Howard Hughes starts Houston metro’s first mass-timber office project

Howard Hughes is off and running with the office portion of its master-planned community in Cypress, introducing an eco-friendly design to the submarket.

The Houston-based real estate giant started construction on the 49,000-square-foot One Bridgeland Green, a mass-timber office building within the 70-acre Village Green at Bridgeland Central, the Houston Business Journal reported. 

The office building, at 20203 Bridgeland Creek Parkway, is within the “Northwest outlier” submarket, according to Colliers. That submarket has under 7.5 million square feet of inventory, less than 4 percent of the metro’s overall 205 million square feet, and its vacancy sits at about 20 percent. That’s lower than the Greater Houston office vacancy of 27.5 percent.

Village Green will serve as the town center development of Bridgeland, an 11,500-acre community in the northwest suburb, and its first office building. That and a 100,000-square-foot H-E-B grocery store will anchor the town center, which could include restaurants, hotels, retail and entertainment. 

Mass timber has become increasingly popular as more developers take an environmentally focused approach. Mass timber construction involves the assembly of large pre-manufactured, multilayered solid wood panels, enhancing efficiency and sustainability.

One Bridgeland Green will be built with 1,700 cubic meters of spruce-pine-fir, showcasing dowel-laminated timber decking and cross-laminated timber shear walls. Complementing these materials are low-carbon concrete and zinc cladding, creating a building with renewable-energy and high-performance systems aimed at reducing overall carbon emissions.

Howard Hughes is pursuing LEED Gold and Fitwel green building certifications for One Bridgeland Green, with anticipation of 25 percent less annual energy usage and an 80 percent  less municipal water consumption.

“Sustainability, nature — these are all aspects of master-planned community development that we take very seriously, both in The Woodlands and in Bridgeland,” Howard Hughes’ Jim Carman told the outlet. “And so it was natural for us to look at mass timber for this very first office building in Bridgeland.”

The building’s eco-friendly features extend to a 10,000-gallon rainwater-harvesting cistern for recycling rainwater and HVAC condensation, along with native plants and water-efficient fixtures. The project will also incorporate electric vehicle charging stations and photovoltaic rooftop panels.

Construction of One Bridgeland Green is expected to be completed by summer 2025. The majority of the building has been pre-leased, with additional leases set to be announced this summer.

—Quinn Donoghue 

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