The pitch worked. Shell signed on as the anchor tenant for the young developer’s first skyscraper and ended up relocating its U.S. headquarters to the site from New York. The coup gave Hines the credibility and cachet to rebuild Houston’s skyline, completing the trapezoidal headquarters of Pennzoil in 1975 and the 75-floor Texas Commerce tower in 1982 that remains the city’s highest.
"He’s a master salesman," said John Guess, president of Houston-based real estate services company Guess Group Inc. "He can paint a picture for you and that’s so important in development where you need to be articulate enough to get someone to visualize the project."
The company’s development pipeline still exhibits its founder’s belief in the value of building eye-catching structures. Hines is co-developing 61-floor Salesforce Tower that will be San Francisco’s highest when it opens in 2018. In New York, he is constructing a tapering condominium skyscraper that’s rising above the Museum of Modern Art.
Still, Hines seems to reserve his fondest memories for his earliest developments. Asked to name his favorite ones in a 2015 interview with lifestyle magazine Modern Luxury, Hines listed Shell, Pennzoil and Houston’s Galleria shopping mall.
“They were the early ones, when I was skating on thin ice,” he said.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.