If you have residual competitive juices from yesterday’s Texans game (or maybe you’ve blocked the memory), we have another outlet: the City of Houston’s Green Office Challenge.

We snapped new City director of sustainability Laura Spanjian discussing the program (no, the cake isn’t for the challenge—it was her birthday). She says Houston has already come a long way in a short time. In ’07, we had six green buildings. Now we have 89 LEED and 133 Energy Star buildings, making us eighth nationwide in LEED and sixth for Energy Star. Houston is the second city to do a significant green building challenge, and although it started with Chicago’s scorecard, the City changed it to be Houston-specific. There are two ways to compete: as an owner/manager and as a tenant, which is more focused on behavioral changes. The City will count recent strides and reward you for already being green.

Laura tells us the City is going through the management districts and hopes participation in the competition will lead to third-party certifications. The City will help with this; for example, it’s bringing the EPA to Greenspoint, where it will do training in Portfolio Manager and help 20 buildings get Energy Star rated. It’s providing financial help, too, giving seed money to the management districts for small initiatives, like a bike exchange or buying recycling bins. Bigger amounts of stimulus funds will be available in an energy efficiency loan program to help with upfront capital requirements. Laura says the City is hoping for 300 participants across the Houston area. The year-long challenge begins Oct. 15.

Touring the Corridor

Been wanting a peek into some of those fancy buildings in the Energy Corridor? We have you covered, thanks to ULI’s Suburban Marketplace tours. We snapped CBRE’s Steve Rocher and Trammell Crow’s Aaron Thielhorn in Energy Center II, a part of Energy Center Plaza, which has two buildings totaling 637k SF on 9.2 acres, developed by Trammell Crow. The firm acquired the land in ’06 from Principal Financial Group and built both properties in 15 months. Energy Center I is 100% leased to Foster Wheeler and recently sold to Wells REIT II. Energy Center II’s main tenant is WorleyParsons; 67k SF is available. Aaron says it took two and a half years to get a direct cut from the highway feeder to the property, but it’s a big draw. The plaza was designed by HOK and Clark Condon and built by Manhattan. (Want more from Aaron? Hear him speak at our Future of the Energy Corridor event tomorrow morning. Last chance to sign up!)

From Energy Center II, we snapped this of ConocoPhillips’ world HQ. The 62-acre campus was originally designed in 1984, and a 75k SF Wellness Center designed by Pickard Chilton was added in ’06. PDR helped with a recent upgrade to the lobby and parking, with Kendall Heaton and Bellows rounding out the design team. We toured the wellness center—which includes a jogging trail, soccer field, three ping-pong tables, and a six-lane pool—and draws 800 participants daily.

Sponsor Hightlight: NAI Houston

By partnering with Arcadian Real Estate Services, NAI Houston has been able to offer more services to its clients. “We are a market leader in office and industrial leasing,” EVP Scott Davis (right) tells us. “Arcadian really allowed us to develop our business by offering expanded property and project management services.” The NAI Houston brokerage group works with the Arcadian Real Estate Services and Arcadian Real Estate Capital to integrate services on the acquisition, property, and project management side. Arcadian principal Mark Kurtz tells us there is a “distinct synergy and benefit to our clients.” NAI is sponsoring our Energy Corridor event tomorrow, so what's the connection to that topic? “Over the last few years, we’ve done more than 300 energy-related deals in Houston and around the world,” Scott says. More on NAI here.