A 1960s office tower that sat largely empty in downtown Houston for years has landed a $136 million loan to become hundreds of new apartments. 3L Real Estate obtained the financing from Bank OZK to convert One City Centre, a 780,530-square-foot building at 1021 Main St., from office space into 460 residential units and 93 hotel keys.
The loan was first reported by Multifamily Housing News, which cited Yardi Matrix data in detailing the financing. Under the plan, the residential portion will occupy floors seven through 29, while the hotel component is slated for levels two through six. More than 60 percent of the residential apartments are expected to feature one-bedroom layouts, with studio, one-bedroom and two-bedroom floorplans mixed throughout the building.
One City Centre has stood mostly vacant since its largest tenant, Waste Management, moved out in 2020, leaving the property about 90 percent empty, according to The Real Deal. Built in 1960, the tower has immediate access to the MetroRail Red Line, which connects directly to the employment hub at the Texas Medical Center, a locational perk that developers are betting will help lease up the new units.
Amenities Planned From the Lobby to the Roof
The design calls for separate residential and hospitality lobbies at ground level, along with a bar, a conference room and a dog wash. The sixth floor is slated to include coworking spaces, a library, a lounge, a studio room, a gym and saunas, and a new skybridge will connect that floor to the rooftop of a nearby garage, which is set to include a pool deck.
The development team behind the conversion includes Gensler, KW Landscape Architects, civil engineer Walter P. Moore, VSMsq Structural Engineers and Wylie Engineering for mechanical, electrical, plumbing and fire protection work, per the same Multifamily Housing News account.
Last year, developer Joseph Slezak told The Real Deal that 3L planned to pursue historic preservation credits and other tax incentives to help make the conversion's finances work, though it remains unclear whether those incentives have come through. A 2025 filing with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation described the project similarly, listing 553 total units split between 460 residential apartments on levels seven through 29 and 93 hotel apartments on levels two through six.
Part of a Broader Shift in Downtown Houston's Office Stock
One City Centre is one of several downtown Houston office towers being eyed for residential conversion as landlords grapple with high vacancy. Downtown's office vacancy rate stood at 25.9 percent in the second quarter of 2025, according to the Houston Chronicle, which also reported that roughly 2.3 percent of Houston's office inventory — about 5 million square feet across seven projects — was planned or underway for conversion. Citywide, Houston's office availability rate has eased somewhat, falling to 26.1 percent in the third quarter of 2026 from a peak of 28.5 percent in the third quarter of 2023, per Houston.org.
That same Houston.org data shows the strain is concentrated in older buildings: vacancy averaged just 12.0 percent in properties built since 2011, compared with 26.8 percent in buildings constructed before that year — a gap that helps explain why a 1960-built tower like One City Centre became a conversion target in the first place. Other downtown properties have followed similar paths with mixed results. The 542,919-square-foot office building at 919 Milam traded in June 2026 and may undergo its own multifamily conversion, though the Houston Business Journal reported the 24-story tower was only 19.8 percent occupied at the time of the sale.
Not every conversion story downtown has gone smoothly. The 1.2-million-square-foot 800 Bell, formerly the headquarters of Humble-Exxon, has also been floated for residential adaptive reuse, but CoStar reported that an affiliate of CMI Developers listed the building for sale in January 2025 after those conversion plans fizzled. Downtown's residential base has nonetheless grown substantially in recent years; a Brookings analysis found the area had more than 7,300 residential units, with nearly 5,300 built since 2014, as the neighborhood's housing stock has nearly tripled over the preceding decade.
