HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) — Houston City Council voted this week to allow real estate firm Cushman and Wakefield to list two city-owned buildings for sale as part of a plan to consolidate the police and public works departments into a single location.

The two buildings up for sale are the police headquarters on Travis and the public works building on Walker.

City officials described them as “terrible” this week and have previously said they contain “life-threatening conditions.”

ABC13 has reported on well-documented problems with both buildings over the past year.

Photos show water damage, officials have described broken elevators, and the police headquarters evidence room suffered from a rat infestation last year.

“We’ve got 400,000 pounds of marijuana, and the rats are the only ones enjoying it,” Mayor John Whitmire said in January 2025.

In August, city council approved buying the old Continental Airlines Building on Smith Street for $55 million to house police, public works, and other departments.

Public Works Director Randy Macchi said some employees should be in that building by this time next year.

But getting it ready for those employees won’t be cheap, Macchi said.

“The build-out is going to be expensive,” Macchi said this week. “Current estimates right now are about $5.5 million per floor on that buildout.”

That works out to nearly $281 million for a building that contains 51 floors.

Macchi said the sale of the buildings on Travis and Walker will help offset that cost.

The city plans to sell both buildings as-is.

“This is a big boon to the city from a financial standpoint,” Macchi said.

Quenton Rockwell, a commercial real estate expert and board member of the Houston Association of Realtors, said the buildings may take time to sell.

“I think they’ll sit for a little bit until the right investor comes along to jump on it,” Rockwell said.

He said it could take months or longer for the buildings to sell, but he believes they ultimately will.

“I think they’ll be bought up and turned into some sort of residential or a resi-mercial mix,” he said.

Rockwell estimated each building would sell for between $100 million and $200 million, or possibly less if the same buyer buys both properties.

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