This NY Times article describes Lakewood Church‘s long term lease on the City of Houston’s Compaq Center, formerly the home of the NBA Houston Rockets, who have now moved to a new downtown arena, the Toyota Center.
Lakewood’s acquisition of the lease on Compaq Center was not easy. Immediately after the deal was announced, Fort Worth-based Crescent Real Estate Equities Company, the owner of Greenway Plaza, the five-million-square-foot high-end office complex that surrounds the arena, threw ecclesiastic concerns aside and sued Lakewood, contending that its proposed lease on the Compaq Center would violate deed restrictions on the arena. Of course, the new office building that Crescent wanted to build on the Compaq Center site did not violate those same deed restrictions. At any rate, the suit was settled last year, after the city agreed to overpay and buy 5.5 acres of land from Crescent in front of the City’s George R. Brown Convention Center for $33 million.