Top car dealer takes 45K sf lease at Moody Rambin development

One of the country’s top car dealers is setting up shop in west Houston. 

Group 1 Automotive leased 45,000 square feet at 730 Town and Country Boulevard, according to filings with the state. The Fortune 300 dealer will build out office space on the fifth and sixth floors, work that is expected to cost $7.25 million, the filing states. That’s about $160 per square foot.

Work, which includes “general demolition,” building office space and constructing a showcase stairway between the floors, is scheduled to begin in May and run through October. 

The office will be a part of Moody Rambin’s eight-story, 167,000-square-foot Town Centre Two. It sits within the company’s 41-acre mixed-use development in West Houston, Town and Country Village. The development is just south of Midway’s CityCentre. 

Town Centre Two broke ground in 2022, around the same time Greystar signed on to lease 68,000 square feet. The Charleston, South Carolina-based rental developer and manager downsized in the move, only planning to use 34,000 square feet while subleasing the rest, leaving open the possibility for expansion, according to the Houston Chronicle.

Group One Automotive won’t be setting up shop far from its current headquarters at One Memorial City Plaza, which sits just on the other side of Gessner Road. That building, owned by Houston-based MetroNational, stands 12 stories and counts Group One as one of its major tenants.

Houston’s office market has faced challenges in recent years. Just west of Town Centre Two, though, lies one of the city’s bright spots, the Energy Corridor. Leasing activity has concentrated there and in the Woodlands, Howard Hughes’ master-planned community north of downtown. 

The city’s average office vacancy rate is about 21 percent, but high-profile foreclosures, like the one that is threatened at the Scanlan Building downtown, have suggested trouble for many of the city’s commercial landlords.

Read more

Houston

Clear Lake a shining star in struggling Houston office market

Houston

Expansive faces foreclosure at downtown Houston office building

Houston

Galleria office building headed to auction after $13M default