Wolff Cos. adds another tract to Beacon Hill mixed-use community in Waller County

 

By Florian Martin, Houston Business Journal

Wolff Cos. has added another tract to Beacon Hill, its master-planned, mixed-use community on U.S. Highway 290 just outside Waller.

The longtime Houston-based developer said it acquired 22.7 acres east of Beacon Hill directly from the McCaig Family Limited Partnership, growing the development to 587 acres.

“We’re developing Beacon Hill to 500-year floodplain standards,” said David Wolff, chairman and president of Wolff Cos. “And we’re being very conservative, making sure there’s plenty of detention, and detention requires land.”

Wolff Cos. purchased the original 521 acres for Beacon Hill in 2018 from the Schild family for between $15 million and $20 million.

In 2020, Wolff sold 270 acres of Beacon Hill to Houston-based Long Lake Ltd., which is developing a residential community with homes priced from the mid-$200,000s to the low $500,000s. So far, 60 of the planned 867 homes are completed, and the first residents moved in in August 2021, according to Wolff Cos.

The developer also added a 43-acre tract at the corner of Highway 290 and James R. Muse Parkway in January 2021 and sold just under 78 acres at Highway 290 and Beacon Hill Boulevard to Houston-based Hines a year later for industrial development.

Wolff Cos. has completed Beacon Hill Boulevard, which will connect Owen Road to the Highway 290 frontage road once that is built, and will start adding live oak trees to it in the next 45 days, Wolff said. The Texas Department of Transportation should start construction on a new exit ramp and service road in the next two months, he said.

The community is already connected to water and sewer service as well as electricity and natural gas. Development of the business park will depend on interest of prospective tenants or buyers, Wolff said.

He considers Beacon Hill the dominant commercial project on Highway 290.

“It takes frontage on the freeway. It takes access to the freeway. It takes having already done your infrastructure, your water, sewer and drainage,” he said. “And Beacon Hill has all three.”

He expects basic site work on the newly added tract, which is overgrown with brush, to begin in the next three to four months to “clean it up and make it a good deal more attractive” for potential retail development.

The 290 corridor outside the Grand Parkway is seeing increased commercial development as residential communities are pushing farther into Houston’s exurbs. Wolff even sees parallels to what ended up becoming the Energy Corridor on Interstate 10.

Other developments along the 290 corridor include a 4.3 million-square-foot Daikin manufacturing and distribution facility on Kermier Road.

Two other industrial projects — a 1.3 million-square-foot facility by Houston-based The Avera Cos. and a 500,000-square-foot distribution center by Houston-based Pagewood — are in the works, and more land is under contract with different developers.

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