William R. Franks

Bill is a native Texas and a longtime Houstonian. During that time, he has watched Houston change and evolve into the dynamic, world class city that it is today. Bill was President of Spire Realty Group, L.P., a commercial real estate, investment, and management company with properties in Houston, Dallas, Austin, Canada and Eastern Europe. During the eighteen years with Spire, he worked on the acquisition, redevelopment, marketing, administration, and management of residential and commercial projects consisting of commercial office buildings, condominiums, historic buildings, retail shopping centers, warehouses, industrial buildings, residential housing, subdivision land development, hotels, historic buildings, loft conversions, CBD parking lots and garages. In just the Houston Central Business District, he has transformed and repositioned fifteen (15) buildings into modern, unique, sustainable properties. Working with Owners, the City of Houston, Redevelopment Authorities, Management Districts and the County, to remove urban blight and problem areas into state-of-the-art properties. Some of the many properties are the 1010 Lamar Building, The Southern Pacific Building/The Bayou Lofts, the McCrory Building/1004 Prairie, The Cotton Exchange Building, 509 Main Street, The Topek Building, The Woodstead Buildings, The William Penn Building, The Stowers Building, The Jesse Jones Building / 708 Main Building and the historical renovation of The Alden/Sam Houston Hotel. The Dallas properties consist of Bryan Tower, Mockingbird Tower, Park Stemmons, Carillon Towers, Promenade Center and Towers.  The Austin properties consist of the Texas Lottery Commission Headquarters Building, Grant Plaza as well as numerous city blocks.

He then joined The Oxberry Group, where he developed Multi-Family Apartments, Retail Shopping Centers, Office Buildings, Industrial Warehouses and Condominiums. Recent projects include Humble Park Place Shopping Center, Village Park Place Shopping Center, Humble Office Park, Chenevert Condominiums and Midtown Grove, a Midtown infill apartment development.

For the last decade, has worked on the conversion of underutilized buildings, transforming them into economic drivers that will endure for the next fifty to one hundred years. One of these buildings is the 100-year-old Carter Building located in the heart of Downtown Houston at 806 Main Building, into the J W Marriott Hotel – Downtown Houston. Another of these buildings is the 103 years old Stowers Furniture Building, which was transformed into the aloft Hotel Houston-Downtown and the Houston Bar Association Building which has just opened into the A C Hotel by Marriott. And currently, Bill is working on four other historical renovation projects of similar stature and nature, the Medical Towers Building transformed into the Westin – Medical Center, the S W Bell Building into the Hyatt Place Downtown Houston.  

Currently, projects include the historic Texas Tower Building in El Paso and the historic Medical Arts Building in Atlanta.