Levcor shopping center in Houston recruits five tenants

Larry Levine’s Levcor has secured a quintet of leases at its Post Oak Plaza shopping center in Uptown Houston.

Tenants occupied a total of 26,500 square feet, bringing the property’s occupancy rate to 98 percent. Tenants include restaurants Local Foods, Tacodeli and Rakkan Ramen, as well as luxury mattress company Saatva and appliance brands Bosch, Thermador and Gaggenau.

The appliance showroom spans more than 14,000 square feet and will be the first in Texas. Other leases range from approximately 1,800 square feet to 4,000 square feet.

The tenant package brings the mall to 98 percent occupied and validates Levcor’s decision to redevelop the property, at the intersection of Post Oak Boulevard and San Felipe Road. The mall’s improvements took nearly five years and transformed “one of the city’s most visible corners into a vibrant destination for dining and shopping,” said Sasha Levine, vice president of Levcor. BRR Architecture managed the redesign.

Other retail renovations are underway nearby. Galleria mall owner Simon Property Group plans to make “transformative, multi-million dollar improvements” this summer.

These games come amid a strong retail market in Houston, which has shown resilience after the pandemic accelerated a surge in e-commerce and dealt a blow to malls across the country. Halfway through last year, Houston’s retail vacancy rate was a few dozen below 5% for the fifth straight quarter, its lowest rate since 2017. Asking rents also increased 3.6% over one year.

Levcor, meanwhile, has been a major player in Houston real estate since the 1980s. It has developed, owned and operated more than 25 million square feet of real estate across the country since its inception.

—Quinn Donoghue