Bay Area Houston Business is booming everywhere you look
By Mary Alys Cherry
Recession? Looking around Bay Area Houston, one would never know there had even been an economic downturn. Business is actually booming.
New businesses are opening faster than you can keep up with them, and many major players are announcing multi-million-dollar expansions – especially in Pasadena, League City and La Porte. Projects that will results in more and more jobs.
Looking over a list of new business development by Barbara Cutsinger, real estate marketing manager for Bay Area Houston Economic Partnership, is almost breath taking.
Frontier Logistics, for example, is planning a new 600,000 square foot facility to be built in a new master-planned industrial distribution complex in Pasadena on Highway 225 at Beltway 8 with the developer Avera breaking ground on the $50-$70 million project any day and completion expected in the fall of 2014. Red Ball Oxygen, meanwhile, has just bought five acres for a new company location nearby.
Kaneka expanding
Over in the Bayport Industrial District, Kaneka North American plans a $50 million expansion while developers of Global ICS industrial park there have a plan for 20.7 acres that would include a trans-loading terminal, blending and packaging facility and tank storage with a pipeline connection to nearby docks.
Lubline expects of open a new manufacturing facility on 30 acres on Red Bluff, while WIKA, a German world market leader in industrial measuring instruments, has purchased 13 acres at Beltway 8 and Highway 225 where it will build a two-story, 88,000 square foot hub; and Plant Maintenance Services bought 18 acres on Genoa Red Bluff to build an 80,000 square foot office and manufacturing facility, bringing 150 new jobs to the area.
$14 million warehouse
In nearby Seabrook, Gulf Winds International is building a 180,000 square foot warehouse between Highway 146 and Old 146 at a cost of $14 million.
Up in La Porte, industrial gas producer Linde North America is busy with a $200 million expansion of its operations that will result in 50 jobs, while Noltex recently broke ground for a $180 million expansion project in the Battleground Industrial District that will add 25 new full-time jobs.
League City will be growing as the developers of the Lawrence Business Park plan five more office or warehouse buildings on build-ready sites on Lawrence Road and with the news All-Tube Fittings has purchased a 12,000 square foot design-build facility in Brittany Business Park on Butler Road.
And, that’s not all, by any means.
New medical facilities
Over in Webster Kelsey-Seybold is building a new 55,000 square foot medical office building on South Ponds Dive at Baybrook Passage, planning to consolidate its other two locations in the immediate area. The new facility, expected to open next summer, will house 25 physicians with plans to possibly expand to 37.
Another medical facility is in the works on a 10-acre site on the southeast corner of Highway 3 and Medical Center Boulevard, purchased by Medistar and Dallas-based Cobalt to build a 45-bed hospital and medical office building.
In Friendswood, plans are moving forward for Clearwood Business Park that will include two 6,000 square foot office warehouses for lease or sale that could be used as office suites or condos on 4.25 acres on FM 2351.
