Morgan has eight multifamily projects under construction in Houston, Austin, Miami, Fort Lauderdale and Orange County, president Alan Patton told us yesterday at ULI’s Spring Meeting. They’re primarily urban mid-rise product—one is Morgan’s first high-rise and one is a garden suburban project. In Houston, Alan is particularly excited about the city’s first vertical mixed-use apartment built over a Whole Foods. (Organic kumquats can do that to a fella.) Alan says ULI’s session on what Millennials want mentioned Whole Foods a surprising amount, a great sign for this project. It'll be the 11th Whole Foods in the Houston metro, and Alan says it’s filling a grocery gap in Midtown.
Here’s Ziegler Cooper’s preliminary rendering of the 260-unit community, breaking ground in Q1. The property is at Smith and Elgin, two major arteries that will provide lots of potential shoppers. It’s a 40k SF property, which is very difficult to attain in an urban environment with room for parking. Alan tells us Morgan had to purchase 1.5 blocks and get support from the city and Midtown TIRZ to close the street in between to get a large enough tract. The other challenge was the nature of vertical mixed-use; Alan says it took over a year to get the deal done.
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