Houston Office Park Continues Adaptive Reuse Trend

A 63-acre former corporate campus in Houston will be redeveloped into a mixed-use project, reports Trevor Schillaci in the Architect’s Newspaper. “The effort will add new office space, residential, retail, and restaurants around the perimeter of the site.”

The original office park, built for Conoco (later ConocoPhillips) in 1984, “comprises 16 buildings arranged in five groups, with an additional service structure situated at the center of the complex.” Designed as a ‘technoburb,’ the complex aimed to provide everything workers needed: “While much of the complex is programmed as office (and garden) space, the central service building combines parking facilities, a gym, a computer center, staff cafeterias, a credit union, and a travel agency under one roof.”

“Recognizing that a post-pandemic workforce prefers low-rise, low-density workspaces, as opposed to the high-density office towers, the plan proposed by Midway reduces the original 1.3 million-square-foot site down to 650,000 square feet, while repurposing the remaining space to accommodate other uses,” Schillaci explains. Buildings will be remodeled into apartment units, a boutique hotel, as well as restaurants and bars with waterfront views. The developer plans to build on the complex’s sustainability elements by preserving on-site trees and green space and repurposing food and water waste. With demand for physical offices remaining low and the shift to remote work lasting longer than many predicted, adaptive reuse is gaining momentum as property owners look to new uses for now-obsolete office space.