E-commerce growth is sparking some changes in Houston's industrial real estate market

Making moves

Houston's industrial development has grown, and a contributing factor is the rise of e-commerce activity. Getty Images

With retail e-commerce sales in the U.S. projected to soar from $501 billion in 2018 to $740 billion in 2023, it's no wonder that Houston's industrial market is expanding faster than Santa's bag of toys.

E-commerce is one of the main drivers of an upturn in industrial construction in the Houston area. Estimates from four commercial real estate services companies show that during the third quarter, anywhere from 13.3 million square feet to 18.5 million square feet of industrial space was under construction in the region. That volume is up considerably from the second quarter of 2019 and from the same period in 2018.

Around the country, the "need for speed and choice" to appease shoppers is driving a lot of the increased demand for industrial space, Hamid Moghadam, chairman and CEO of industrial REIT Prologis, recently told Wall Street analysts. That, he said, is because "the more choices you want and the quicker you want them, the more inventory you need to position near the customers."

Rob Stillwell, executive managing director in the Houston office of commercial real estate services company Newmark Knight Frank, says many of the local industrial facilities geared toward e-commerce are being built in and around pockets of residential growth. This includes a swath from I-10 West in Katy to I-45 North toward The Woodlands. Among the facilities popping up in that corridor are massive projects for Amazon, FedEx, and UPS, according to Stilwell.

"E-commerce is likely a contributing factor to many distribution operations in Houston, but not the sole reason for the strong demand seen in the market," Stilwell says. Many new or expanding industrial tenants in the market do have an e-commerce component, he adds, yet won't be leasing space just for e-commerce purposes.

In Houston, e-commerce-fueled construction of industrial space is especially prevalent near George Bush Intercontinental Airport, according to commercial real estate services company Cushman & Wakefield. However, Houston's northwest submarket is seeing the most industrial construction in the area, with 5.5 million square feet underway in the third quarter.

Commercial real estate services company JLL pegs the southeast submarket as the hottest, with its third-quarter report showing 3.5 million square feet of new industrial projects underway there.

Aside from e-commerce, the Port of Houston and the petrochemical sector are propelling industrial construction in the area, Cushman & Wakefield says.

Around the Houston area, nine of the 89 industrial spaces under construction in the third quarter exceeded 500,000 square feet, Cushman & Wakefield says. Several of those lack a specific e-commerce element. This includes a 1 million-million-square-foot manufacturing facility for Coca-Cola, a more than 770,000-square-foot distribution center for Home Depot, and a nearly 550,000-square-foot distribution center for Costco.

Cushman & Wakefield warns that Houston's industrial market could suffer from an oversupply of space, as well as from a drop in shipping activity prompted by ongoing trade disputes and a decline in oil prices. Although industrial vacancy is expected to rise slightly through 2021, the company says, "demand continues for more modern, state-of-the-art facilities and market fundamentals remain healthy."

During the third quarter, only one-fourth of the space under construction in the Houston area was preleased, according to commercial real estate services company Colliers International. However, another 10 percent to 25 percent of that inventory should be preleased before the facilities are completed, the company says.

The area's industrial vacancy rate rose to 7.7 percent in the third quarter as new projects came online, Cushman & Wakefield says. Once more supply arrives, the vacancy rate is expected to tick up.

"Low interest rates and robust investor demand are expected to continue generating strong interest for Houston industrial assets. On the fundamentals side, the market is closely watching new inventory additions," JLL says.

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UH Health names leader of new digital health institute

new exec

Recently launched UH Health has named the first-ever executive director of its new Institute for Digital Healthcare Transformation at the University of Houston.

Beto López has been tapped to lead the new initiative that aims to help develop and commercialize health care technologies centered around university research.

Launched in August, the Institute for Digital Healthcare Transformation leans on experts from UH’s engineering, medicine, business, law and other departments and will connect with industry partners. It will initially focus on mobile health applications, sensors, wearables and artificial intelligence, according to UH.

“Most digital health initiatives and commercialization efforts start with the technology and hope adoption follows. But the translation gap isn't a science problem — it’s a scaffolding problem between researchers, the community and the market,” López said in a news release. “I've spent the past 10 years building that scaffolding in places that weren’t wired for it, and I'm looking forward to building it here at UH to help ensure new health care technologies reach the people and communities that can benefit from them most.”

López previously spent 10 years at San Francisco-based innovation consultancy company IDEO, where he led over 100 projects for Fortune 500 companies and public agencies. He co-founded and served as managing director of the Design Institute for Health at UT Austin’s Dell Medical School; and also co-founded a social venture studio/venture capital fund focused on health care innovation. He worked alongside Houston’s Legacy Community Health during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Beto understands that breakthrough technology alone doesn't transform health care — it has to be designed around the needs of patients, providers and communities and have a clear path into practice,” Jonathan McCullers, vice president for health affairs at UH, added in the news release. “His experience spanning academic health care and venture capital equips him to bring together researchers, health care organizations, entrepreneurs and investors. This makes him uniquely suited to lead this institute and help turn the university's innovation into solutions that improve people's lives.”

The University of Houston launched UH Health, its new cross-disciplinary academic venture, in July. It aims to bring together the university's health-related education, research and community impact under one umbrella.

ExxonMobil gets approval for $5B Texas Gulf Coast carbon capture project

CCS Expansion

Spring-based ExxonMobil has won approval from the Texas Railroad Commission for a $5 billion carbon capture and storage project in East Texas.

Dominic Genetti, senior vice president of CCS at ExxonMobil, told The Financial Times, which broke the news, that the Railroad Commission’s action is a “major milestone” that lets the company keep expanding along the Gulf Coast. In a 2-1 vote, commissioners authorized a carbon sequestration permit for the project.

“The Railroad Commission clearly recognizes the important role carbon capture and storage can play in meeting growing global demand for lower-carbon products while supporting new jobs and economic growth,” Genetti said.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) approved ExxonMobil’s Rose CCS project last year.

The project will enable the company to inject about 53 metric tons of industrial customers’ carbon emissions into three underground wells it drilled in the Beaumont-Port Arthur area. Over a 13-year period, ExxonMobil plans to inject about 4 million metric tons per year into the Fleming and Upper Frio rock formations, according to Carbon Herald.

ExxonMobil says it owns the world’s first and largest CCS system, comprising 1,300 miles of CO2 pipeline and secure storage sites. Seventy percent of the pipelines are along the Gulf Coast.

The company ramped up its CCS business in 2023 with the $4.9 billion purchase of Denbury, which owned about 1,000 miles of CO2 pipelines.

“Our expertise, combined with Denbury’s talent and CO2 pipeline network, expands our low-carbon leadership and best positions us to meet the decarbonization needs of industrial customers while also reducing emissions in our own operations,” ExxonMobil Chairman and CEO Darren Woods said when the deal closed.

In January, Genetti wrote in a post on ExxonMobil’s website that the company is committed to CCS “for the long haul.”

“CCS is not new technology, but it’s flown relatively under the radar compared with the attention that production of hydrocarbons commands,” he wrote. “Now, as the world becomes more aware of the need to reduce emissions, CCS finally has a brighter spotlight and a broader runway to scale up.”

The company also announced this week that it has begun CCS operations at a direct reduced iron facility in Convent, Louisiana. The project will capture, transport and store up to 800,000 metric tons of CO2 per year, according to the company.

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This article first appeared on EnergyCapitalHTX.com.

Houston researchers develop breakthrough device that could bypass spinal injuries

breakthrough research

Scientists at Houston Methodist have announced a significant leap forward for spinal cord injury recovery.

The researchers have developed a device that essentially bypasses spinal injuries, allowing signals from previously “lost” functions to reach the brain, a new study published in Nature Communications shows.

“Most current technologies try to improve whatever function remains after a spinal cord injury,” Dr. Damiano Barone, assistant professor of neurosurgery in the Department of Neurosurgery at Houston Methodist and co-lead on the study, said in a news release. “Our goal is different. Rather than fixing the injury itself, we want to bypass it completely and create an alternative route for signals to travel.”

The study involved a single ultrathin circumferential electrode array made to conform around the spinal cord without penetrating neural tissue, which was implanted into rodent and pig models with spinal injuries. The electrode array was able to interpret motor, sensory and autonomic signals around the injury. Think of it as a set of detours that restore road access to isolated towns after a disaster destroys the highway instead of just rebuilding the highway.

Over the course of three days, the arrays detected signals of intended movement from low-frequency spinal oscillations with more than 94 percent accuracy. This worked across species and was replicated in feasibility studies on human cadavers.

This research could serve as a new foundation for neuroprosthetic implants that could restore connectivity to the 2.5 million people worldwide suffering from spinal injuries that result in loss of ability. Future development could result in everything from restored organ function to mobility, according to Houston Methodist.

George Malliaras, the Prince Professor of Technology in the Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge, who co-led the study, sees it as a fundamental restructuring of the science of spinal trauma.

“This could represent a paradigm change in how we think about spinal cord injuries,” Malliaras said. “Instead of starting from the idea that what is lost is gone forever, this approach asks whether we can restore function by carrying the signal around the injury.”

Further work involving laboratory models will need to be completed before launching human trials.

Grants from the National Institutes of Health, Houston Methodist Katz Investigator Award, Helaers Research Award and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council helped support the study. Other collaborators on the study include Salim Hadwe, Ruben Serrano, George Psaltakis, Margaux Forner, Chaeyeon Lee, Sydney Swedick, Moleca Ghnnam, Tawfique Hasan and Alejandro Carnicer-Lombarte from the University of Cambridge; and Anton Banta and Xueer Zhang from Houston Methodist.

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