In the southwest of Houston, TX, on the Interstate 610 loop, 5 miles southwest of Downtown and 3 miles southeast of Uptown, lies a business center called Greenway Plaza. West of Upper Kirby, northwest of West University Place, and southward of River Oaks are the nearest neighbors of the district.
Greenway Plaza, which local entrepreneur Kenneth L. Schnitzer first envisioned for the area in the late 1960s, has grown to become one of Greater Houston’s greatest employment hubs with more than 4.4 million square meters of office space on a 52-acre property. Greenway Plaza is renowned for its enormous green spaces and unwavering modernist architectural style and is widely regarded as a trailblazing model of mixed-use construction in the US.An vast network of wind skyways, tunnels, and subterranean parking garages links the campus’ eleven office skyscrapers.
One of the biggest congregations in the country may be found at Lakewood Church, a nonsectarian Christian church, which would be located in Greenway Plaza. The Houston Rockets, a pro basketball club, as well as other athletic teams, concerts, and events used to be held at Lakewood’s main campus, a location formerly called “The Summit” and then “Compaq Center.” In 2005, Lakewood Church made the acquisition.
How did it come to place?
The idea for Greenway Plaza, Houston’s first mixed-use development, came from Kenneth L. Schnitzer, who is also the head of the Century Progress Corporation.
In an effort to avoid drawing notice, Century recruited realtors from taraftarium24 outer Houston communities and had them purchase individual parcels for extremely low prices. After learning of the proposal, one homeowner requested that the house be sold for $350,000. For a little house at the time, the price was high. In order to acquire the parcel on which the house was located, the corporation paid the money. In 1973, the official opening took place. Greenway Plaza would develop into a “second downtown,” according to Schnitzer. According to Bill Schadewald of the Houston Press, Greenway Plaza, a complex that included office buildings, shops, a basketball arena, a theater, and a hotel, “established the well used concept in an initial “Edge City””.
The Compaq Center, which housed the Houston Rockets until about 2003, was then converted into the Lakewood Church Central Campus. According to Nancy Sarnoff of the Houston Chronicle, this change caused the nearby Greenway Plaza to become “sleepy,” and in 2017 Greenway Plaza had little activity at night despite having a lot of activity during the day. As a result, according to Sarnoff, Greenway Plaza “starts to feel like houston did 10 or 20 years ago.”
Recent Developments
Crescent made an effort to sell a 50% equity stake in Greenway Plaza and Houston Center in 2004. El Paso Corp., a significant tenant at Greenway Plaza with 912,000 square feet, announced during that year that it was leaving the building and relocating its staff to its headquarters in Downtown Houston. According to a Houston Business Daily report, El Paso intends to sublet the space until its lease expires in 2014 at that point.
Internet America, a supplier of internet services, had headquarters in Greenway Plaza in 2005.
On Monday, July 29, 2013, Cousins Properties, an Atlanta-based business, made an announcement that it was purchasing both a Downtown Fort Worth office tower and the whole Greenway Plaza complex. The Houston Chronicle’s Nancy Sarnoff said that Cousins planned to pay $1.1 billion as cash. In 2017, Parkway Inc., the property’s owner, announced plans to restore Greenway Plaza.
T-Mobile announced its relocation to the T-Mobile Tower, formerly of the River Oaks Tower, in July 2017. Occidental Petroleum made its move-out announcement and put its space up for sale in the same month.
