Shell Oil to sell 1935 Bellaire Technology Site

Shell Oil Co.'s decision to shutter its 70-year-old Bellaire Technology Center and shift the jobs to an expanded campus in West Houston will open up a prime piece of Inner-Loop real estate.
The Bellaire Technology Center land, which is made up of three individual parcels located at 3737 Bellaire Blvd. between Stella Link and Buffalo Speedway, will be marketed for redevelopment once Shell demolishes the structures on the site and prepares it for sale, which could be as late as 2012.
Shell will relocate 480 Bellaire employees to its Westhollow Technology Center near Westheimer and State Highway 6 over the next two years, with the final consolidation scheduled for completion by 2011. Another 170 Bellaire employees will move to the company's Woodcreek site north of Interstate 10 near Beltway 8.
Shell owns 5.5 acres of the 9.7-acre Bellaire site, and leases the rest from the Perrin White family. White, a Houston real estate investor, declined to comment on the land.
Shell started operating at the site in the late 1930s, and over the years constructed eight buildings with a total of 315,000 square feet of space.
Even with two separate owners, the three parcels are expected to be jointly marketed for redevelopment once the land is cleared, according to Jeri Ballard, director of corporate real estate for Shell.
The campus is across the street from a residential neighborhood, and is not far from the Texas Medical Center. Ballard does not know what the cleared land might be worth.
"The value will be totally driven by the use," she says.
And the future use will be dictated by the City of Southside Place, which, unlike Houston, has zoning regulations.
City leaders will have a keen interest in future development as they seek to regain economic losses from Shell's departure. The municipality will experience a dip in property tax revenue after the relocation, and businesses will no longer have access to 650 Shell employees who shop and eat in the area.
"I think commercial (development) is certainly what Southside Place wants there," Ballard says.
David Moss, city manager of Southside Place, agrees, saying that once Shell moves out, "property taxes will be the key issue."
He says the campus and surrounding area has been designated for a variety of uses, including office and professional, research and development, special services and medium-density residential.
The city has not yet talked in depth with Shell about the transition, but, Moss says, "we would like to do that. We have had a great relationship with them over the years."
Out west
Shell's 480 Bellaire employees will join the existing 1,300 employees at the Westhollow Technology Center, which will be renamed Shell Technology Center-Americas.
The project will move the operations of Shell Exploration and Production Technology from Bellaire to Westhollow, which opened in 1975.
Shell said in 2006 that it planned to close the Bellaire facility, but the move to Westhollow was just announced last week.
The project will bring together the upstream exploration and production research of the Bellaire Technology Center with the downstream research -- refining, manufacturing, fuel blending -- done at Westhollow.
Westhollow is located on 200 acres with 43 buildings encompassing more than 1 million square feet of laboratory and office space.
The modernization project will add 150,000 square feet of new space spread out among a laboratory building, a multipurpose facility and a shipping and receiving building. for more information see www.houstonrealtyadavisors.com or www.houstonrealtyadvisor.net