Three of the four leases are renewals. "These leases signify further that recognition that the downtown Houston submarket is continuing to gain momentum as a desirable place to do business," said Paul Layne, Trizec's senior vice president of the Western region.

The four-building Cullen Center again is at the forefront of the deal making, where just last week KBR Tower at 601 Jefferson St. and 500 Jefferson St. basked in the attention from a dual renewal by Kellogg Brown & Root. In the latest round, the stars are the 51-story Continental Center I at 1600 Smith St. and 20-story Continental Center II at 600 Jefferson St.

At the 1.1-million-sf Continental Center I, Resolution Performance Products has the keys to 41,781 sf in a renewal with a 3,903-sf expansion. The two-year tenant signed for another five years. Tim Relyea of the Houston office of Cushman & Wakefield of Texas negotiated for the Houston-based oil and gas company while Trizec's team consisted of Paul Frazier, vice president of leasing in Houston, and Tammy Hendrix, property manager.

Continental Center I also won an 11,728-sf renewal from 10-year tenant, Texas Independent Explorations, another Houston oil and gas company. Hendrix single-handedly steered the deal as she did with a 34,802-sf lease, which included a 13,253-sf expansion, for Houston Works at Continental Center II. Layne tells GlobeSt.com that the educational services company, a tenant for four years, signed a medium-term lease for the 449,000-sf office building.

The newcomer in the stack is the General Services Administration, which closed a 9,970-sf lease at Three Allen Center, a 1.2-million-sf building at 333 Clay St. Layne and company aren't saying which federal agency is the beneficiary of the 10-year lease. Trizec's Gary Loh packaged the deal.

With the deals now done, the three-million-sf Cullen Center is 90% occupied, Layne says. Allen Center's occupancy edged up to 89%.