Aetna Takes 45,000 sq ft in Houston/Sugarland Area

Aetna Inc. will be the first tenant in a speculative Sugar Land office building that has stood vacant for more than a year.

Houston Business Journal - by Jennifer Dawson

The health care insurer will occupy two floors in Three Sugar Creek Center, a 154,000-square-foot Class A building that was completed in 2007 by Harry Green Interests Inc. Aetna employees will move into the six-story office building at Three Sugar Creek Boulevard by April.
Aetna was shopping for a new home because it currently subleases space in Sugar Land from Fluor Corp., and the Fortune 500 engineering company now needs the square footage. Aetna currently occupies about 45,000 square feet in Fluor’s building at U.S. Highway 59 and State Highway 6.
Joe Esch, executive director of business and intergovernmental relations for the City of Sugar Land, says the deal shows that the city needs speculative office space on hand when a leasing opportunity arises. He believes that the availability of the Three Sugar Creek Center building kept Aetna from moving out of Sugar Land.
“It proves that when companies start looking for space, they look for existing buildings,” Esch says.
Bruce Rutherford of Jones Lang LaSalle Inc., who represented Aetna in lease negotiations, says the firm wanted to stay in the Sugar Land area in an effort to retain the current employees, as well as attract future workers.
Aetna could have stayed at the Fluor site for three more years, Rutherford says, but decided to go ahead and relocate now. Fluor, which had more than 4,200 local employees as of late August, needs the extra space to accommodate its growing work force.
Jeff Bernhard, a market head for Aetna in Houston, says several factors were involved in the insurance company’s decision not to exercise options to extend the expired lease with Fluor. Aetna wants to be in a building with better parking, have its own cafeteria and have the ability to build technology into the space, he says.
Employees are on board with the new space, Bernhard says, because it comes with covered garage parking that’s connected to the building. As it stands now, he says, many employees have to walk quite a distance in the elements to get inside the Fluor office.
“It was not convenient for employees,” Bernhard says.
ELBOW ROOM
Aetna signed a lease in December for roughly 52,000 square feet of space in the new location, which will give employees a little bit more elbow room. Approximately 360 Aetna employees will report to the new office, though some work from home and on the road.
The Sugar Land office, which is Aetna’s headquarters for Texas and the surrounding states, will also get a technology upgrade as part of the move.
“There’s going to be a greater use of technology in this office than in prior offices,” Rutherford says. “This will become the poster child for advanced technology in Aetna’s offices.”For more information see: www.houstonrealtyadvisors,com or www.houstonrealtyadvisors.net