Technology History | Compaq Center West Drive — The Sign Changed and the Buildings Did Not

The merger closed on 3 May 2002, and an HP sign went up at the gate of a campus Compaq had built for itself. Three Texas Instruments managers — Rod Canion, Jim Harris and Bill Murto — founded Compaq in Houston in 1982, and these buildings went up between 1984 and 1988 on State Highway 249. By 1997 the company was booking $24.58 billion in sales and shipping more personal computers than anyone. It had also bought Digital Equipment Corporation in 1998, which meant that when HP came for Compaq, DEC came with it. HP announced the deal on 3 September 2001 and almost lost it. Walter Hewlett, a director and the son of a founder, opposed the merger and ran a proxy fight against his own board. The shareholder vote on 19 March 2002 was close enough that Hewlett sued in the Delaware Court of Chancery, alleging HP had pressured Deutsche Bank into switching the 25 million shares it held. Chancellor Chandler ruled for HP on 30 April 2002, three days before the closing. What HP acquired at this address turned out to be more durable than the deal's reputation. Houston became the company's largest employment hub in the United States, and stayed that way. The site did not last. Floods reached it in April 2016 and again during Hurricane Harvey in 2017, damaging the manufacturing buildings beyond repair. HPE said in November 2017 that it would leave, and in 2022 the campus was sold to Mexcor, a wine and spirits distributor, which now occupies it. HPE's own global headquarters moved to Spring, about eleven miles northeast of here, in a campus that opened in 2022. The trail is easy to follow in the road names. Compaq Center West Drive and Compaq Center Drive are still on the map, attached to a company that stopped existing in 2002. Photo: WhisperToMe, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons — the HP monument sign at the campus entrance, photographed during HP's tenure.