Men’s Wearhouse Houston HQ Trades

Oak Park Office Center II. Image courtesy of Jud Haggard

Office Properties Income Trust continues its highly successful capital recycling program with the sale of Oak Park Office Center II, an approximately 206,400-square-foot office building in Houston. Office Properties relied on JLL Capital Markets to orchestrate the disposition of the asset, 49 percent of which Men’s Wearhouse occupies as its headquarters. The new owner is Garden Capital Partners, a Houston-based private investment group.

“As we’ve talked about for our disposition program, it’s really to kind of get out of markets where we don’t feel like we can grow NOI or those that are going to kind of have larger capital burden for various circumstances,” Chris Bilotto, president & chief operating officer of Office Properties Income Trust, said during the REIT’s first quarter earnings conference call on April 29, 2022.

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Myers, Crow & Saviers opened Oak Park II in 2006, having developed the two-story building on 18 acres at 6380 Rogerdale Road in the Westchase submarket. The property’s location near the intersection of Beltway 8 and Westpark Tollway and ease of access to Interstate 10 and Highway 59 place it within 30 miles of a variety of Houston’s leading destinations, including the central business district, George Bush Intercontinental Airport and Hobby Airport, the Texas Medical Center, the Energy Corridor and the Galleria.

Office Properties came into possession of Oak Park II by way of merger. In 2018, the REIT evolved as a new company as the result of Government Properties Income Trust’s merger with Select Income REIT, an entity of which, SIR REIT LLC, is identified in Harris County real estate records as the previous owner of the property. Men’s Wearhouse once occupied Oak Park II in its entirety but today, the men’s clothing company maintains its corporate base on the first floor of the office destination under a long-term lease agreement for approximately 100,000 square feet. As of January 2022, the property was just over 50 percent leased.

“As you look at kind of the weighted average lease term or the average building age and other things those are all kind of, I think, where we’re focused. And I think occupancy too, is something that most of what we’re selling, also has kind of some occupancy challenges as well,” Bilotto noted during the call.

The Houston office market continues to struggle. While the metro recorded two consecutive quarters of occupancy gains as of the close of the second quarter of 2022, absorption remained negative and the overall vacancy rate held in the 25 percent range, according to a report by JLL.

Money in, money out

Office Properties plans to cull as much as roughly $500 million in proceeds from the asset dispositions through its capital recycling program in 2022. The program has been in place for some time and funds from previous sales were utilized in combination with the company’s liquidity position for such purposes as paying off $300 million in notes, due in July 2022, a bit early in June 2022 without penalty. “And then it’s continued focus on our redevelopment projects and we do continue to look at acquisitions but really the focus is more on the redevelopment,” Bilotto said.

JLL Capital Markets’ Kevin McConn, Marty Hogan and Jack Moody represented Office Properties in the sale transaction.