Ion breaks ground in Midtown to be future ‘beehive of activity’
Officials celebrate new innovation hub as students express concerns over project
The Ion innovation hub, to be located in the former Midtown Sears, celebrated its official groundbreaking Friday morning, with officials and local students placing a heavy emphasis on equity and inclusion.
“We’re not building a new innovation center, a hub, just for those within this sector,” Mayor Sylvester Turner said in a tent placed in the building’s parking lot. “We’re building it for the talent that exists in neighborhoods all across our city.”
The Ion is set to open late next year as a gathering place for startups, large corporations seeking new technologies, venture capitalists, business accelerator programs, academics and others.
Rice Management Co. is leading and financing the project, a $100 million renovation converting the 80-year-old, 270,000square-foot former store to a highend office and collaboration center. “We wanted to create a building that would be a beehive of activity,” said Allison Thacker, president and chief investment officer of Rice Management, which manages the university’s $6.3 billion endowment.
The redevelopment of the old Sears, at 4201 Main, is part of a larger Rice-led innovation district that would cover some 16 acres in Midtown and could ultimately include more commercial development, housing and public spaces. And more broadly, it sits along a four-mile corridor spanning from downtown to the Texas Medical Center that city officials have dubbed the innovation corridor.
Alan Arnold, Rice Management’s investment director of real estate, underscored Rice’s com
mitment to the area.
“Rice owns the land, but we want to be really good stewards — not just for the endowment, but for Houston and for the neighborhood,” he said.
A group of students are seeking to keep Rice accountable to the neighborhood, too. Wanting to avoid problems seen in other tech hubs, the recently formed Student Coalition for a Just and Equitable Innovation Corridor held a news conference across the street from the Ion festivities.
“The coalition’s goal is to hold the innovation corridor’s leaders accountable to the interests and concerns of the local vulnerable populations with historical, ongoing and future connections to this area,” Mary Claire Neal, a Rice University student, said at the news conference. “What we’re concerned about are the patterns of gentrification, food deserts, the affordable housing crisis and unand underemployment.”
Members of the student group attend schools including Rice, Texas Southern University, University of Houston, Houston Community College and local high schools. They recently met with leaders of the Ion project, pushing for actions including a community benefits agreement, which is a contract outlining how projects would include community-determined benefits such as employment programs or affordable housing.
“The engagement is important,” Neal said, “but ultimately the concrete actions are what we need.”
Ryan LeVasseur, Rice Management’s managing director of direct real estate, said he was excited to have met with the students and to have heard their ideas for the innovation district.
“There’s so much work ahead of us. We need to better understand this area,” LeVasseur said. “As far as future agreements, we’ll have to figure that out.”
Gaby Rowe, chief executive of startup hub Station Houston, which will oversee programming at Ion, said her organization has been meeting with community members to determine what should be put in place.
“Anything that holds us as a city accountable for equity and inclusion is a good thing,” Rowe said, “and has to be looked at and explored.”
The groundbreaking ceremony gave attendees a look inside the gutted Sears building and showcased local startups like Rugged Robotics, which is creating intelligent automation for commercial construction, and Northworks Digital Factory, which focuses on 3D printing.
During his remarks to the crowd, Rice President David Leebron thanked the city, county and others who have been part of the innovation district.
But he put special emphasis on the city’s academic institutions, including the University of Houston, Texas Southern University, University of St. Thomas, Houston Baptist University and the area’s community colleges.
“Universities are actually not known, particularly within their home environments, for working together,” Leebron said. “And when we tell people the collaboration that has been brought together around this project, they are amazed. They’ve never seen anything like it.”