Shell Oil Company's Bellaire Technology Center had been located in Southside Place. The facility opened as a geophysical processing center in 1936. For decades many scientists and engineers discovered and studied facts related to oil and natural gas. In 2008 Shell announced that it would close the Bellaire facility and expand the Westhollow Technology Center in Houston to accommodate the most of the staff employed by the Bellaire center, while some staff would go to the Woodcreek Technology Campus in western Houston. Shell said that it closed the Bellaire facility partly because two thirds of the land was leased, and the lease was set to expire in 2010. The move decreased tax revenue into the City of Southside Place; the city rezoned the parcel for various land uses.