New Center Design to Engage Users at Street Level

HOUSTON—Brookfield Properties recently unveiled its vision and plans for the redevelopment of Houston Center, a four-building mixed-use downtown complex. The renovation focuses on creating a more connected experience at Houston Center by engaging users at street level.

“The fact that Brookfield owns the properties on both sides of McKinney has given our design team the unique opportunity to incorporate the street into an expansive and seamless plaza,” says Gensler principal Dean Strombom. “Building on the pedestrian-friendly and program-rich environment of nearby Discovery Green, this new district will be an energized place for Houston Center office users during the day, and for the public on nights and weekends.”

Circulation spaces will provide pedestrians with direct access to Houston Center in the form of a new green space along McKinney Street. A more walkable pedestrian-friendly McKinney Street, which is a key downtown corridor, is planned including wider sidewalks and landscaping in addition to more outdoor dining patios. This new green space will extend activities from surrounding amenities and attractions such as Discovery Green.

“Brookfield Properties’ approach is predicated on our distinctive placemaking vision, creating successful mixed-use environments offering experiential destinations for today’s office worker, consumers and visitors alike. Together with our design teams at Gensler and Clark Condon, Houston Center will be a best-in-class destination,” said Travis Overall, executive vice president and head of the Texas region for Brookfield Properties. “The capital investment we are making in Houston Center is reflective of the confidence we have in downtown and in Houston as a whole.”

The renovation of Houston Center will offer a mix of features and amenities including restaurants and retail. Occupying five blocks along McKinney Street, the LEED gold-certified Houston Center campus is the largest property by square footage in the city’s urban core, situated on 9.2 acres, and comprised of LyondellBasell Tower, 2 Houston Center, Fulbright Tower, 4 Houston Center and The Shops at Houston Center.

“We knew when we acquired Houston Center in December 2017 that we needed to make significant improvements to the property to attract and retain the best tenants in the market. Houston Center’s original design did not address the ground level and assumed all circulation would occur in elevated lobbies, which was no longer feasible,” Overall tells GlobeSt.com. “The area around Houston Center has changed dramatically since the project was developed in the 1970s and 1980s, with major private and public investments. This area serves the core of downtown, so it was critical for Houston Center to alter its presence to reflect that growth. Brookfield’s plan focuses on creating a more welcoming environment and providing enhanced amenity offerings that will appeal to a diverse audience–tenants, visitors and neighbors.”

Key elements of the renovation will include an entirely new arrival experience through a reimagined central plaza and green space along McKinney Street; a digital water wall and entertainment space, and a stair connection to landscaped terraces above; renovation of the 2 Houston Center and LyondellBasell Tower lobbies featuring two-story glass façade at 2 Houston Center and modernized elevator cabs throughout; reclad skybridges connecting the complex to shopping and retail center; a new fitness center; conferencing venues and lobby co-working spaces including a new outdoor sky deck; and new multi-tenant corridor.

“Brookfield continues to look to the future by transforming another of their downtown properties into an amenity-rich development. This progressive, strategic shift accommodates the blurred lines of today’s live-work-play corporate culture that tenants desire,” said Bob Eury, Downtown District president. “In addition, the re-imagining of Houston Center and McKinney Street will add to downtown’s list of attractions creating a bustling linear space lined with restaurants, nightlife, parks and landscaping, connecting Main Street to Discovery Green and Avenida Houston.”

With Brookfield’s acquisition of the Houston Center complex a year ago, the owner/developer now has 12 million square feet of commercial assets in downtown.

Brookfield Properties recently redeveloped One Allen Center, which included a transformation of the lobby with a modern two-story glass facade, a re-clad transparent sky bridge that connects One and Two Allen Center, and a complete re-envisioning of the exterior landscaping with a 1-acre green space named The Acre. Future plans include complete lobby renovations for Two and Three Allen Center, as well as the transformation of C. Baldwin, formerly the Doubletree Hotel.

“Once renovations are complete, Houston Center will offer a more inviting street level presence with new landscaping, additional street level retail, new transparent curtain wall at the lower levels along McKinney and more intuitive vertical circulation,” Overall tells GlobeSt.com. “The project will embrace more open areas, provide more natural lighting to our lobby areas and house new areas of collaboration outside of traditional office space. These are common themes across both Houston Center and our Allen Center project.”

Construction will begin next month with an estimated completion in late 2020. Brookfield enrolled the redevelopment project in the Construction Career Collaborative/C3 initiative which is a nonprofit collaboration of owners, contractors, specialty contractors, industry associations and design professions with the mission of developing a safe, skilled and sustainable craft workforce in commercial construction for the Houston region. As a C3 project, all construction workers involved will be employees, not independent subcontractors, and receive hourly pay with overtime and worker’s compensation insurance coverage. Additionally, the workforce will be required to have OSHA safety credentials and be provided with ongoing safety and craft training.

The office market maintained a slow and steady recovery track in 2018, according to a report by Avison Young. Houston’s vigorous and diverse economy deserves most of the credit, with unemployment under 4% and nearly 115,000 jobs created during the last year. And several key factors unique to the Houston metro have it well positioned for another banner year if not better than 2018. For example, Houston’s zoning and land-use regulations are appealing to investors and developers.