Tenant Takes The Wheel In Steering Design Of Houston's Largest Forthcoming Office Building

It is useless to build an office in Houston if it isn’t exactly where and what a tenant wants it to be, according to the developer of the city’s largest office building under construction.

That's the philosophy that has been adopted by Midway, which is building CityCentre Six, a 308K SF office building that is 66% preleased by Dow Chemical Co. Making up almost half of the city’s 710K SF of office product under construction, the building is set to be delivered in the first quarter of 2026.

The office design and development of CityCentre Six, like any office being built today, are being largely driven by tenant desires, Midway Executive Vice President Robert Sigler said at Bisnow’s Houston Construction and Development Transformations event at The Westin Houston, Memorial City last week. 

“The tenant for the high-rise really controls the deal,” Sigler said. “They’re bringing the capital to the project, they’re bringing the credit that allows us to capitalize the job and get it going. Whatever they demand, we try to meet, or we really don’t have a project.” 

Sigler said anchor tenant Dow loved the site, located within Midway’s CityCentre mixed-use development in West Houston. The Energy Corridor submarket has been a hot spot for office leasing in recent years, with a direct vacancy rate of 17.8%, much lower than Houston’s average 23.9%, according to JLL.

Like most tenants flocking to newer office buildings, Dow is interested in wellness, technology and efficiency in the workplace design, Sigler said. Price point is another important factor, he said, but Dow also had some other requests.

“They demanded retail,” Sigler said.

CityCentre Six’s design includes 12K SF of retail and dining on the ground floor.

It also demanded the building include some components produced by the company itself, he said.

“It kind of threw a wrench into some things of how we can incorporate their products, but we tended to work through that,” Sigler said.

Midway gained experience in meeting tenant needs when designing the first offices in East River. The CEO of the first office tenant in East River rode his bike to work and requested showers and locker rooms on his floor. 

Midway thought that was a great idea and installed showers and lockers on every floor in the building, which is along the Buffalo Bayou hike-and-bike trail, Sigler said.

“[Tenants] do have an impact,” he said. “They do have significant influence on both the architecture of the building, how it’s going to operate and the build’s efficiency.”