BUILDING ON PROJECT
Six new buildings, over 1 million more square feet coming to 120-acre site
Hines adding second phase to 120-acre Boulevard Oaks Business Park development.
Hines is starting construction on the second phase of its 120acre Boulevard Oaks Business Park development in southwest Houston, adding more than 1 million square feet to the city’s rapidly expanding industrial market.
The construction will comprise six buildings totaling 1.15 million square feet, more than double the 450,000-square-foot first phase, which has been completed and is mostly occupied.
The site of the industrial project — one of the largest under construction in Houston — is just inside Beltway 8, lining both sides of a tree-lined stretch of West Fuqua.
The new buildings will expand the growing supply of spec space in the sector, which some market watchers worry could become overbuilt.
Expansion among users of distribution space could slow amid concerns about a recession and fallout in the retail sector, according to a recent report from Transwestern, a commercial real estate company.
“Additionally, weakness in the manufacturing sector that has begun to display at the national level could trickle into the Houston metro, further reducing demand from the breakneck pace over recent history,” the company said.
Vacancy in Houston’s industrial market was 5.5 percent in the third quarter, a healthy figure but the highest in nearly eight years. The construction pipeline has grown to more than 21.1 million square feet, the highest level on record. And the majority of the space is speculative, meaning it hasn’t been preleased.
When completed, Boulevard Oaks will have 10 industrial buildings filling 1.6 million square feet. The four-building first phase is 95 percent occupied.
The new round of development will have three rear-load facilities of between 110,000 and 160,000 square feet, two frontload facilities of between 105,000 and 125,000 square feet, and one 530,000-square-foot cross-dock facility.
The expected completion date for the second phase is third quarter 2020.
The recent leases in the project’s initial phase are a testament to the park’s location and building quality, Hines Director Laura Denkler said in a statement.
“We are especially proud of the look and feel within the business park that we are creating at Boulevard Oaks and have received an incredibly positive response from the market for our efforts,” she said.
Jim Foreman and Allison Bergmann of Cushman & Wakefield are leasing the project for Hines. Burton Construction is the general contractor, and Powers Brown is the architect of record.
Hines is also developing a large industrial park at the southeast corner of Beltway 8 and Gessner in northwest Houston. That project, Grand National Business Park, is expected to include 1.5 million square feet of industrial/logistics space.
Last year, the company called off plans for a large business park in Katy that was to be called Pintail Crossing. The company sold the land to Costco Wholesale Corp.