With little downtime in backfilling a vacancy, NewQuest Properties has signed Frost Bank and America's Best as tenants in the two-million-sf Brazos Town Center in Fort Bend County.
Frost Bank and America's Best have leased 4,147 sf and 2,988 sf, respectively, with NewQuest making room for the duo by splitting up recently vacated class A space. Located along Interstate 69 in Rosenberg, Brazos Town Center is the nation's 30th largest shopping center and NewQuest's biggest development to date. Openings are few and far between in the project, which is now 98% leased.
"When we do lose a tenant, we backfill it very quickly," says Bob Conwell, senior vice president of Houston-based NewQuest Properties. "It's an unbelievable lineup of national, regional and local credit tenants."
America's Best will immediately dig into its build-out, eyeing an opening by summer's end. Frost Bank will come on line in late 2020.
Conwell and Austen Baldridge, vice president of NewQuest, handle leasing for Brazos Town Center. Lilly Golden of Evergreen Commercial Realty represented America's Best. Scott Gardner of Streetwise Retail Advisors was Frost Bank's tenant representative.
Brazos Town Center is a 550-acre master-planned development located eight miles south of Sugar Land and 25 miles southwest of Houston. NewQuest broke ground 14 years ago on the two-phase project.
"Brazos Town Center has by far exceeded our expectations," Conwell says. "It's a top-performing location in Texas for many of our tenants."
Brazos Town Center is home to one of the largest Kroger stores in Texas. As a testament to the NewQuest development, the 123,000-sf grocery consistently is in the top 5% of the company's 209 locations in the Lone Star State.
Southwest Houston has been a hotbed of development activity for many years. As Sugar Land reaches a saturation point, residential development is spiking in the Rosenberg-Richmond market, where both cities have scored major commercial real estate wins in the past year. Soon to open in Rosenberg is Dollar Tree's one-million-sf distribution center. Less than four miles away in Richmond, Trammell Crow Co. will build an 850,000-sf e-commerce fulfillment center for Amazon.
Because of the lay of the land, Brazos Town Center's trade area, encompassing 272,000 people, extends nearly 40 miles to the west, roughly 25 miles to the south and at least 15 miles north. The NewQuest development represents 50% of the four million sf of retail space in Rosenberg proper.
"Brazos Town Center isn't built-out. It is continuing to evolve," Conwell says. "And, we will continue to reach out to prospective tenants, as they do to us, although we can't thread everyone into the project because of multiple exclusive uses."
NewQuest Properties, founded in 2001, is a privately owned, full-service commercial real estate firm specializing in development, land brokerage, leasing, tenant representation, investment sales and property management services. Headquartered in Houston, NewQuest owns a portfolio encompassing more than 60 retail and mixed-use projects valued at $2.2 billion and provides leasing services for more than 12 million square feet of commercial space in Texas, Louisiana and throughout the U.S.
