Marissa Luck | Costar News
April 8, 2021
M-K-T Continues To Fill Out As More Tenants Move Into Mixed-Use Campus
An adaptive reuse project in Houston's The Heights has gradually come to life over the last several months as dozens of boutique shops, trendy restaurants, and new office tenants begin to move into the hip mixed-use, mostly single-story campus.
M-K-T developers recently scored new leases, and they're expecting to see a string of retail tenant move-ins this spring, developers Radom Capital and Triten Real Estate said. Although construction wrapped up more than six months ago, the project never had a formal grand opening because of the pandemic and instead, tenants have gradually been trickling in.
Village Medical, a primary healthcare provider, recently signed a lease for 7,430 square feet within Building 5 of M-K-T, according to the tenant's brokerage, JLL. The lease comes a few months after residential real estate firm Compass signed a lease for 6,095 square feet of office space. Located just north of Interstate 10 at the northeast corner of Shepherd Drive and Sixth Street, the project is named after the adjacent trail, the MKT/SP Rails-to-Trails.
Developers Triten Real Estate Partners and Radom Capital substantially completed construction on the trendy adaptive reuse project in August after about a year of construction. Backed by Long Wharf Capital and designed by Michael Hsu's Office of Architecture, M-K-T developers turned five vintage industrial buildings into a 200,000-square-foot mixed-use project with 100,000 square feet of office space overlooking the popular trail. Overall, the campus is about 70% leased, according to Triten Real Estate.
Walking through the renovated campus, it is almost hard to imagine its industrial roots. Walls and roofs were removed from a former warehouse to create an open-air plaza in front of future restaurant space. Midcentury modern globe lights hang in front of glass-and-wood facades. A piece of a retro U.S. Army building called a Quonset hut was added to the tops of the retail spaces, creating a unique swoop along the roofline of the previously flat single-story structures. The insides of the swoops are covered in colorful murals.
“A lot of what we were pushing for is just creating that additional visibility off of Shepherd Drive so that when you drive by at night or day, you’re like, ‘Whoa, I got to come see this,’” said Steve Radom, managing principal of Radom Capital, in a December interview with CoStar News.
New bridges and walkways connect the campus to the adjacent hike-and-bike trail, and dozens of pedestrians wander in to look at the new restaurants, retailers and yoga studio. A new 40-foot, open-air, asymmetrical roof with custom lighting connects two buildings and calls attention to the spaces along the trail. Contractors also cleared out significant overgrowth along the trail, added native plants to the landscaping and created an open-air space for farmers markets and events.
“If you're trying to target cool young people, it’s a pretty cool spot,” Radom said.
Access to the outdoors and walkability to nearby restaurants were key in several office tenants' decisions to lease space.
“As a tech company with a diverse employee population, the biggest driver for us was amenities outside of a traditional office suite, which is what we have in our current location. The most important [thing] to our team was proximity to outdoor space plus walkable to restaurants,” said Dania Buchanan, a spokeswoman for SmartVault, in an email to CoStar News after the company inked an 8,500-square-foot lease at M-K-T in July.
Another office tenant, Brian Miller of Miller Grossbard Advisors, said he can take clients to walk 10 minutes along the trail to a host of nearby restaurants. "The client was like, 'That was awesome.'" Miller said in an interview. Miller's accounting firm leases about 14,000 square feet in the project, according to CoStar data.
But soon Miller won’t have to walk far to eat as the project is getting several new restaurants including an ice house concept called Highline Park, a Euro-Indian restaurant by the owners of Oporto called De Gama Canteen, healthy food concept Mendicino Farms, frozen custard shop Honey Sweet Creams, Tex-Mex comfort restaurant Homstead Kitchen &Bar, Blue Sushi Sake Grill, Rakkan Ramen, Tight Squeeze Juice Bar and others, according to M-K-T’s website. Trendy salad bar concept Sweetgreen has signs up advertising a future space in the complex.
The influx of restaurants will be joined by a handful of local and national clothing, apparel and beauty brands like Burdlife jewelry and June & Co., plus several wellness and health brands such as Pedego Electric Bikes and Mayweather Boxing & Fitness.
M-K-T developers managed to score several of those leases despite the uncertainty of the pandemic putting retail leasing on pause for much of last year. Triten Real Estate and Radom Capital created almost turnkey retail spaces, or “vanilla box” spaces, that could be quickly customized for tenants and equipped with HVAC and lighting, Radom said. That means a retailer could open in a new space within about a month rather than waiting nine to 12 months if they were handling all of their own tenant improvements, Radom added.
The vanilla box spaces take the burden off of smaller local companies to have to pay for and coordinate with contractors to build out space. They also gave the landlords more flexibility in leasing terms, added Scott Arnoldy, founder of Triten Real Estate, in a December interview.
“Through COVID, nobody wanted to make a long-term decision, right? So if you were providing them an option where they could make a quick decision and it allowed us because we’re vanilla box-ing it, we can provide more flexibility in terms. And so very quickly a whole local lineup committed,” Arnoldy said.
This spring, M-K-T’s list of open on-site retailers will be growing with the openings of SMYL Dentistry, women's clothing store Chloe Dao, Rakkan Ramen and De Gama Canteen in the coming month, said a spokeswoman from Triten Real Estate. Focus Refined Eye Care, DYI and Pedago Electric Bikes also recently opened. Village Medical is expected to move in this fall in what would be its 10th location in Houston, according to the spokeswoman.
On the office side, Compass is expected to move in this fall, adding to existing office tenants in the project including SmartVault, which has moved into the space but continues to work from home, XCL Resources, Miller Grossbard, Decode and Aflac, which has moved in, according to the spokeswoman.
The office portion of the project is 70% leased with 24,000 square feet remaining in Building 5 and 7,000 square feet remaining in Building 3, according to Triten Real Estate.
Eventually, M-K-T could have up to 60 tenants including office, retail and healthcare providers, Arnoldy said. He’s hopeful the project’s location near a trail, the 4 acres of green space and hip neighborhood will help to lease up the remaining space.
“These [types of spaces] don't just show up in the middle of The Heights: five buildings on 12 acres on a hike-and-bike trail. It's a hard unicorn to find,” Arnoldy said.
For the Record
JLL’s Walker Pennington, Chris Wadley and Bryant Lach represented Village Medical in its lease. Joshua Meltzer and Jennifer Meehan of Savills represented Compass. Bubba Harkins, Russell Hodges and Jenny Mueller, formerly with JLL and now with CBRE, are handling leasing for M-K-T developers.
An adaptive reuse project in Houston's The Heights has gradually come to life over the last several months as dozens of boutique shops, trendy restaurants and new office tenants begin to move into the hip mixed-use, mostly single-story campus.
M-K-T developers recently scored new leases, and they're expecting to see a string of retail tenant move-ins this spring, developers Radom Capital and Triten Real Estate said. Although construction wrapped up more than six months ago, the project never had a formal grand opening because of the pandemic and instead tenants have gradually been trickling in.
Village Medical, a primary healthcare provider, recently signed a lease for 7,430 square feet within Building 5 of M-K-T, according to the tenant's brokerage, JLL. The lease comes a few months after residential real estate firm Compass signed a lease for 6,095 square feet of office space. Located just north of Interstate 10 at the northeast corner of Shepherd Drive and Sixth Street, the project is named after the adjacent trail, the MKT/SP Rails-to-Trails.
Developers Triten Real Estate Partners and Radom Capital substantially completed construction on the trendy adaptive reuse project in August after about a year of construction. Backed by Long Wharf Capital and designed by Michael Hsu's Office of Architecture, M-K-T developers turned five vintage industrial buildings into a 200,000-square-foot mixed-use project with 100,000 square feet of office space overlooking the popular trail. Overall, the campus is about 70% leased, according to Triten Real Estate.