Boardwalk Pipeline will take up four floors of 990 Town & Country, the new name for the former Marathon Oil tower in CityCentre. (MetroNational)
A Houston pipeline company plans to move its corporate headquarters to CityCentre from its longtime home at Greenway Plaza after signing one of the city’s largest new leases so far this year.
Boardwalk Pipeline has agreed to lease four floors of the former Marathon Oil tower, taking up roughly 143,253 square feet in west Houston within the CityCentre mixed-use development. The move will expand Boardwalk’s Houston office footprint by roughly 45%.
Boardwalk said it plans to begin relocating roughly 300 employees to the CityCentre area starting this summer. The company has had a presence at Nine Greenway Plaza for 20 years, the Chronicle previously reported.
The deal is the largest new office lease signed in Houston so far this year, according to real estate data firm CoStar, and comes after an unusually slow year for large-scale office leasing deals in 2025. Last year, there were four office leases signed for more than 100,000 square feet across the metro, including one new lease and three renewals, according to CoStar.
Boardwalk’s lease is also the latest example of how west Houston continues to attract corporate headquarters as companies seek newer office towers.
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The Katy Freeway East submarket, which includes CityCentre, had an office vacancy rate of 19% in the first quarter, compared to nearly 27% across the overall Houston region, according to real estate firm JLL.
Demand for high-quality newer office space has helped MetroNational quickly fill up 990 Town & Country, the new name for the former Marathon Oil headquarters at 990 Town and Country Blvd. Completed in 2022, the tower was a relatively new addition near CityCentre’s entrance when ConocoPhillips inherited it through a merger with Marathon.
The 15-story tower was almost entirely vacant when MetroNational bought the building from ConocoPhillips last August. MetroNational engaged JLL to oversee leasing for the tower, and in just seven months, there was enough leasing activity to bring the tower’s occupancy up to 91%, according to MetroNational.
The tower will also soon house a new 30,000-square-foot Houston campus for the University of Texas at Austin’s McCombs School of Business.
Nearby, Midway has also seen strong leasing momentum at its newly built office tower, CityCentre Six, which is now 90% pre-leased ahead of opening in May. That’s when chemical company Dow plans to relocate to CityCentre Six. Other tenants include VoltaGrid, Octave and Enverus.
“Katy Freeway is clearly one of the most active, if not the most active, so far this year but it’s early into it,” said Robert Kramp, regional research director at Transwestern, who was not involved in the recent CityCentre deals but tracks the Houston office market. “The concentration of the newest prime space and density of the three R’s: restaurants, retail and residential, make it a slam dunk.”
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Boardwalk’s new space will help the company accommodate its current and future growth, said Jill Kirkconnell, director of public relations for the firm.
“We’ve definitely outgrown our footprint in Greenway,” Kirkconnell said.
Boardwalk’s current 98,600-square-foot lease at Greenway Plaza expires in 2030, according to filings with the Harris County District Court.
It was not immediately clear whether Boardwalk would seek to terminate its lease or sublease the space.
The loss of Boardwalk is another big blow for Greenway Plaza, a prominent 4.5-million-square-foot mixed-use campus that has been facing financial troubles for years after the prior owners defaulted on a $465 million loan tied to the property.
Recent tenant move-outs, including a headquarters move by Camden Property Trust into Williams Tower, have brought down Greenway’s overall occupancy to about 57% as of February, according to court documents.
Last week, Houston-based Interra Capital announced it has closed on the acquisition of Greenway Plaza, after assuming about $416 million in debt linked to the campus. Interra Capital is now working to boost occupancy and retain tenants in partnership with real estate firm CBRE.
Boardwalk’s move highlights the challenge Interra faces in rebuilding occupancy at Greenway Plaza as tenants continue gravitating toward newer, amenity-rich offices.
This article originally published at Exclusive: Houston pipeline company moving HQ to CityCentre after decades at Greenway Plaza.