19-Story Apartment Tower Proposed To Replace Budget Hotel In Old Fourth Ward

In the barrage of return-to-work news coverage, Kastle System card swipe data — which measures the percentage of employees entering the office versus pre-pandemic levels — has widely been viewed as the throbbing pulse of recovery.

And in the last few months, the patient has shown new signs of life, said Kastle Systems Chairman Mark Ein, with national average office occupancy up to 43% — a 50% jump since the beginning of the year.

But when asked what separates the firms successfully enticing workers back, and those that still lag, Ein said it comes down to marching orders.

“Frankly, the ones who have been most successful have put stakes in the grounds and said that 'we need you back,' with various degrees of flexibility,” he said. “They have required people to come back. It’s been the most effective strategy.”

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For decades, Hines could say that it had some of the glitziest office towers in America's downtowns. The Lipstick Building in Manhattan and Salesforce Tower in San Francisco, both acclaimed and towering buildings in their own right, endcap hundreds of millions of square feet in office property the company has built in most major American markets.

In Houston, where Hines was founded and is headquartered, various central business districts feel like a who's who of notable Hines buildings, the newest of which is the Texas Tower, a highly amenitized skyscraper that opened downtown late last year.

Although the Texas Tower fits the typical blueprint for a Hines project — well-publicized, a flagship downtown location and stellar sustainability ratings — it opened just as the company announced it would funnel billions into nonoffice real estate, from new life sciences projects here and abroad to massive funds in real estate in its home country to niche sectors like studio property.

"We've really pushed very hard into other product types,” co-CEO Jeff Hines said in a 2021 interview with Walker & Dunlop CEO Willy Walker. “We had this great footprint and we have this great group of people running the firm in various spots around the globe. It only makes sense to leverage that by adding other product types."

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