 6330 West Loop because of its proximity to the hospital’s home base in the Texas Medical Center,” David Bale, a broker with JLL who represented the health plan, said in an announcement.
“In addition, we were able to secure seven high contiguous floors with large (20,000 square feet) efficient floor plates that allow for enhanced communication and collaboration among the various departments,” Bale said.
Texas Children’s Health Plan, a subsidiary of Texas Children’s Hospital, offers Children’s Health Insurance Program and Medicaid to residents in 20 counties including the Houston area.
The new headquarters, which will relocate from 2450 Holcombe, will house a call center for member services, marketing, outreach, finance, information services, claims and case management services.
The larger office will enable the health plan to grow from 350 employees to about 900 over the next year, said Jenn Blackmer Jacome, a spokeswoman for Texas Children’s Hospital.
The deal allows Accesso Partners, which was represented by the Texas asset manager Michael Adams, to fill a chunk of space previously occupied by WorleyParsons. The sixth and seventh floors remain vacant.
As energy companies have relocated to new buildings, downsized or scaled back plans for growth, sublease space in the Houston market reached a high of 6.8 million square feet in the second quarter, according to CBRE.
In the first half of the year alone, 2.7 million square feet of sublease space hit the market. Sublease space now represents 3.3 percent of the total office market.
Accesso Partners, based in Hallandale Beach, Fla., owns 10 buildings in Houston spanning nearly 2.6 million square feet.
The company, which was previously known as Beacon Investment Properties, is looking to acquire more buildings.
“We’ve recently been closely monitoring the Houston marketplace, given what has happened to the price of oil,” Brian Rosen, managing director-acquisitions for Accesso Partners, said in an email. “But we’re taking the longterm view that Houston is a strong place for office buildings, and we’re now actively looking for opportunistic investments, both downtown and in the suburbs.”