Houston real estate joint venture building ‘creative workspace community’ near CityCentre
Florian Martin, Reporter
The Quad is being developed from four existing warehouses next to The Cannon West Houston.
A joint venture between two Houston-based real estate companies purchased 40,000 square feet of warehouse space in west Houston near CityCentre and plans to turn it into a “creative workspace community,” to be called The Quad.
Pagewood and Wile Interests have teamed with Austin-based architecture firm Mark Odom Studio to repurpose four 10,000-square-foot warehouse buildings that have been used for band rehearsals into office buildings that encourage social interaction and collaboration.
The joint venture acquired the property last October from Houston-based Ryan Owens, said Paul Coonrod, managing principal at Pagewood.
Interior demolition of the first building started last week, and that building is slated to be completed by the third quarter of this year.
“The intent, architecturally and socially, is to have a more collaborative space as it relates to a social atmosphere in a day-to-day activity,” Mark Odom said.
This is achieved by having community amenities, such as a coffee lounge and grab-and-go food service. In addition, outside areas will provide a place for mingling with co-workers and other users. Each building will have different amenities, with the goal to encourage users of one workspace to visit the others.
The property could accommodate a single tenant occupying all 40,000 square feet or different tenants leasing spaces as small as 2,500 square feet.
For now, the developers will build the common areas and then work on the remaining design once a tenant or tenants have been secured.
The property is just across a parking lot from another flexible workspace: The Cannon West Houston, a 120,000-square-foot entrepreneurial hub with rentable desks and larger office space for bigger startups, which opened in July 2019.
The Cannon's proximity was a big factor in deciding the location for The Quad, Odom said.
“We went through a series of discussions to … not only be focused on what we’re doing specifically, but how do we relate to our neighbors? How do we relate to the streetscape? And then most importantly, how do we provide connectivity to all of that?” he said.
The Quad's exterior will be designed to stand out from buildings around it, with lighting and other features, to attract gazes from drivers, Odom said.
The team hopes the new workspace community will lead to additional similar concepts in this industrial neighborhood, which has a number of unused warehouses.
“There are several buildings there that I think could domino, in terms of its neighbors or across the street or down the road,” Odom said. “And then the culture and the identity becomes a part of that office park.”