Up Close with Jeremy Garner
Trammell Crow principal Jeremy Garner is developing the largest industrial spec project under construction now in Houston, Fallbrook Pines. It’s a plum job, but Jeremy’s had a unique path to it.
Growing up in Houston, Jeremy was fascinated by the ‘80s development explosion (he even had a Houston skyline painted in his childhood bedroom), and at one point wanted to be an architect. But first he meandered through a few careers. After UT, the car buff went into automotives and got his dream job at Ford. But he didn’t want to live in Detroit his whole life, so he enrolled in the MBA program at Rice to figure out what to do next. He was interning at Dynegy in ’03 when energy trading crumbled and everyone sitting around him was laid off. He worked a stint at HP but didn’t love it, so he stopped and thought about what he was really passionate about.
That brought Jeremy to real estate, and his buddy Drew Morris (Savills Studley senior managing director) introduced him to developers. Trammell Crow senior managing director Jim Casey gave him a shot leasing TCC’s developments in ’04 and when it joined CBRE, he became a developer exclusively. His favorite deal was assembling land at Fallbrook Pines with CBRE’s Joseph Smith a year and a half ago. Every developer in town was looking for a site in Northwest Houston, and few were available. Above, Jeremy and son Turner at Lakeview Business Park; they go there and dig up old golf balls, as it was formerly the site of Willowisp Country Club.
The duo assembled four tracts off-market amid difficulties like dealing with the horse track that said it wasn’t a seller, and another seller who refused to close on 20 of her acres—which happened at the same time Jeremy’s daughter was being born. (He negotiated from the delivery room.) Best of all, they got everything under contract before the market/pricing really took off. 709k SF is under construction at Fallbrook Pines now, and TCC has 57 additional acres available. If building Houston’s largest industrial development underway isn’t enough, Jeremy is also planning to kick off Park 8Ninety this summer and is looking at developing a new building in Kenswick AirFreight & LogisticsCentre late this year.
Jeremy and his wife Britain have two kids: Turner (4.5 years old) and Evelyn (1.5 years old—Turner gets upset if Jeremy leaves out the half in either age). He’d like to travel to all corners of the Earth one day, and spend more time outdoors camping and hiking. Jeremy tells us he’d like to teach when he retires and is already dabbling in that by volunteering with Junior Achievement and assisting with classes at UH’s graduate real estate program.
