Aerial photography had revealed a large tract of wooded land 20 miles (32 km) north of downtown Houston, near Interstate 45, not far from George Bush Intercontinental Airport. The Woodlands, a nationally known master-planned community and census-designated place, also lay close to the site. The unidentified Fortune 500 company was very interested in this sizable, rare jewel of vacant, wooded land close to the nation’s energy capital.
The owner of the tract, CDC Houston, had heard it all before. Over the years, the developer had fielded proposals for a NASCAR racetrack and ideas from dozens of other would-be buyers, says Keith Simon, executive vice president and director of development for CDC Houston. But the offers had always been weak.
This time, however, the buyer turned out to be a bona-fide corporate user—ExxonMobil, which today is putting the finishing touches on a 20-building, 3 million-square-foot (279,000 sq m), 385-acre (156 ha) corporate campus where 10,000 employees will work.