Textron Signs 40,788-SF, Class A Office Lease

The Providence, RI-headquartered Textron and subsidiary Bell Helicopter have roughly 500 employees based in more than 200,000 sf of office and industrial space in AllianceTexas. The latest lease takes an IT group from shared space into the 72,761-sf Commerce Center 14 at 2301 Eagle Parkway. Textron will occupy most of the first floor and half of the second, setting up staged-in moves that will wrap up at the end of September, according to Bob Alter, group vice president of marketing for Hillwood Properties.

"That's a huge win for us," Alter tells GlobeSt.com about direct talks that began about nine months ago, went dark and were resurrected earlier this summer. "Initially, it was 24,000 sf," he says, "but when it came back to life, it had morphed into the 71,000-sf requirement." In the early stages of the talks, he says Textron did look around, but "quickly focused on Alliance."

Alter says the production pipeline has enough deals working to hang a "no occupancy" sign on AllianceTexas office space. "We went from having little activity on office to having to tell prospective users that we have no space," he says. To date this year, Hillwood's leased 111,296 sf of office space, the most that's been filled since 2001. AllianceTexas' office space runs from the mid-teens into the low $20 per sf plus electric.