Fluor Corp. will add 800 to 1,000 employees to its Sugar Land operations, in 192,000 square feet of space the company has leased at the former UNOCAL building.
The Greater Fort Bend Economic Council and the City of Sugar Land said in an announcement on Wednesday that Fluor has leased space lease at the building through March 2010.
Tom Zachman, vice president and general manager of Fluor’s Sugar Land operations, said it’s difficult to predict what the company’s needs will be in three years when the lease expires, adding that Fluor will evaluate its situation at that time.
“Business is probably the best it’s been in 30 years,” Zachman said. “We’d love to have our business continue at that level.”
But that depends on the cycles of the industries for which Fluor provides engineering and construction services, such as upstream oil and gas producers (platforms and pipelines) and downstream operations (refineries).
For now, the company is “pleased to be able to expand our operations in the Sugar Land area while utilizing existing office space. Its location in Sugar Land nearby our current Operations Center will help us to attract and retain the professionals needed to address the growth in our business during 2007 and beyond.”
“For more than 20 years, Fluor has been one of the largest employers in Fort Bend County,” said EDC President Jeff Wiley. “Their decision to expand their presence in Sugar Land is an example of their commitment to the community.
Fluor, a publicly traded engineering, procurement, construction and maintenance services company, already occupies about 1 million square feet of space at One Fluor Daniel Drive in Sugar Land, according to the EDC.
One Sugar Creek, the former UNOCAL building at 14141 Southwest Freeway near Dairy Ashford, contains about 521,000 square feet of space and is owned by Unilev Capital Corp. of Beverly Hills, Calif. It served as UNOCAL’s headquarters for many years, until its merger with Chevron Corp. in 2005.
Much of the building now is empty, but Chevron occupies five floors, the EDC said. Zachman noted Chevron has a lease on most of the building’s space that also runs through 2010.
The CBRE team of Sanford Criner, Steve Hesse, Michael Sieger, and Mark Pillsbury represented Chevron in the lease transaction with Fluor, according to a statement from the EDC and City of Sugar Land. The Cushman Wakefield team of Jeff Osborn, Chris Oliver, Tom McDonald, and Chris Bosley represented Fluor.
