The class-A property is located at 7100 Business Park Dr., just north of West Little York at Texas 290 and Beltway 8. Houston Telecom Exchange is an undertaking by New York City-based Insignia/ESG; Koontz McCombs LLC, a San Antonio-based development firm; and Blackacre Capital Management LLC, a New York-based real estate investment management firm.
Peyton Collins of Insignia/ESG tells GlobeSt.com that the partnership had been eager to build a telecom hotel outside of the saturated downtown market. The team had been particularly interested in designing a hotel from the ground up instead of the more popular trend of converting older properties into telecom hotels. Collins says the Houston Telecom Exchange base had been a new institutional grade, tilt-wall warehouse in close proximity to the railroad tracks where the major fiber lines are located.
"This newly constructed facility brings a fresh product to the Houston telecom market," says Jerald King, senior leasing manager for Insignia/ESG. "Typically telecom hotels are conversions of aging properties. This facility has been designed specifically to offertelecom clients everything they need to house and operate sensitive communications equipment." LZA Associates had been the project architects.
Insignia/ESG is a part of Insignia Financial Group, the companies currently manage over five million-sf of telecom facilities for clients such as Sprint, MCI/WorldCom, Time Warner, Qwest, Bell South, Winstar Communications and Level 3. Insignia's telecom facilities are located in Houston, San Antonio, Chicago, New York and Atlanta.
Collins says that it is popular in Houston for brokers to market properties as telecom hotels, but most are selling the potential, meaning they are waiting for a tenant before commencing the construction on a raw building. This methodology, he says, can take between four and six months. In comparison, the Houston Telecom Exchange can bring utilities to tenants within 45 days, with tenant finish out as the only remaining barrier for setting up shop. King says the Houston Telecom Exchange is a strong carrier facility because tenants have control over their own facilities instead of a shared infrastructure.
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