by Bob Campbell
Midland Reporter-Telegram
Published: Saturday, March 20, 2010 6:44 PM CDT
The city of Midland’s downtown revitalization is getting its biggest boost since the 1980s with a national oilfield service company’s $15 million “Permian Plaza” offices and parking garage initiative.
By early 2011, Basic Energy Services will open its “Permian 1″ and “Permian 2″ buildings and connect them to a seven-story garage with sidewalks and canopies in the 500 and 600 blocks of West Ohio and Illinois avenues.
The firm was persuaded to put 75 public spaces in the 470-space garage with a $2 million incentive from the Midland Development Corp. in May last year.
Public parking will be rented during business hours and be used on a first come, first served basis after hours and on weekends, architect Mark Wellen said.
During a tour last week, Basic Energy executives Alan Krenek and Mark Rankin, Realtor John Elphick and Wellen said the six-story Permian 2 building at 511 W. Ohio is in good shape and already in use by the company and other lessees.
But Permian 1 at 600 W. Illinois, the 10-story former Hightower Building opened in 1986 by Parker & Parsley Petroleum, is a work in progress. A new roof has been laid, elevators reconditioned, air and heating installed and asbestos removed in preparation for its 180,000 square feet of floor space to be readied for occupancy, the men said.
Basic will take half the ground floor, leave the rest for commercial and retail enterprises and use another four or five floors while providing downtown’s first new Class A office space in decades on the other five or six stories.
Working for MobilGreen Precast Co. of Boulder Junction, Wis., and local sub-contractor Ingram Concrete of 2608 N. Farm to Market 1788 will immediately pour piers for the $5.7 million garage where the old “Belt Buckle” building was razed east of Permian 1 and on the south side of Permian 2, said Wellen.
He said Basic, with 3,800 employees in 11 states — a third of those in Midland, Odessa, Crane and Big Spring — was considering moving its headquarters to Houston when CEO Ken Huseman intervened.
Wellen said Huseman “took it a step further than we needed because he wants the complex to be an improvement for downtown, not just a place for the offices.”
Noting the garage will create parking for less than the national average of $12-$15 thousand per space, the architect said, “There are many projects that don’t happen because of the expense of a garage.”
District 3 City Councilman John James dubbed it “the largest single investment in downtown in more than two decades.
“That alone begged for my support,” James said. “It will add desperately needed parking, spur commercial development and take taxation pressure off homeowners.”
MDC President Mike Hatley predicted that “Permian Plaza” will come to fruition just as the regional economy is consolidating its rebound from the recession of 2008-09. “We’ll see the demand grow, particularly in the parking piece of that development, as the economy recovers,” Hatley said.
“This will allow Class A office space to come online that has been greatly needed for a long time.”
Bob Campbell can be reached at campbell@mrt.com
Read more: http://www.mywesttexas.com/articles/2010/03/20/news/top_stories/permian_plaza.txt#ixzz0j6UavKy0
