AQUILA Signs New Tenant at Austin Campus

Highland Tech Center. Image courtesy of AQUILA Commercial

The Austin Stone Community Church has signed a 37,362-square-foot lease at Highland Tech Center, a low-rise office property totaling 86,099 square feet in Austin. The church, which has six locations in the city, will use the space as their offices. AQUILA Commercial worked on behalf of the landlord, while Cushman & Wakefield represented the tenant.

AQUILA Commercial’s Managing Principal Chad Barrett negotiated the newly inked lease, while the Cushman & Wakefield team included Executive Directors Bob Wynn and Rick Whiteley and Director Lexie Hall.

READ ALSO: TikTok Inks Major Lease in Austin

AQUILA also led the transformation of the office complex into a Class A office building with Runa Workshop as the architect. Highland Tech Center at 6505 Airport Blvd. was originally completed in 1961 and finished redevelopment in January 2021. The single-story office property has ceilings reaching 18 feet and newly extended floor-to-ceiling windows.

Highland Tech Center is less than 2 miles from Interstate 35 and Highway 290 and about 5 miles north of downtown.

Austin’s office sector

Investors are bullish on Austin. Last year, approximately 9.5 million square feet of office assets traded totaling $1.9 billion, a significant improvement over 2020, when office sales volume in Greater Austin amounted to just $175 million, according to CommercialEdge data.

Austin closed 2021 with office vacancy at 17 percent, below the U.S. average (15.5 percent), but performing better than other markets in the state, such as Dallas (17.6 percent) and Houston (24.3 percent). Recently, TikTok Inc. inked a nearly 370,000-square-foot lease to occupy six floors at Cousins Properties’ 32-story office tower in Austin’s CBD, and a joint venture between Starwood Capital Group and Vanderbilt Partners also gained a multinational company as tenant at The Campus at Arboretum totaling 319,000 square feet of office space.