TMC Helix Park: Texas Medical Center Bio Research Campus

[Naviguessor]

Has nothing to do with this topic. Don’t poison it, please. 

[texas911]

Are you serious? lol, if you read the whole thread, its got lots of topics. And the UT school/funding is part of the project. Now, who's on topic?

 

Plus have you ever wondered why UH isn't part of TMC3?

Edited December 10, 2019 by texas911

[hindesky]

The construction fence looks new to me. Might be a lay down yard for the TMC3 project.

[Highrise Tower]

There was a luncheon celebration today.  Sand was brought in.  Also noticed a small Biggie crane.  Sounds like a groundbreaking ceremony but it's probably not.

 

 

 

[hindesky]

 

COMING TO HOU IN 2022

Texas Medical Center reveals new details and renderings for its TMC3 campus

The design and construction team has been announced for TMC3. Courtesy of Elkus Manfredi Architects

 

The Texas Medical Center just announced the dream team of architects and designers that are making TMC3 into a reality.

Elkus Manfredi Architects, Transwestern, and Vaughn Construction are the three companies that will serve as the architectural and development team for the 37-acre research campus. TMC3's founding institutions — TMC, Baylor College of Medicine, Texas A&M University Health Science Center, The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, and The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center — decided on the three entities.

"Texas Medical Center is eager to move forward with a bold, imaginative and dynamic new design vision for the TMC3 Master Plan," says TMC CEO and president, Bill McKeon, in a press release. "With the combined talents of Elkus Manfredi Architects, Transwestern, and Vaughn Construction on-board, I couldn't be more confident that this dream team will flawlessly execute the totality of the project's vision and fulfill its mission to bring together leading researchers and top-tiered expertise from the private sector to create the number one biotechnology and bioscience innovation center in the entire world."

 

TMC3 was first announced just over a year ago and is planned to open in 2022. The campus will incorporate research facilities, retail space, residential plans, a hotel and conference center, and green space. Parking will be underground to optimize surface area.

Design in mind

 

 

The 37-acre research campus will be interconnected by a DNA helix outdoor promenade.

Courtesy of Elkus Manfredi Architects

 

From a design perspective, the key element will be a DNA helix-shape that looks like a necklace chain that connects the campus.

"Our idea was to expand on the DNA design concept and create a series of spaces that would elongate the strand all the way north to the historic core of the Texas Medical Center and south to the new development by UTHealth and MD Anderson in order to create more opportunity for connections and collisions," says Elkus Manfredi Architects CEO and founding principal, David Manfredi, in the release. "We're implementing the connective tissue between all these places and establishing opportunities for unplanned interactions. Science, technology, medicine, discovery and innovation are all about making connections, and we are building a space for institutions, industry and startups to interact."

 

Manfredi's firm is responsible for a few other iconic medical facilities, such as the original Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and The Stanley Building at the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the New York Genome Center.

"We want to create spaces that attract talent," Manfredi says in the release. "You can attract talent with great colleagues, research and facilities, but if you don't have a great social environment for people to live, learn, and play, people move on. We are creating a place where people will want to be because they're constantly stimulated – whether it's breakfast at the local coffee shop, or a volleyball league in the afternoon, or working in a central lab and the person next to them is doing something intersects with their own research."

 

Growing partner institutions

 

 

TMC3 Collaborative will be a centrally located building on the campus that is designed to host gatherings and share space with industry leaders.

Courtesy of Elkus Manfredi Architects

 

 

While a big portion of the attraction in the new campus is this multi-purposeful and connective space, the project opens doors for the five partner institutions. For Baylor College of Medicine, TMC3 means an expansion of its facilities and an increased footprint for Baylor St. Luke's Medical Center's McNair Campus. The second tower of the hospital will be right at TMC3's eastern edge.

"The selection of a development team is an important milestone for the TMC3 project," says Paul Klotman, president, CEO and executive dean of Baylor College of Medicine, in the release. "The project itself is a huge step in developing the biotech industry in Houston. At Baylor, we look forward to working closely with TMC leaders, as well as those of the other anchor institutions, in making this project a reality."

Additionally, the Texas A&M Health Science Center research building — led by Carrie L. Byington, M.D — on the north end adjacent to BCM's building and the hotel and conference center. On the south side of the campus, MD Anderson and UTHealth will each develop new research facilities that will connect to the existing University of Texas Research Park that is directly to the south of the campus. UT Research Park will be connected to TMC3 via a new skybridge.

 

The release also describes a central building dubbed TMC3 Collaborative that will create collaborative research space for industry partners. The first level of the building will be an open atrium for gatherings and have food and beverage concepts.

"When TMC3 opens in 2022, Texas Medical Center will officially plant a tangible flag that signals its arrival as the Third Coast for life sciences for the foreseeable future," McKeon says in the release.

[lockmat]

On 5/24/2019 at 12:51 PM, CaptainJilliams said:

This development is actually starting to remind me of a development in Pittsburgh known as Nova Place. Before I moved down to Houston, I attended college just outside of Pittsburgh, so I frequently made trips to the city to watch ball games and see performances, a nice mid-size city.

 

Nova Place is a renewal project on the north side of town that took the former Allegheny Center (Mall) and turned it into a mixed-use hub with the largest co-working space in the city, restaurants, and even residential units nearby. From what I've heard, it's experienced a decent amount of success and continues to add a lot of tech and medical companies.

 

You can take a look at it for yourself here: https://novaplace.com/about-nova-place/

 

I hope Post HTX can be a significantly better version of this, and hopefully grow and add more amenities with time.  

 

They're going to build the campus out in THREE to FIVE years?!

[TheSirDingle]

2 years to build out this monster of a development, that's insanely quick. They better start digging last year.

This is going to be something special for Houston (Texas as a whole to a certain extent), and bring so much to the table. I might even dare to say it's going to be ICONIC

[Houston19514]

19 hours ago, TheSirDingle said:

2 years to build out this monster of a development, that's insanely quick. They better start digging last year.

This is going to be something special for Houston (Texas as a whole to a certain extent), and bring so much to the table. I might even dare to say it's going to be ICONIC

 

I don't think they are saying that everything in the renderings will be completed in 2 years.

[Urbannizer]

Start date pushed back from early 2020 to "later this year"

 

Where and how healthcare is being provided will continue to shift in 2020. The change starts at Houston’s healthcare epicenter, the Texas Medical Center, where the long-awaited

TMC3 expansion project will break ground later this year. The 37-acre campus will add 1.5M SF of collaborative research space, integrating commercial operations with the Texas Medical Centers' institutional knowledge.

https://www.bisnow.com/houston/news/healthcare/houstons-healthcare-sector-leads-the-way-in-2020-102362

[j_cuevas713]

2 hours ago, Urbannizer said:

Start date pushed back from early 2020 to "later this year"

 

 

 

 

https://www.bisnow.com/houston/news/healthcare/houstons-healthcare-sector-leads-the-way-in-2020-102362

 

I wouldn’t take this too literal. I mean later this year could mean a month or two. 

[Luminare]

5 hours ago, j_cuevas713 said:

I wouldn’t take this too literal. I mean later this year could mean a month or two. 

 

Yeah. It could mean anything. Early 2020 is something one would say the prior year, but "later this year" is something you would say when you are already in that year.

[Houston19514]

11 hours ago, Urbannizer said:

Start date pushed back from early 2020 to "later this year"

 

 

 

 

https://www.bisnow.com/houston/news/healthcare/houstons-healthcare-sector-leads-the-way-in-2020-102362

 

 

8 hours ago, j_cuevas713 said:

I wouldn’t take this too literal. I mean later this year could mean a month or two. 

 

2 hours ago, Luminare said:

 

Yeah. It could mean anything. Early 2020 is something one would say the prior year, but "later this year" is something you would say when you are already in that year.

 

Agreed, especially when it's nothing more than a minor reference in a story that is not focused on TMC3. (What journalist, especially among Houston journalists, would take the time to look up specific information when a casual generalized bit of fluff will fill the space?)

[Highrise Tower]

TMC's 2020 parking fee schedule indicates the South Extension lot is closing on 2/29/20.

 

 

[texan]

The Texas A&M University System Board of Regents are expected to approve a $109 million research building for TMC3 next week. (Page 25)

 

http://assets.system.tamus.edu/files/bor/pdf/AgendaArchive/2020-02Reg/RegularItemBinderFeb2020.pdf

[Highrise Tower]

20 minutes ago, texan said:

The Texas A&M University System Board of Regents are expected to approve a $109 million research building for TMC3 next week. (Page 25)

 

http://assets.system.tamus.edu/files/bor/pdf/AgendaArchive/2020-02Reg/RegularItemBinderFeb2020.pdf

 

 

 

 

 

[bobruss]

In earlier renderings It showed the TMC3 project extending south of O.S.T. In a post from ekdrm2d1,  on page 7 oct. 31, the third frame shows the tract and in that image it actually shows this project crossing O.S.T. and actually going right into some guys head. Has that changed?

[cloud713]

Assuming the layout linked in the post right above yours is the new/current design, it shows it crossing OST.

[Luminare]

4 hours ago, bobruss said:

In earlier renderings It showed the TMC3 project extending south of O.S.T. In a post from ekdrm2d1,  on page 7 oct. 31, the third frame shows the tract and in that image it actually shows this project crossing O.S.T. and actually going right into some guys head. Has that changed?

 

To help visualize this better for everyone, I've now plotted this on the Development Map, per the recent site plan.

[X.R.]

Yeah it is going over OST because there is going to be that bridge that they showed in the video, the one with the bikes and people and autonomous cars. 

 

What kind of underrated is that they are building a pedestrian friendly way of getting from the bayou/TMC North/Hermann Park to OST without, you know, dying. 

 

Edited February 2, 2020 by X.R.

[Triton]

On 1/31/2020 at 5:24 PM, ekdrm2d1 said:

 

 

 

This thing is going over the bayou on the top?

[Geographer]

2 hours ago, Triton said:

 

This thing is going over the bayou on the top?

I doubt it.  The map ends at Braeswood for a reason.

 

There should fewer cross streets.  The architects should remove E, O, and S streets to improve the pedestrian experience and safety.  It would be awesome to have a long, uninterrupted pedestrian mall.

[Triton]

16 minutes ago, Geographer said:

I doubt it.  The map ends at Braeswood for a reason.

 

 

Am I the only one seeing the criss-crossed lines going over Braeswood?

[cspwal]

19 minutes ago, Geographer said:

I doubt it.  The map ends at Braeswood for a reason.

 

There should fewer cross streets.  The architects should remove E, O, and S streets to improve the pedestrian experience and safety.  It would be awesome to have a long, uninterrupted pedestrian mall.

 

Cross streets that don't have through traffic can create a feeling of a more urban environment, and can also provide places for parking, uber drop off/pickup, and loading zones in a way that flows better than dedicated driveways.  If I had to guess, I bet there will be wide crosswalks at all those cross streets, with stop signs and speed tables to keep cars from going to fast through them

[hindesky]

I doubt it, the Thermal Energy Corp is just across Brays Bayou.

[Triton]

1 hour ago, hindesky said:

I doubt it, the Thermal Energy Corp is just across Brays Bayou.

Based on your map, maybe it will connect into the Brays Bayou bike trail.

[CREguy13]

Great HBJ article this morning.  The bolded text at the end is very encouraging.

 

Houston hospital systems, Texas universities and private developers are investing hundreds of millions of dollars to grow their presences in the Texas Medical Center — the planet’s largest medical center.

 

Most recently, the Texas A&M University System announced on Feb. 20 that it would build a $550 million complex in the heart of the TMC. The development will include a new 19-floor student housing tower; a new 30-floor medical office tower; and a renovated 18-story building to house the university’s innovative EnMed degree program.

 

The massive development project is being funded through a public-private partnership. State funds totaling $145 million facilitated Texas A&M’s land purchase near the TMC and the renovation of the existing 18-floor building. Private industry will cover the remaining $401 million to construct the two new towers.

 

Having a large presence in the Texas Medical Center will aid Texas A&M’s medical research and recruiting capabilities, said Greg Hartman, interim senior vice president for the Texas A&M University Health Science Center. Just as Texas A&M invests in its sports facilities to recruit the nation’s top athletic talent, the Health Science Center needed to build a premier medical research facility in the TMC, Hartman said.

 

“The same way you build weight rooms to recruit football and basketball players, and new gymnasiums and swimming pools to attract elite athletes, you’ve got to have those same kind of facilities to attract elite medical students and researchers,” Hartman said.

Finding the industry loophole

In 2017, the Texas A&M University System purchased an 18-story building on 5.5 acres at 1020 Holcombe Blvd. For-profit entities are barred from operating on the 1,400 acres owned by the nonprofit TMC — but Texas A&M owns its own land. That way, the university can attract and partner with for-profit corporations and public entities.

 

“Because we are just outside of the medical center, we don’t have covenants or any restrictions dealing with private folks,” said John Sharp, chancellor of the Texas A&M University System. “So, a for-profit Pfizer could come in right next to somebody from Baylor College of Medicine that has rented some research space.”

 

Houston-based Medistar Corp. is the developer for the Texas A&M project. Medistar also developed the InterContinental Houston-Medical Center, the first luxury hotel built in the TMC area in decades. The company is also nearing groundbreaking for the new Innovation Tower — a 48-story, mixed-use facility to be situated at 6700 Main St., next to the InterContinental. Paul McCleary, senior vice president of business development for Medistar Corp., said Innovation Tower will become the tallest building in the TMC when it’s completed.

 

Innovation Tower will consist of ground level retail space; dry lab and research space for medical, biomedical and health tech companies; 410 luxury apartment units; and parking for up to 2,000 vehicles, McCleary said. Similar to Texas A&M’s project, Innovation Tower has for-profit entities in mind. Currently, if a health care giant, like a Pfizer or a Medtronic, were looking for a large office footprint in the heart of the TMC, they wouldn’t find it, McCleary said. Innovation Tower aims to fill that need.

 

“If you’re a larger group that has a requirement for maybe [30,000], [50,000] or 100,000 square feet, the next question is, ‘Where is that available in the Texas Medical Center?’” McCleary said. “Today I would tell you it doesn’t exist.”

Healthy growth

Medistar recently broke ground on The Fountains, a 326-unit multifamily development at the corner of Alice and Ardmore east of the TMC, McCleary said. Aside from larger office space and student housing, McCleary emphasized the need for additional multifamily apartment units around the TMC as the area continues to grow.

 

Outside of Texas A&M’s massive project and Innovation Tower, there are other major developments in store for the TMC. Bill McKeon, president and CEO of the Texas Medical Center, said groundbreaking for the new 37-acre TMC3 campus should happen in the second quarter of 2020. Five partners comprise the TMC3 founding institutions — TMC, Baylor College of Medicine, Texas A&M University Health Science Center, the University of

Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) and the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.

 

Like the Texas A&M complex, TMC3 was designed to meet a person’s many needs — and not simply the needs of the working employee. The project is centered around a DNA helix-shaped green space promenade that will span the length of the campus. The facilities surrounding the promenade will include over 100,000 square feet of retail space.

 

“The needs of our physicians and researchers have changed dramatically,” McKeon said. “They demand to be in work-live-play environments. They want to be in a densified area that has all the amenities necessary for the whole person — not just the person who’s going to work.”

 

McKeon said there’s never been a more active time of development in the 75-year history of the TMC. From TMC3 to the Texas A&M complex to Innovation Tower — the world’s largest medical city is only getting larger. The TMC thinks that many new entrants will be for-profit corporations.

 

“Now, we’re actually opening the doors and creating a whole new environment for industry to play right alongside, and the response has been really exciting,” McKeon said.

Sleeping giant

Other institutions in the TMC are investing hundreds of millions of dollars in hospital expansions. Memorial Hermann Health System — the largest health system in Houston — opened the new Sarofim Pavilion in late February. Susan and Fayez Sarofim, the billionaire behind Houston-based investment firm Fayez Sarofim & Co., donated $25 million for the project — the largest gift Memorial Hermann had ever received when it was announced in February 2018. The Sarofim Pavilion was part of a roughly $700 million renovation and expansion project at Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center, according to Memorial Hermann.

 

The new 17-floor tower has more than 140 patient rooms; 24 operating rooms, including three hybrid ORs; a 335-seat cafeteria dubbed the Arboretum Café; and 900 new parking spots. Sarofim Pavilion also is the new home of the Red Duke Trauma Institute at Memorial Hermann-TMC — one of two adult Level 1 trauma centers in Houston. Operations for Memorial Hermann’s air ambulance service, Life Flight, moved on top of the new tower.

 

In August 2019, M.D. Anderson Cancer Center broke ground on a $159 million expansion of its Proton Therapy Center at 1840 Old Spanish Trail. The expansion will grow the center’s footprint to over 160,000 square feet, enough room for the cancer center to house eight proton therapy radiation machines developed by Japanese technology manufacturer Hitachi. The center currently spans 73,500 square feet.

 

On top of the hundreds of millions of dollars being poured into the TMC right now, even more deals with industry are waiting to be announced once TMC3 breaks ground, McKeon said.

 

“They’re realizing that the sleeping giant has awoken and now we’re open for business,” McKeon said. “We’re just seeing it with Texas A&M University — and wait until TMC3 opens.”

[H-Town Man]

So second quarter groundbreaking for TMC3. Can't happen soon enough.

 

[CREguy13]

Another great article from Costar on TMC.  A big takeaway was the below statement from McKeon:

 

'McKeon said the TMC3 project is sparking interest and investment from private companies.  He already has a letter-of-intent with a major industry player for a 500,000-square-foot-building in the complex.'

 

"We'll be announcing deal after deal after deal with the industry.  It's amazing the speed and the appetite they've had," McKeon said.  "The sleeping giant has awoken and now we're open for business."

 

Wondering who this could be... Medtronic or Johnson & Johnson perhaps?

Houston Aims to Become a US 'Medical Device Mecca'

The first successful artificial heart transplant. The first battery-powered heart pump. The first silicone gel breast implant.

 

These medical device breakthroughs took place in Houston. Now scientists and civic leaders are hoping the city could be home to more medical device innovations, thanks to a confluence of a university's major expansion near the world's largest medical district, the Texas Medical Center, the city's relative affordability compared to high-tech areas such as Silicon Valley, and collaborations with top research institutions.

 

Texas A&M University System and its partners plan to pour a half-billion dollars into a project near the TMC they say could help turn Houston into a growing hub for medical device innovation. The university system and Houston-based developer Medistar Corp. are behind the $546 million mixed-use complex that features three skyscrapers, including a renovated 18-story tower to house the university's medical engineering program where "physicianeers" in training are required to invent a medical device to graduate.

 

It's not going to be easy: In a national ranking of regions for the medical device industry, Texas only ranked No. 7, and powerhouse states like California aren't sitting by idly. In Texas, officials are counting on Texas A&M's expanded medical engineering presence to add to public, private and educational research efforts already underway in Houston that could elevate a nascent medical device industry in the state, proponents say.

 

The work is happening against the backdrop of the proposed 37-acre biotech campus, called TMC3, which is perhaps optimistically dubbed the "Third Coast" for life sciences and is expected to break ground in the second quarter. It may be a reach, and could be partly based on some big Texas bluster, but the effort shows how medical innovation is a driver of real estate development across the United States.

"The ultimate goal is to have both the East and West coasts shaking in their boots — or whatever shoes they’re wearing," Dr. Paul Cherukuri, executive director of the Institute of Biosciences and Bioengineering at Houston’s Rice University, said in an interview with CoStar News.

 

While the national competition is tough, and gaining funding is always competitive, Houston shows it can take on other cities. Houston is already home to more than 1,760 life sciences companies, and local institutions received $668 million in medical research grant funding from the National Institutes of Health in 2018, a 6.9% increase from the year before.

 

Bill McKeon, CEO of the Texas Medical Center Corp., the nonprofit that oversees the 50 million-square-foot TMC campus where more than 100,000 employees work, said Texas and Houston are at a critical turning point. McKeon, who spent much of his career in the medical device industry at firms like Medtronic, argues that there is not a single city for known for medical device innovation, research and development, besides clusters in Boston and Minneapolis.

 

He said CEOs at major medical device companies have started telling him they see Houston as the next go-to place for medical device innovation. McKeon said there are several medical device deals in the works for the proposed TMC3 campus that he expects to announce later this year. Plans for the campus call for 1.5 million square feet of buildings and parks designed to look like a double helix DNA strand from above.

 

"I think the Medical Center … will be where the medical device mecca will happen in the United States," McKeon said in an interview.

 

Expansion Challenge

 

Restrictive covenants inside the TMC historically prevented private, for-profit companies from significantly expanding. Instead, nonprofit hospitals, healthcare systems and research institutions have dominated the district. The new TMC3 campus loosens restrictions for for-profit endeavors, opening new opportunities for for-profit companies to work alongside nonprofits, universities and research institutions.

 

McKeon said the TMC3 project is sparking interest and investment from private companies. He already has a letter-of-intent with a major industry player for a 500,000-square-foot-building in the complex.

 

"We’ll be announcing deal after deal after deal with the industry. It’s amazing the speed and the appetite they’ve had," McKeon said. "The sleeping giant has awoken and now we’re open for business."

 

McKeon and others have noted that the TMC is attractive for product researchers because they can access a large, diverse pool of patients to develop and test new products. About 10 million patients visit the TMC every year, according to the TMC, and Houston is now considered one of the most ethnically diverse cities in the country. TMC3 is meant to put the industry, researchers and startups together to speed the time from idea to manufacturing new products.

 

"When you’re working with patients, you want that feedback immediately to close the time from innovation to commercialization — and that really requires the industry side-by-side with researchers," McKeon said.

Medical device deals inside TMC3 and the new Texas A&M University complex are expected to add to work already underway nearby at Rice University, a private research university with a medical innovation master’s program. A Rice University team of neuroengineers is developing a headset technology that can directly link the human brain to machines without surgery, backed by $18 million in U.S. Department of Defense funding.

 

Texas is an attractive option for medical technology startups because of its affordability when compared to east and west coast cities. Among the nation’s 20 most populous metropolitan areas, Houston’s housing costs are 49.3% below the average, and its overall costs are 25.4% below average, according to the Council for Community and Economic Research.

 

"The cost of doing research and startups out there and in Silicon Valley [is getting more expensive]. People are coming to Houston. I think you’re going to start seeing a lot more [medical innovation] hits coming out of Houston," Cherukuri said.

 

Financial Collaborations

 

While cities such as Boston benefit from collaborations with deep pocketed research institutions such as Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Silicon Valley works with Stanford University, Houston has deep pockets of its own. TMC3 is a collaboration between Texas A&M University Health Science Center, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, Baylor College of Medicine and the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.

 

The UT System and Texas A&M System rank in the top 10 in the nation for largest endowments of U.S. colleges and universities, and Rice University ranks in the top 20, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

 

Texas has a big challenge in trying to catch up to other states. It lags behind states including California, Minnesota and Massachusetts for the medical device industry. There were 72, 471 professionals working for the medical device industry in California last year, where roughly $2.5 billion of venture capital funding flowed into medical device companies, according to industry magazine Medical Design & Outsourcing. That compares to Texas, where there were just 15,087 professionals employed by the medical device industry and just $53 million in venture capital funneled to industry startups.

 

The Texas Medical Center, the eighth-largest business district in the United States, has already started to see more interest from the medical device industry.

 

Fortune 500 medical tech company Johnson & Johnson opened its Center for Device Innovation in 2017 inside the TMC, the multinational firm’s only research and development center dedicated to inventing medical devices to make surgeries less invasive and bring procedures to underserved populations.

 

Johnson & Johnson also runs an incubator program in the medical center called JLabs @ TMC, alongside an accelerator program for healthcare entrepreneurs called TMCx. The TMC Innovation Institute is also home to AT&T Foundry, which is researching network connectivity for prosthetic limbs. And last year, robotics company ABB opened a 5,300-square-foot facility within TMC dedicated to finding new ways to use robots in the healthcare industry.

 

Integar, the largest medical device contractor manufacturer in the world, is headquartered in Plano outside of Dallas, and the state is home to several manufacturing facilities for Fortune 500 medical tech companies and subsidiaries such as Stryker, Cardinal Health and Becton Dickinson. One of the largest industrial construction projects underway in Houston is a 1.3 million-square-foot warehouse for Medline Industries, the largest private medical supply manufacturer in the world.

 

Funding Challenge

 

Becoming a national leader won't be easy. In speaking with executives at medical technology startups, Cherukuri, the Rice University professor, said raising venture capital funding in Houston continues to be a challenge, though that is changing slowly.

 

After all, Houston isn’t known as a startup magnet like Austin, which in spite of being a significantly smaller city, raked in $2.2 billion in venture capital funding in 2019 across 263 deals, according to PitchBook data.

 

Last year, venture capital funneled $543.9 million into Houston startups, the highest number on record for the Houston region, according to an analysis from Pitchbook by the Greater Houston Partnership.

 

Healthcare and life sciences startups were the biggest target for funding, scoring about $244 million across 26 deals, according to the partnership. Half of that total came from Houston’s largest venture capital deal of the year, a $121 million series B funding to the immunology firm Allovir.

 

Economic development and civic leaders in Houston are trying to spur startup growth in the so-called Innovation District, a proposed 4-mile district stretching from the Texas Medical Center north to downtown and is anchored by The Ion, an innovation hub redevelopment of a former Sears by Rice University in the Midtown neighborhood. Though the proposed Innovation District isn’t without its critics, proponents argue it could be a critical step in building a true startup ecosystem in the city.

 

Justin Boyar, CoStar's director of market analytics in Houston, said the new Texas A&M program and The Ion could help generate the tech startup and venture capital interest in Houston needed to propel the medical device industry into a more national spotlight.

 

"Midtown’s growing profile as a soon-to-be burgeoning tech cluster adds to the attractiveness of Houston’s growing medtech R&D cluster profile, as it provides density and room for a medtech presence to eventually grow," Boyar said. "Houston still has a ways to go to gain ground on the top medtech R&D hubs, such as the Bay Area, Boston, Minneapolis-St. Paul, and Warsaw, Indiana … but I do think Houston is moving in the right direction."

[texas911]

Is there any way Metro could add a line close to this thing? 

[cloud713]

11 hours ago, CREguy13 said:

Plans for the campus call for 1.5 million square feet of buildings and parks designed to look like a double helix DNA strand from above.

 

McKeon said the TMC3 project is sparking interest and investment from private companies. He already has a letter-of-intent with a major industry player for a 500,000-square-foot-building in the complex.

 

"We’ll be announcing deal after deal after deal with the industry. It’s amazing the speed and the appetite they’ve had," McKeon said. "The sleeping giant has awoken and now we’re open for business."

1.5 million square feet of buildings in the TMC3, and a "major industry player" is taking up 1/3rd of it? Add in the university facilities, and I have to wonder where is the room left for all this co-op collaborative innovation work that the TMC3 is supposed to support? Kind of seems like they're not building this big enough..