The 27-story tower at 611 Walker Street, which opened in 1968 and houses Houston Public Works, could be replaced — and in its place, brokers are floating something much taller. The building is still standing downtown on the west side of the Central Business District, bounded by Walker, Smith, Louisiana and McKinney streets, but its days in that form may be numbered if the city finds the right buyer.
Houston City Council voted last week to try to sell both 611 Walker and the nearby 1200 Travis Street, the longtime Houston Police Department headquarters, according to the Houston Chronicle. City leaders have said both buildings have become too expensive to keep running, a conclusion that tracks with earlier estimates: rehabilitating 611 Walker alone would have cost an estimated $323 million, while maintenance costs for 1200 Travis had climbed to $20 million a year by 2024, per the same reporting.
A Broker's Pitch for a Defining Downtown Statement
Tim Relyea, executive vice chairman at Cushman & Wakefield, is representing the city in the sale effort, according to a Chron report. He said the vacated building creates an opportunity to redevelop the block into a defining architectural statement, and that a comparable site — offering unobstructed views of Buffalo Bayou Park — has not been available in Houston in half a century. If the site lands the right buyer, the existing building would be demolished to make way for something new.
Relyea has already brought in architect Jon Pickard of Pickard Chilton to sketch early concepts for a possible tower on the site, per the same Chron report. Pickard Chilton's portfolio includes Exxon Mobil's global headquarters north of Houston, the 48-story 609 Main office tower, and the Amegy Bank building near Loop 610 and San Felipe. Any renderings or formal design for a 611 Walker tower have not been made public.
No Price Tag Yet, but Developer Interest Is Already There
As of Oct. 8, the city had not listed a sale price for either 611 Walker or 1200 Travis Street, according to Community Impact. Any final sale of either property still requires Houston City Council approval. Developers have already expressed interest in 611 Walker because of its desirable location, freeway access and skyline views, the outlet reports.
The two buildings, both built in 1966, have weak generators and outdated electrical systems, Community Impact notes. In July 2025, Houston Public Works director Randy Macchi said 611 Walker had just 18% of its service life remaining and 1200 Travis had 15%, absent major improvements. Estimates of what it would cost to fix both buildings vary: Community Impact reported figures of roughly $500 million apiece, while Macchi told ABC13 it would cost nearly $600 million combined to keep both buildings and address their deferred maintenance.
Around 4,400 city employees from the two buildings have already begun relocating to 1600 Smith Street, the former Continental Airlines headquarters the city purchased for $55 million in 2024, per the Houston Chronicle. Houston's Public Works director has said the city's plan is to purchase the 1600 Smith building for around $50 million in 2026, according to ABC13. Unlike 1200 Travis, which sits on half a block with an attached parking garage, 611 Walker occupies an entire city block, the Chronicle reports.
A Tough Market for Selling Old Office Towers
Selling either property won't necessarily be easy. Economic headwinds and high vacancy rates for downtown office buildings may make the towers very hard to sell, the Chronicle reports, and commercial real estate figure Mark Davis has said Houston's market for older office buildings is at its worst, per the same outlet. Houston last tried and failed to sell the police headquarters back in 2012.
Still, the broader office market has shown signs of life. Houston's office availability rate eased to 26.6% in the second quarter of 2026 after peaking at 28.7% in the third quarter of 2023, according to the Greater Houston Partnership at houston.org. Average gross asking rents rose to $31.10 per square foot in that same quarter, up roughly 8.1% year over year, the organization reports — though Cushman & Wakefield's own numbers for the quarter put vacancy at 24.7% and average gross asking rent at $31.99 per square foot, a modest gain of 0.7% from the prior quarter. New construction remains scarce regardless of whose numbers are used: Cushman & Wakefield counted just two office projects under construction citywide, while houston.org pegged total construction at about 572,000 square feet, or roughly 0.2% of Houston's office inventory. Newer buildings are faring far better than older stock — properties delivered since 2011 averaged 15.2% vacancy in the quarter, compared with 28.0% for buildings built before then, according to houston.org.
Could Downtown Houston See a Building Boom?
The push to redevelop 611 Walker is being pitched as part of a larger wave, with downtown Houston potentially seeing six to 12 new office towers move forward in the next few years, according to the Chron report. For comparison, Austin's Waterline tower — a 74-story high-rise that opened this summer — now claims the title of tallest building in Texas, topping out with 703,000 square feet of Class AA office space across 26 floors, per Community Impact's earlier coverage of that project. Whether 611 Walker becomes home to anything close to that scale remains to be seen, since no zoning, height limit, square footage or financing details for a potential Houston replacement tower have been made public.
