Plans for a $66.5 million renovation at Chevron’s downtown Houston offices have been set in motion, following the oil and gas giant’s relocation from California to Texas.
Chevron, led by chairman and CEO Mike Wirth, is building out its Houston headquarters, with plans to renovate the upper levels of its 40-story building at 1500 Louisiana Street, the Houston Chronicle reported. Details of the renovations, including square footage, haven’t been disclosed.
The company’s investment highlights its commitment to enhancing its footprint in Houston, which also includes the 1.2 million square foot building at 1400 Smith Street, which it bought from Brookfield Properties for $340 million in 2011.
Last year, the company acquired 77 acres in Cypress, where it could build an upstream research and development campus. Additionally, its venture capital division leases space at the Ion, a tech hub established by Rice University in Midtown.
Chevron is “evaluating which positions will relocate to Houston and which positions will remain in San Ramon to support our California operations,” a spokesperson told the outlet.
The energy giant occupies 3 million square feet of office space in downtown Houston and is the largest private employer in Houston’s central business district with 6,000 workers. Another 1,000 are employed by Chevron elsewhere in the metro, as of 2022, the outlet reported. About 2,000 employees still work at Chevron’s former headquarters, where it had operated for 140 years.
Chevron sold its 92-acre campus at 6001 Bollinger Canyon Road in San Ramon, near San Francisco, to Sunset Development, a firm headed by CEO Alexander Mehran. It consists of 13 office buildings totalling 1.3 million square feet.
— Andrew Terrell