HOUSTON-Weingarten uses a downREIT structure, debt assumption and cash to buy a 389,500-sf trio of grocery-anchored centers in San Leandro, CA and Raleigh, NC area. The $71.5-million purchase comes with nearly full product in strong markets.

HOUSTON-Mayor Bill White and others are lobbing a hard campaign for corporate relocations, using pro-business dialogue, the usual incentives and the CBD's 21% vacancy in a 42-million-sf office inventory as bait.

HOUSTON-An investment group from Honolulu gets the purchasing power from JPMorgan Mortgage Capital in a 30-day loan processing by arrangers in Portland and Houston. The 10-year loan, with a sub-6.25% fixed-interest rate, has a 75% LTV.

HOUSTON-Comfort Supply, already committed to office/warehouse space in North Houston and Galveston, cuts a deal for a third location, signing for 14,148 sf in Beltway 8 Business Park as a consolidation location in the southwest submarket.

CLEAR LAKE, TX-Twenty Twenty Properties buys two more buildings in Johnson Space Center's homeport. Word on the street is the fully leased twins, Clear Lake I and II, reel in about $10 million for seller, ING Clarion, after a six-month run on the market.

HOUSTON-Weatherford Center in the Galleria submarket sets the hook for the REIT's first acquisition from a fund now starting its third month. Sources tell GlobeSt.com that the fully leased asset trades for about $40 million or close to $155 per sf.

HOUSTON-Aurora Casket Co. slides into a pocket of warehouse space at Southpoint Business Park. The Indiana-based manufacturer gets one of the last remaining small distribution spots along the South Loop and the only one in a 161,000-sf building.

LaPORTE, TX-Katoen Natie Gulf Coast Inc., a supplier of plastic resins and petrochemical products, has ramped up production in a 1.2-million-sf terminal. Work wraps up on the 72-acre complex two years ahead of schedule.