David O’Reilly and Jay Cross

For a Houston-based firm focused not just on single buildings but build-ing planned communities and mini cities, working in time frames of decades, Howard Hughes had a standout year: record land sales of $317 million, up 51 percent from the year before; record net operating income, up almost 20 percent; and the best year selling condominiums in Honolulu’s Ward Village, moving 663 units. In particular, the pandemic-era lifestyle push out of big cities and toward the Sun Belt, for both employees and employers, has been a boon for the developer.

“Across the board, this was the best year in the history of Howard Hughes,” CEO David O’Reilly said.

The capstone of the year was the $600million acquisition of Douglas Ranch outside of Phoenix, a shovel-ready,37,000-acre site in the West Valley that will be the “city of the future,” per O’Reilly. It’s a plot of land that will create its own gravity, attracting firms, business and amenities that in turn will create a self-fulfilling cycle. Finding these kinds of properties is rare.

The larger demographic moves have picked up so much speed, they’re accelerating demand and development at Howard Hughes’ existing properties, such as The Woodlands outside of Houston, which is seeing more need for office and commercial space as new residents arrive. The company is speeding up the unfolding of properties that had 10-year plans due to this flood of demand, with new aims to finish the same work in half the time. Howard Hughes is also speeding up the development of spec office projects, including Las Vegas’ Summerlin, due to demand for remote work.

“It’s like creating a new office submarket, one that’s proximate to housing and a better quality of life,” O’Reilly said.

Other big deals throughout the year included the sale of Century Park, a 63-acre, 1.3 million-square-foot office campus in Houston’s Energy Corridor for $25 million in new proceeds, and finally gaining entitlement in December for 250 Water Street, a 27-story, mixed-use tower in Manhattan’s South Street Seaport district.