Australia-based BHP Billiton Ltd. (NYSE: BHP) and its contractor have filed a swath of building permits for its 600,000-square-foot Class A office tower, which will change the skyline within the Uptown District.
Houston-based D.E. Harvey Builders Inc. is overseeing the construction of the 30-story structure being built on 2.72 acres within the Four Oaks Place office complex on Post Oak Boulevard.
Construction of the tower began in October 2013.
The permits filed show construction plans for floors nine to 28 with an anticipated cost of $2.5 million per floor.
The original intention was to consolidate the company’s U.S. employees at this one tower, which will have 594,000 rentable square feet. The company’s employees have been scattered between 4 Oaks Place in the Galleria area, downtown Houston and Tulsa, Oklahoma.
The company anticipates moving in sometime in the first half of 2017, according to company spokesman Jaryl Strong. This move will end up vacating between 200,000 square feet and 300,000 square feet of office space in the Galleria area which will add to the area’s growing inventory of empty office space.
“We’re at a tipping point for the Galleria,” Beau Bellow, vice president of tenant representation at Chicago-based JLL in Houston, told the Houston Business Journal. “If we continue to see commodity prices stay low for the next six to 12 months, we’re going to see a deterioration in the rental rates that are being quoted. It just so happens that a couple of the large tenants in that market are energy-specific … and the market is going to be at the mercy of these bigger tenants.”
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