2/25/23 - Weekend Listening from Intercontinental Exchange
Our guest this week: David O'Reilly, CEO of Howard Hughes Corporation NYSE: HHC)
What can we learn about real estate from the migratory patterns of North American birds?
Houston, Texas holds an auspicious spot on what’s known as the Central Flyway, the 14,000 kilometer airborne corridor from the Canadian Arctic to the southern tip of Argentina. Every year, over 380 species of birds, from the Bobollnk to the Whooping Crane, swoop through the Lone Star State on their way to warmer climes, many of them settling in for an extended stay.
The same is true for American corporations. They’re coming in big numbers, but not leaving. A study last year the The Hoover Institution, Stanford University showed that, from 2018 to 2021, at least 132 companies moved from California to Texas. Across industries, McKesson (NYSE: MCK), Chevron (NYSE: CVX), Oracle (NYSE: ORCL) and Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPE) are among the bigger West Coast names to nest in new headquarters.
Many of the new migrants arrive at The Woodlands, the 28,500-acre master planned community of The Howard Hughes Corporation (NYSE: HHC). Located 28 miles north of Houston, with its 151 parks, 220 miles of hiking and bike trails, and roughly 115,000 residents, it’s no wonder that 33 companies have announced relocations or expansions there since 2020.
One of them is Alight Solutions, a payroll, benefits, and HR partner of some of the world’s biggest companies The company recently moved into 184,000 square feet of office space in The Woodlands.
“I delivered a build-to-suit building that met their full specs in 11 months,” David O'Reilly, the CEO of Howard Hughes Corporation, told me on this week’s episode of Inside the ICE House. “I gave their employees short commutes, gave them great schools to go to, gave them the houses of worship to enjoy their religion. And they couldn't have gotten that done in any major city.”
Similar migrations are happening at Howard Hughes master planned communities in Arizona, Nevada, and Hawaii. We cover all of the geographies in our fascinating conversation on real estate development with David at the link below.
The view from The Woodlands:
Howard Hughes Corp. CEO David O’Reilly on Master Planned Communities David O’Reilly, CEO of the Howard Hughes Corporation (NYSE: HHC), lives and works in The Woodlands, a LEED-certified master planned community that’s part of his company’s portfolio of 118,000 acres of real estate. O’Reilly is a familiar face around Wall Street thanks to projects like the Tin Building and partnerships with anchor tenants like Chef Jean-Georges, which is giving the seaport a new lease on life. David stopped by the NYSE to share Howard Hughes’s decades-long vision for building on the past and present to create the innovative communities of the future.
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