During this energy boom companies go with campus layout

Fuel Fix:
Developers are planning a 20-story office tower for Noble Energy Inc., a project that will create a corporate campus spanning nearly 1 million square feet for the Houston-based independent energy firm.

The 456,000-square-foot building, which will have an eight-story parking garage and a “town hall” for large employee gatherings, will be developed at the southwest corner of Texas 249 and Louetta.

The building will go up next to twin 10-story buildings Noble leased last year and plans to move into in May.

With the new project, Noble joins other large energy firms that have committed to major campus developments across the Houston area.

Millions of square feet of new buildings are planned or under way for firms such as Exxon Mobil Corp., Anadarko Petroleum Corp., Southwestern Energy and Phillips 66. The new projects are largely concentrated in and around The Woodlands and west Houston.

Read more: Energy center corridor grows in west Houston

Trammell Crow Co., which is developing the Noble project with Principal Real Estate Investors, plans to break ground in late summer.

The developers are seeking a LEED Silver rating from the U.S. Green Building Council. Under the group’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program, buildings earn various designations for energy efficiency. Kirksey Architects is designing the building.

The future Noble headquarters will comprise 954,000 square feet of space in two main structures connected by an elevated skybridge that will be known as Noble Energy Center One and Two. Construction is expected to be complete in mid-2015.

The first structure, two 10-story buildings connected by a glass atrium, was purchased by Trammell Crow in May 2011. Noble signed a lease for the 498,000 square feet of space about eight months later. The property is located at 20555 Texas 249, next to The Vintage, a multiuse development with homes, offices, shops and medical facilities in the northwest part of town.

Noble had the first right to occupy a future building on land the developer acquired as part of its building purchase. The property was purchased from Hewlett Packard Corp.
... 
During previous building booms associated with energy growth, there were a lot of high rise buildings built in Downtown Houston.  The campus settings are in suburban areas with a lot of nearby housing making for a shorter commute and less congestion on the Houston freeways.  The Woodlands has been especially successful at attracting business campuses to go with its secluded housing development around man made lakes and championship golf courses.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Washington Post: Some Democrats eye adding more justices to the Supreme Court to change its ideological bent The once-remote idea has gained the attention of liberals angered by the GOP push to remake the federal courts. Probably the easy way to defeat this court-packing scheme is for Trump to propose doing the same thing now.  It would lead to Democrat denunciations and claims that it would be wrong, thereby blowing up any attempt by them in the unfortunate event of Democrats winning a presidential election.
Read more

29 % of companies say they are unlikely to keep insurance after Obamacare

Conn Carroll: A new survey of 368 midsize to large companies found that 29% of them are considering terminating their active employee health care plans when Obamacare is full implemented in 2014. Only 71% of employers surveyed said they did not expect to drop their health coverage, while 20% said they did not know and 9% said they were planning to exit. The latest survey, conducted by Towers Watson, echoes an ealier survey by McKinsey & Co. finding that 30% of private-sector employers were planning to drop their employee health insurance coverage by 2014. When the Congressional Budget Office crunched Obamacare's spending numbers, they estimated that only 7% of employees currently covered by employer-sponsored plans would lose their plans. ... This means the cost of the health care fiasco will be hundreds of billions more than estimated by the CBO and Congressional Democrat. It is also clear that Obama's pledge that you could keep your health care plan if you wanted t
Read more

Bin Laden's concern about Zarqawi's remains

James Robbins: ... Bin Laden suggests that President Bush should allow Zarqawi’s body to be returned to his family in Jordan, but this is a matter that is up to the Jordanian government, which so far has not shown much interest in facilitating a homecoming. Bin Laden mocks King Abdullah II, calling him a Coalition minion, and asking “w hat scares you about Abu Musab after he’s dead? You know that his funeral, if allowed to happen, would be a huge funeral showing the extent of sympathy with the mujahedin.” A large crowd would definitely turn out, though most people would be on hand to demonstrate their anger and disgust. Last November’s hotel bombings in Amman , masterminded by Zarqawi, are still fresh in people’s memory, and mentioning them to Jordanians has the same visceral impact as memory of the 9/11 attacks does here. Jordan has adopted a zero-tolerance policy towards those who choose to mourn the country’s least favorite son, and four opposition members of parliament who paid con
Read more