Houston cleared the way to sell its police and public works towers. The $1 billion repair estimate behind it came from one official.

Houston City Council cleared the way Wednesday to sell its police and public works towers downtown. The nearly $1 billion repair estimate that justifies the sale comes from one city official, and no appraisal or engineering study has been published.

The ordinance lets the city work with Cushman and Wakefield to list 1200 Travis, which houses the police department, and 611 Walker, which houses Houston Public Works. Both were built in 1966 and would sell as-is.

Why it matters

These are among the most valuable properties the city owns, and the council authorized listing them before any independent valuation reached the public. Residents are asked to accept a roughly $1 billion repair bill as the reason, on the word of the department that wants the move.

By the numbers

Nearly $500 million to repair 611 Walker and another $500 million for 1200 Travis, nearly $1 billion combined, according to Public Works Director Randy Macchi.
18 percent remaining service life for the public works building and 15 percent for the police building as of July 2025, absent improvements, also Macchi’s figures.
$55 million is what the city paid for 1600 Smith Street, the replacement tower. Macchi called it “a steal of a deal.”
$5 million per floor across 53 floors to build it out, which Macchi put at around $300 million, per Community Impact. ABC13 reported $5.5 million per floor across 51 floors, or nearly $281 million.
4,400 employees are eventually to work at 1600 Smith.
$100 million to $200 million per building is the only sale figure in print, and it is an estimate from Quenton Rockwell, a commercial real estate broker and Houston Association of Realtors board member, not a city appraisal.

The arithmetic does not close. Five million dollars across 53 floors is $265 million, about $35 million short of the $300 million quoted in the same breath. ABC13’s version does add to its stated total. The two outlets disagree on both inputs, and the building’s floor count is unsettled in public references.

What the coverage buried

ABC13 described the buildings vividly: water damage, broken elevators, a rat infestation in the police evidence room. It did not report the nearly $1 billion repair estimate. That is the number that makes the decision legible, and Community Impact had it.

ABC13 also named no council member who raised concerns. Community Impact reported that Council Member Edward Pollard asked for “a real analysis between the difference of just selling those properties” and whether 75 or 99 year ground leases were possible so the city could keep the land. An obvious objection existed, from inside the council, and one outlet printed it.

Credit where it is due: ABC13 got the brokerage, the as-is terms and the consolidation purpose.

The other side

If 15 percent and 18 percent remaining service life are right, selling is not a close call. Buying 1600 Smith at $55 million and spending $265 million to $300 million on it beats a $1 billion repair bill by a wide margin, and Mayor John Whitmire’s “right now we don’t have the money to repair” states a real constraint. Pollard’s ground lease idea has a cost too. It keeps the land and leaves the city holding two towers it says are unsafe.

The objection is not to selling. It is that every figure in the comparison, the repair estimate, the service life percentages, the build-out total and the promised savings, comes from one department, and the council voted before an appraisal or a competing estimate was public.

What to watch

Council must approve any final sale agreement, per Community Impact. That is the vote where an appraisal should appear.
Whether the city publishes the engineering assessment behind the $500 million per building figures and the July 2025 service life percentages.
The commission terms in the Cushman and Wakefield agreement.
Macchi said some employees should move into 1600 Smith by about this time next year.
Reconciliation of the floor count and per-floor build-out cost.

Bottom line

Selling two sixty-year-old towers the city cannot afford to fix may well be the right call. But the council authorized the listing on a self-reported billion-dollar estimate, with no appraisal, and with one member’s request for a sell-versus-lease analysis unanswered. The appraisal should land before the sale vote.

Sources

Editorial