Noble Corp. will leave Sugar Land for west Houston

 

Noble Corporation PLC (NYSE: NE) is leaving Sugar Land after 20 years and moving its headquarters to west Houston.

The offshore drilling company has signed a 110,250-square-foot lease at 2101 CityWest Blvd. The six-floor, 305,828-square-foot building is Building 1 in the 39-acre CityWestPlace office campus off Beltway 8 and just north of Westheimer Road in the Westchase District.

Mark O’Donnell, Jim Bell and Jennifer Meehan with Savills represented Noble in lease negotiations with the landlord, Houston-based Parkway. Savills Corporate Managing Director Ed Bowerman will handle design and construction consulting services for Noble’s new space.

Noble will move from its Sugar Land offices at 13135 Dairy Ashford Road and training center in the Sugar Land Business Park at 12550 Reed Road.

Noble’s lease at those properties is set to expire, according to Savills, adding that the company was looking for a new, modernized workplace to allow for a seamless integration with Maersk Drilling, which Noble acquired in 2022.

The new space has a flexible design allowing the company to potentially double its office workforce of about 400 without the need to lease additional space, Savills said in a press release, adding that Noble has “significant expansion plans.”

Noble did not respond to a request for comment.

In its new CityWestPlace space, Noble will occupy the 50,000-square-foot sixth floor plus about 60,000 square feet on the first and second floors for its Noble Advances training center and other business functions, Savills said. Currently, Noble’s training center is a mile up the road from its Sugar Land offices.

The quoted triple net rent for available space at CityWestPlace 1 is $32 per square foot, but Savills said it was able to secure a substantial concession package as well as building signage rights.

Savills created a location analysis that identified areas of Greater Houston that fit Noble’s requirements, the brokerage said. The team evaluated multiple submarkets and ultimately focused on Westchase and west Houston because of its number of high-quality, heavily amenitized buildings.

The CityWestPlace campus also will provide beneficial commute and transportation options and the potential for future growth, Savills said. Parkway acquired CityWestPlace, along with the Post Oak Central office campus, last fall.

West Houston, in particular Westchase and the Energy Corridor, continues to attract companies, many of which are looking for modern buildings with high-quality amenities that are closer to where most of their employees live.

CityWestPlace also recently gained Bechtel Corp., which celebrated the grand opening of its new offices on March 28 after signing a 285,251-square-foot lease across two of the campus’s buildings in 2022.

Sugar Land’s headquarters retention efforts
Meanwhile, Noble’s move is another headquarters loss for Sugar Land, which also has to bid farewell to Irving, Texas-based engineering and construction company Fluor Corp. (NYSE: FLR) when it leaves its 53-acre campus for the Eldridge office campus in the Energy Corridor this year.

That’s despite an incentives program for existing headquarters the city of Sugar Land launched in November 2022. The program offers a company $6,000 per job kept in the city if it renews its existing lease for five to 10 years within the city limits and retains at least 50 primary jobs on an annual average. The program also requires a minimum of $1 million capital investment for office build-out or improvements.

The city has been in talks with Noble about its planned exit for about the past two years, said Alba Penate-Johnson, assistant director of economic development at the city of Sugar Land. But in the end, there wasn’t much the city could do to keep the company.

“We’re really, honestly, very sorry to see them go,” she said. “But it was a business decision from what we have been able to gather. And so, understandably, within this office market, it’s just become more and more of a challenge.”

The city is in constant communication with the brokers for the properties Noble is leaving to hopefully find a new tenant — or tenants — for the space soon, Penate-Johnsons said.

In another instance, Sugar Land’s retention program worked. Last November, SouthWest Water Co. signed a 15-year lease for Minute Maid’s former space in Sugar Land Town Square. The company in early January moved from its former building in the Sugar Land Business Park, at 12535 Reed Road.

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