BWE secured a $23.5 million loan to finance the acquisition and substantial improvement of The Edge, a 173-unit, 553-bed student housing community near Texas State University in San Marcos, TX. 

BWE’s Chris Carroll and Max Miller originated the financing on behalf of Campus Realty Advisors. Texas State has seen a surge in enrollment, which has increased by 5% over the last year to bring the entire student body above 40,000. 

The Edge features a mix of 1-, 2-, 3-, and 4-bedroom apartments and offers students a wide range of amenities, including a fitness center, clubhouse, and basketball court. The community is located less than a mile from the Texas State campus. 

As part of the acquisition, The Edge will receive numerous upgrades to improve the residents’ experiences. All units will receive new flooring, cabinets, and doors, upgraded bathroom fixtures, and improved lighting. The clubhouse, study areas, fitness center and other amenities will also receive major improvements to enhance the students’ sense of community. 

​​The latest corporate relocation to Texas might also be the tastiest.

Fast food chicken chain KFC announced plans last week to move its headquarters from Kentucky to the Metroplex. It came close on the heels of an announcement earlier this month that real estate services website Realtor.com planned to move to Austin, making its home in what it predicts will be the most populous state in the nation within 20 years. 

Relocations to the Lone Star State have cooled since the turn of the decade when dozens upon dozens of companies stampeded to open headquarters there. And states like Georgia and the Carolinas are increasingly coming for its title.

But 2024 was the first year since 2021 that Texas corporate relos inched up, and site selection experts say 2025 is already setting up to come in hot.

Texas saw its number of corporate relocations inch up from 2023 to 2024.

After a year of uncertainty surrounding the presidential election and capital markets, JLL Managing Director Torrey Littlejohn said KFC and Realtor.com’s arrival could be the beginning of a fresh wave of relocations to Texas. 

“You can’t push pause forever, and so what we’re seeing right now is a lot of people have pushed play,” said Littlejohn, who co-leads JLL’s tenant representation team and represents national corporate office clients in facility and site acquisition.

“The velocity of transactions and activity that we’re seeing is huge for the first six to eight weeks of the year.”

Texas’ business-friendly environment and lack of personal and corporate income taxes has long made it a premier destination for corporate relocations, though states like Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina are making a push up the charts.

After crowning the Lone Star State as the best business climate in the U.S. a year ago, Site Selection Magazine dropped Texas to No. 4 alongside Tennessee and behind the previously mentioned locations based on its November 2024 site selector survey.

Yet Dallas still topped the magazine’s ranking of best cities for headquarters, followed by Charlotte, North Carolina, Atlanta and Nashville. 

State officials are hoping to solidify Texas as “the headquarters of headquarters,” as the Office of Gov. Greg Abbott calls the state. Last year, Texas snagged 24 out-of-state headquarters relocations, the first time that number has increased over the previous year since 2021, according to a list put out by Abbott’s office. 

2021 was the height of the state’s acceleration period as an HQ hub. Texas brought in 42 headquarters relocations in 2020 and 79 the following year. The number dropped to 38 in 2022 and just 17 in 2023.

Last year, the state also saw the number of headquarters moving from California to Texas rebound as 11 companies made the jump. In total, Texas has seen 314 headquarters relocations over the last decade, with nearly half of those — 156 — coming from California.

Dallas skyline

Despite a relative cooling off from the white-hot pace of 2020-21, site selection researcher The Boyd Co. maintains Texas remains a top choice for corporation relocations. 

“Some of the most high-growth submarkets today are in the Dallas Metroplex region,” principal John Boyd Jr. said of headquarters selection. “Markets like Plano, Frisco and McKinney are very much in demand.”

Companies are on the hunt for workers, which is something Texas has in spades. Texas is on track to surpass California as the nation’s most populous state by 2045, per a Realtor.com analysis of its own data and figures from the U.S. Census Bureau.

“Texas continues to be a big winner with respect to talent migration,” Boyd said. 

DFW also topped U-Haul’s Growth Metro of 2024 list by having the largest net gains of the moving companies’ customers taking one-way trips into the Metroplex. The state’s Austin and Houston metros also placed within the company’s top 10. 

The connectivity of Texas, whether through Port Houston or the highways and airports linking DFW with the global marketplace, is one of the most attractive reasons for corporations to move to the state, Boyd said. Plus, SpaceX’s rocket launch facility in Cameron County links the state to space. 

“It’s impossible to underscore how significant the space industry is,” Boyd said. “Every industry relies on satellites in outer space — healthcare, banking, finance, transportation, defense.”

The impending rise of Y’all Street is seen as another feather in the state’s cap that can be used to attract companies, Boyd and Littlejohn said.

The Texas Stock Exchange aims to host its first listings in 2026 and establish its headquarters in the heart of Dallas, including executive offices, a conference center and a broadcast center. The New York Stock Exchange also announced plans to reincorporate its Chicago branch in Dallas as NYSE Texas.

“The stock exchanges might be a little late to the game, because this has really been a great place for financial services clients to relocate the labor base [for the past five to 10 years],” Littlejohn said.

Skanska has signed a contract with the Texas A&M University System to construct the new Meat Science and Technology Center on their campus. The contract is worth $91 million. 

The new building will be a 73,500 gross square-foot facility that will provide AgriLife, a research and educational agency within the Texas A&M University System, with modern, state-of-the-art processing capabilities. 

The facility will support the next generation of food safety and nutritional quality research in meat science. It will feature an auditorium, laboratories, training classrooms, seminar spaces, and offices designed for graduate students and faculty.

Work is slated to begin in December 2025 and is expected to reach completion in January 2028.

The Texas A&M University System’s Board of Regents approved over $141 million for statewide construction projects.  

$80 million will fund Student Housing Phase III and Dining Project at Texas A&M San Antonio. The project will add 300 new student beds and a dining facility. 

East Texas AM University will also receive a $63.4 million event center for intercollegiate sports and community events. Construction is scheduled to begin in March 2025. 

Prairie View A&M University will develop a $40.6 million Teaching & Academic Student Support Services Facility, which will break ground this month. 

Blue Bell Park at Texas A&M University will see the development of a $28.3 million Player Development Center with enhanced amenities for baseball student-athletes.  

A $27 million South Texas Workforce Development Project is slated for Brownsville. It will include a Texas A&M Engineering Extension Service facility to support advanced manufacturing training. Construction begins in April 2025. 

LV Collective and Culpepper Realty Co. are moving forward on a new luxury student-oriented multifamily housing development in College Station, Texas.  

This housing project, located across from Texas A&M University at 313 College Avenue, is the first of three planned student housing developments that LV and Culpepper Realty will partner on within the larger Legacy Point master plan. The Legacy Point master plan is expected to deliver 2,800 beds of student housing and will include over 50,000 square feet of retail, entertainment, restaurants, and outdoor amenity space. 

The 752,500-square-foot student housing development at 313 College Ave will be seven stories and feature 316 apartments, including studio, 1-, 2-, 3-, 4-, 5- and 6-bedroom units, for a total of 953 beds.  Site work began last week at 313 College Ave., and the project is scheduled to open in Fall 2027 in time for the 2027-2028 academic year. 

Provident Data Centers and American Real Estate Partners’ PowerHouse Data Centers have formed a joint venture to build a data center campus near Dallas slated to be one of the largest such complexes in the United States.

Provident and AREP’s PowerHouse Data Centers plan to build the hyperscale-focused campus on 768 acres between Dallas and Fort Worth in Grand Prairie, Texas. The multi-phase project will initially leverage about 500 megawatts of committed power, with the potential to scale up to 1.8 gigawatts at full build-out, according to Provident.

Construction on the site — which sits north of Route 67 and close to Google’s data center complex in neighboring Midlothian, Texas — is set to begin in the second quarter of 2025, with power delivery secured for May 2026. While neither party in the joint venture shared their total investment in the project, Provident touted at least $5B in direct construction impact over the course of the multi-year build-out. 

The nearly 2 gigawatts of capacity planned for Grand Prairie would place the campus among the largest in both the booming DFW data center market and nationally, even as the data center sector is increasingly dominated by massive projects serving tech giants like Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Meta.  

“We were motivated to form this partnership due to Provident’s extensive experience in large-scale infrastructure and deep Texas roots, combined with PowerHouse’s focus on hyperscale solutions,” Provident Principal Strategist Jack Backes said in an email to Bisnow. “This created a partnership uniquely positioned to deliver a facility that meets the growing needs of global hyperscalers with speed, scalability, and efficiency.”

The JV between Provident and PowerHouse brings together two firms pursuing aggressive growth in the hyperscale data center market.  

Dallas-based Provident’s data center footprint entails 50 buildings in six states, totaling 3.8 gigawatts of power. The firm’s portfolio is centered in Texas, with data centers in operation or being developed in seven cities across the state, according to the company’s website. 

Development plans include a seven-building data center campus in Burns Harbor, Indiana, which Provident first proposed in August. But Backes tells Bisnow its latest Texas project previews an upcoming push to expand its presence in the market, targeting the world’s largest tech firms.  

“This project is also part of Provident’s broader vision for hyperscale growth,” Backes said. “Provident is preparing to leverage its 30 years of experience to deliver future developments independently through vertical construction in the data center space.”

PowerHouse’s hyperscale expansion is already well underway. The Virginia-based company says it has 87 buildings and 25.5M SF in planning underway or completed, representing over 5.9 gigawatts of power across 6 U.S. markets. 

As with the planned campus in Grand Prairie, PowerHouse’s swollen development pipeline is being executed largely through joint ventures. 

The largest of these JVs, announced in August, is a partnership with fellow data center firm Chirisa and asset manager Blue Owl to build a series of data centers anchored by AI cloud provider CoreWeave that could ultimately deploy more than $5B. The JV’s initial buildout is slated for a campus near Richmond, Virginia, that could ultimately exceed a gigawatt of capacity, with further development expected in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Texas, Kentucky and Nevada. 

Less than a month later, PowerHouse unveiled a separate JV with investment management firm Town Lane. The partnership acquired a 122-acre site in Charlotte, North Carolina, where it plans to offer 300 megawatts of capacity across five buildings by 2027. 

An earlier development joint venture between AREP and investment firm Harrison Street formed in late 2021 has also fueled much of PowerHouse’s growth trajectory. This year, the two firms broke ground on both the first phase of an 800-megawatt campus in Spotsylvania County, Virginia, and a 65-megawatt project in Reno, Nevada. The partners sold one of their co-developed data centers in Northern Virginia to CyrusOne last month.

The JV with Harrison Street has helped PowerHouse push into the DFW market, launching a 200-megawatt project on 50 acres in Irving, TX last spring.  

Amid a nationwide data center development boom, the DFW metroplex has remained one of the industry’s strongest growth markets. The region trails only Northern Virginia in leased critical IT Power with 776 megawatts, according to 451 Research. At the end of the second quarter of last year, JLL reported that Dallas ranked fourth in capacity planned or under construction with a pipeline exceeding 3000 megawatts. 

The data center industry’s growth across Texas has sparked growing concerns about the impact of gigawatt-scale campuses on the stability of the ERCOT power grid and power prices for consumers, with some politicians suggesting pumping the breaks on future development. But Provident’s Backes insists that the company’s project with PowerHouse in Grand Prairie is paired with energy infrastructure investments that, along with collaboration with utilities, will ensure these concerns don’t come to fruition.

“Our development is designed to enhance grid stability rather than strain it,” Backes said. “Provident has spent the past two years working closely with ERCOT and Oncor ensuring that the project not only avoids price increases for consumers but also strengthens grid resilience and reliability.”

Investcorp completed four student housing acquisitions totaling nearly 3,000 beds for a gross transaction cost of over $300 million. The acquisitions include two in Texas and one each in Oklahoma and Kentucky. The Texas properties are:

·         A 792-bed, 99%-occupied property at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas;

·         A 486-bed, 98%-occupied property at Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas;

Investcorp’s Michael O’Brien adds, “Many of the top university markets face shortages of housing, and when combined with growing enrollment, this creates favorable operating dynamics which support our long-term conviction in the asset class.”

Nationally, the student housing sector has seen strong performance this academic year, with steady tenant demand and rent growth averaging nearly 5% across the top 200 university markets, which is above the long-term average, according to Yardi.

Investcorp has deep experience in the student housing sector, having owned and managed approximately 20,000 beds across roughly 30 investments.

Burlington Stores Inc. successfully bid on 10 Texas leases held by The Woodlands-based furniture and appliance retailer, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in July.

The leases Burlington will acquire span five states, though most are in Texas. Burlington bid over $6.65 million on the leases. Including cure amounts, the aggregate cost will total approximately $7.09 million.

A full list of Texas properties Burlington successfully bid for, includes stores in three San Antonio locations and one each in McAllen, Dallas, El Paso, Laredo, Amarillo, Texas City and Austin.

The Houston Business Journal reports that Burlington is in the midst of a national expansion effort. The chain plans to open over 100 stores per year for the next five years and is opening four new stores in the Houston area this fall. 

Besides the Conn’s stores, the company acquired 64 leases from Bed Bath & Beyond, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2023 and closed nearly 900 locations.

Chicago-based Byline Bank’s Commercial Real Estate Group (BCREG) has closed on a $15.2 million loan with Campus Realty Advisors and T2 Capital. The transaction funds the acquisition, renovation and repositioning of The Junction San Marcos, a 152-unit, 488-bed student housing community in San Marcos, Texas, near Texas State University.

This loan marks the first commitment between Byline and Campus Realty Advisors, while T2 Capital is a long-time client of BCREG. The loan will assist in the acquisition and revitalization of the property located at 109 West Avenue. Campus Realty Advisors and T2 Capital plan to renovate all units and common areas.

“The upgraded property will be a welcome addition to the San Marcos rental market, which has seen strong growth and nearly full occupancy for several years in a row,” said Matt Robertson, Senior Vice President in Byline’s Commercial Real Estate Group. The law firm Smith Gambrell Russell represented Campus Realty Advisors and T2 Capital in this transaction, while Holland & Knight represented Byline Bank.