Drawbridge Realty added nearly 40,000 square feet of signed office commitments at its Uplands Corporate Center campus in southwest Austin during the second quarter, as two existing tenants expanded and a national bank re-upped in a market still fighting through elevated vacancy.
The privately held, unlevered real estate firm, partnered with KKR/Global Atlantic, disclosed the leasing run on July 30 at Uplands I, a 167,368-square-foot Class A office building anchoring its 48-acre campus at 5301 Southwest Parkway. The deals stand out in a metro where landlords are competing hard for tenant loyalty, and where the newest, best-amenitized buildings are the ones winning it.
Law firm Fee Smith & Sharp LLC drove the largest commitment, renewing its 10,517 square feet through 2033 while expanding its footprint by 24 percent, or roughly 2,500 additional square feet. Matt Frizzell of Cushman & Wakefield represented Drawbridge in the negotiations, while John Scoblick and Jerry Frey of Savills represented the firm.
Energy consultant Electric Power Engineers followed with a 31 percent expansion of its global headquarters at the campus, adding 5,355 square feet via a direct lease to its existing 17,132-square-foot block. The move lifts the firm’s total presence at Uplands to roughly 22,500 square feet. Andy Carlson of Cushman & Wakefield represented Electric Power Engineers.
Earlier in the year, Wells Fargo Bank signed a renewal for 20,560 square feet at Uplands I, the single largest of the commitments. Jake Ragusa and Luke Gholston of JLL represented the bank.
The activity lands against an Austin office market that is stabilizing but still oversupplied. Metro-wide office vacancy eased to 20.6 percent in the second quarter, down from 21.2 percent in the first, with positive net absorption of roughly 735,300 square feet, according to a Q2 2026 Texas office market snapshot compiled by Coy Davidson of The Tenant Advisor. The recovery is uneven: the report noted that Austin’s central business district posted negative absorption during the period, while suburban and northwest submarkets carried the gains, a pattern consistent with tenants gravitating toward newer, well-located product away from downtown.
That flight to quality is showing up in pricing. Overall asking rents in Austin softened to $44.79 per square foot in the quarter, but Class A space commanded a premium of $54.88 per square foot, according to the same report. The spread underscores why direct renewals and expansions in a fully leased, amenity-rich campus like Uplands carry weight: in a tenant’s market, retention is the harder-won victory.
Uplands Corporate Center consists of two Class A office buildings with views of the Texas Hill Country and downtown Austin. Uplands I was built in 2007 and renovated in 2022. Uplands II, designed by LEVY/DYKEMA and developed by Drawbridge, was completed in 2021 and has drawn recognition for its sustainability and wellness features. The campus has previously reached full occupancy, giving the firm limited room to accommodate growth without the kind of in-place expansions it landed this quarter.
The Austin leasing push is one thread in a broader run of activity for Drawbridge. Over the past 12 months, the firm acquired more than $740 million of Class A assets totaling more than 1.1 million square feet, including the 514,000-square-foot Bridgestone Tower in downtown Nashville, which it also closed in the second quarter. Drawbridge paid $255 million for the 30-story tower, its first foray into the Nashville market, according to Connect CRE. The firm also invested more than $20 million in tenant improvements and capital projects over the period and secured more than 650,000 square feet of major leases nationwide.
Drawbridge specializes in the acquisition, development, and management of mission-critical properties leased to major corporate users, and owns and manages a 7 million-square-foot portfolio of single-tenant office, R&D, life science, and industrial assets across high-growth U.S. markets. Its tenant roster includes Anduril, Apple, Bank of America, Bridgestone Americas, Broadcom, L3Harris Technologies, Meta, Northrop Grumman, Take-Two Interactive, Universal Music Group, Uber, and Wells Fargo, among others.
For a firm that leans on long-term leases to creditworthy tenants, the Uplands commitments reinforce the thesis: the deals push renewal terms as far out as 2033 and deepen relationships with tenants that chose to grow in place rather than test the open market. As Austin’s office sector works through its supply overhang, the second-quarter tally suggests Drawbridge’s disciplined, quality-focused approach is holding its ground in one of the metro’s more competitive suburban nodes.
