Payroll Firm Inks 14,760-SF Lease

HOUSTON-A payroll company has shifted from sublease status to a direct lease, doubling its size with the change at World Houston Plaza in the city's North Belt corridor.

FSV Payment Systems Ltd. took 14,760 sf in the 216,288-sf office building at 15710 JFK Blvd. For the last two years, FSV was subleasing 7,785 sf from KoSa, a Wichita, KS-based packaging and poly-resin manufacturer that has left the metro area, according to Michelle Wogan with Transwestern Commercial Services in Houston, who negotiated the long-term lease on behalf of building owner, KBS Realty Advisors.

Wogan tells GlobeSt.com that the four-year-old FSV Payment considered moving to another building. The decision to stay took "about four months" to negotiate, she says. FSV Payment shifted its location in the now 98%-leased building with the newly crafted direct lease.

Rent and lease terms are off limits, but Wogan says the building's effective rents run from $19.50 per sf to $20.50 per sf. The eight-story tower, near Bush Intercontinental Airport about 15 minutes' drive from the CBD, was built in 1985. The building's name has been swapped around; it was called the Atofina Building for two to three years until just recently, when its leasing agents began again referring to it as World Houston Plaza, its former name.

Newport Beach, CA-based KBS, which owns a total 3.5 million sf of office, retail and warehouse space in the greater Houston area, bought the property in the late 1980s. The company owns more than two dozen other metro-area office properties, including the matching One and Two Eldridge Place towers at 777 and 757 N. Eldridge Parkway.