Houston's economic diversity Thread .. (Dallas, San Antonio: sale, transferring to, luxury)

[Jack Lance]

By and large, Texas' cities stay in their lanes. Houston is the energy capital, with a hefty dose of health care. Dallas does finance. Austin does technology and startups. For a long time, that was fine.

In recent years, however, Houston has started to feel the absence of that startup energy. Venture capital funding, which has backed companies such as Apple, Amazon and Facebook that have now surpassed the largest oil companies in size, has sunk in Houston over the past decade.

And now, city and business leaders are making a concerted effort to try to fix it.

Houston is starting to work on its startup problem - Houston Chronicle

[Jack Lance]

Two stories involving Houston's place in both NASA's space goals, and the evolving private space industry..

With eyes on Mars, Congress sends NASA bill to Trump

WASHINGTON - The U.S. House overwhelmingly approved sweeping new NASA legislation Tuesday, charting an ambitious course to the moon, Mars, "and beyond" while a slew of private space ventures vie for a bigger piece of the action in deep space.
The 146-page bill, shepherded through Congress by a number of prominent Texas Republicans, including Sen. Ted Cruz, seeks a balance between the government space agency and private sector upstarts like Blue Origin and SpaceX, which have set their sights on taking tourists to the moon.
Having cleared the Senate last month, the $19.5 billion NASA bill - the agency's first major legislative tune-up in seven years - is bound for the White House, one of the first major policy initiatives from Congress to hit President Donald Trump's desk. Both House and Senate versions passed on unanimous voice votes.

The bipartisan bill, following a Senate collaboration between Cruz and Florida Democrat Bill Nelson, would advance NASA's development of the Space Launch System heavy-lift rocket and Orion crew vehicle for deep space exploration. It also would support development of commercial vehicles to transport astronauts to the International Space Station, ending the United States' reliance on Russian launches.
Cruz said the bill provides "much-needed certainty" to the missions of the International Space Station and Johnson Space Center.

With eyes on Mars, Congress sends NASA bill to Trump - Houston Chronicle

New control tower moves Ellington closer to space

The City Council will consider a $12.4 million request to replace Ellington Airport's aging and Hurricane Ike-damaged air traffic control tower, another step in the former military base's transformation into a spaceport to handle craft that will travel beyond Earth.
"All of a sudden, what was at one point considered infrastructure of the past becomes the infrastructure of the future," Arturo Machuca, general manager of Ellington and the Houston Spaceport, said Tuesday.
The current tower is more than 60 years old and has needed steel beams for stability since it was damaged in the 2008 hurricane.

At 143 feet, the new tower would be almost twice as tall as the one it is replacing. It would boast new communication and weather observation equipment and include a mission control area for spaceflights that are expected in the years ahead.

New control tower moves Ellington closer to space - Houston Chronicle

[Jack Lance]

Solar power manufacturing and generation part of Houston's economic diversity.

Sunnova, a Houston solar power company, received an $80 million investment from a subsidiary of U.S. Bank to help it fund more than $200 million worth of residential solar projects, Sunnova said Tuesday.

Houston is an expanding market for solar panel companies, which nevertheless have struggled to grow in a state that offers no local incentives for solar power and where renewable energy competes with cheap and plentiful natural gas.

In addition to Sunnova, other companies offering residential solar systems in Houston include SolarCity, which is partnering with MP2 Energy, a retail electricity firm based in The Woodlands, and Green Mountain Energy, a subsidiary of NRG Energy.

Solar firm Sunnova lands $80 million investment - Houston Chronicle

[Jack Lance]

More support flowers for city’s tech startups

Different visions emerge on how to help entrepreneurs find long-term success

BUILDING an innovation and technology cluster takes money, ideas and vision. To those essential ingredients add another: institutions that host and nurture startups, like rocks that anchor shellfish in turbulent seas.+
“Entrepreneurship is a very lonely activity,” says Hesam Panahi, a professor of entrepreneurship at Rice University. “And you need to be around that energy and that buzz.”

http://digital.olivesoftware.com/Oli...e/default.aspx

[CosmicAries]

Amazon announces plans to build another 1M-square-foot facility near Houston

By Olivia Pulsinelli
March 29. 2017

Amazon.com, Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN) announced March 29 that it will build another Houston-area fulfillment center that will create 1,000 more full-time jobs.

The 1 million-square-foot fulfillment center will be in Katy.

http://www.bizjournals.com/houston/n...1m-square.html

[Jack Lance]

Two articles today exemplify Houston ever increasing economic diversity.

Stage Stores to acquire about half of bankrupt retailer's stores

Houston-based Stage Stores Inc. (NYSE: SSI) announced March 30 it won a bid to acquire about half of Gordmans Stores Inc.’s assets through a bankruptcy auction.
Reports surfaced earlier this month that Stage Stores was seriously considering bidding for some of Gordmans assets. The Omaha, Nebraska-based retailer announced it was filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy March 13 and listed total debt of $131 million, sister paper Denver Business Journal reported at the time.

Stage is acquiring the “most desirable Gordmans locations,” which will give the Houston company a strong presence in larger Midwestern markets, Glazer said in the release.

http://www.bizjournals.com/houston/n...-bankrupt.html

Small businesses and Entrepreneurs are absolutely necessary to developing economic diversity.

Businessman gets a handle on cell accessories market

Entrepreneur sells the LoveHandle, a strap for the back of a cellphone

The company last year grossed $1.2 million, and Watts said it is on track for $3 million in sales in 2017.
Watts also created his own knockoff with a cheaper version of the LoveHandle, called the SlingGrip.
"Anytime you launch a product that you think is going to be really big, you're going to get a knockoff, whether or not you have patents," Watts said. "So from Day 1, I decided to co-launch two products, so we could be our own knockoff."
The more expensive LoveHandle sells for $9.95 on sites like Amazon. Sales got a big boost on March 9, when it appeared on "Deals and Steals" on "Good Morning America."

Businessman gets a handle on cell accessories market - Houston Chronicle

[Jack Lance]

CADENCE

Bank prepares to launch its IPO

By Andrea Rumbaugh

Houston-based Cadence Bancorporation is launching its initial public offering during a period of optimism, experts said, as stabilized oil prices, rising interest rates and hopes of reduced regulations have helped boost bank stocks in Texas and across the country.

Cadence Bancorporation, with $9.5 billion in assets, is the holding company for Cadence Bank. The regional bank operates 65 locations in Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Tennessee and Texas.

Formed in 2009 by banking industry veterans, Cadence secured $1 billion of capital commitments in 2010 and built its franchise on the heels of three successful acquisitions: Cadence Bank in March 2011, the franchise of Superior Bank in April 2011 and Encore Bank in July 2012, according to regulatory filings.

Cadence generated $65.8 million in net income last year and $39.3 million in net income in 2015.

http://digital.olivesoftware.com/Oli...e/Default.aspx

[Dopo]

Originally Posted by Jack Lance

Two stories involving Houston's place in both NASA's space goals, and the evolving private space industry..

With eyes on Mars, Congress sends NASA bill to Trump

I'll never understand why people don't see that as wasteful spending
What happened to all the plan of "colonizing the moon"?

[Jack Lance]

Rice business plan competition and the TMCx adding to Houston's economic diversity.


The winner of the 2014 Rice Business Plan competition plans to move its headquarters from Germany to Houston.
Medical Adhesive Revolution GmbH, a biotechnology company that makes high-strength biodegradable surgical adhesives, is expected to set up headquarters in Houston sometime next year, according to Deborah Mansfield, director of life sciences acceleration at the Houston Technology Center, and Antoine Arbuckle, director of marketing and communications at HTC.
[IMG]http://media.bizj.us/view/img/2437721/mar-all-gq*750xx4001-2251-0-625.jpg[/IMG] Enlarge

Germany's Medical Adhesive Revolution GmbH won the grand prize of the Rice Business Plan… more
Slyworks Photograph
The move also was confirmed by Ashok Rao, president of the Houston chapter of The Indus Entrepreneurs, or TIE Inc., and a member of the Goose Society of Texas, which contributed $200,000 of the roughly $507,000 Medical Adhesive won in this year's Rice Business Plan competition. Opportunity Houston and the Greater Houston Partnership also invested $100,000 to the company, which is currently located at RWTH Aachen University in Aachen, Germany. Its CEO, Marius Rosenberg, was not immediately available for comment.

http://www.bizjournals.com/houston/b...companyto.html

[Jack Lance]

Warehousing , Panama Canal expansion, Port Houston adding to Houston's economic diversity..

Houston fast becoming "hub of distribution".

The hottest niche in Houston's recovering real estate market is warehouses, evidence of the city's growing position as a distribution center for consumer goods in a rapidly evolving retail environment.

As Houston's distribution infrastructure bulks up, the region might eventually take on a bigger role nationally in moving goods from Port Houston throughout the heartland. More immediately, the jobs promised by projects underway help the city closer to a rebound from the prolonged energy slump.

"Warehouse distribution is definitely the shining star in industrial real estate," said Travis Land of NAI Partners.

Dallas, with its landscape of supersized warehouses, has been the traditional hub, and it won't soon cease to be. Typically, consumer goods arrive through ports, including Port Houston, then travel by train to a Dallas warehouse, where containers are unpacked, loaded onto trucks and sent back to Houston and other destinations.

But with a population that grew healthily even during the oil slump, Houston is poised to claim a larger share of its own distribution.

That also has a lot to do with Port Houston, which has recently increased traffic in consumer goods in metal crates, aiming to compete with the nation's biggest distribution hubs on the east and west coasts
.
Most commerce here begins at Port Houston, where thousands of products arrive daily by ship, from furniture to frozen meat to construction materials and more.

In Houston's southeast submarket dominated by the port, warehouses accounted for all of the area's more than 5 million-square-foot growth in industrial facilities since 2014, according to data from Transwestern. As of November 2016, 96 percent of square footage under construction was warehouse or distribution space.

The biggest driver of that growth is the boom in local production of plastic resins and the long-term expansion of the port's two container terminals. Both have implications for Houston.

'A third entry point'

The expansion of container shipping also has led to more warehouse space. Last year's opening of a wider Panama Canal opened the shortcut to larger, more modern ships, including some bound for the docks in Houston.

Port Houston also has expanded its Barbours Cut and Bayport container shipping terminals, adding cranes and renovating wharves where ships loaded or unloaded more than 2 million large metal crates last year.

Typically, most of those unloaded goods have stayed around the Houston area, said RD Tanner, senior director of real estate at the port. More and more, he added, they are traveling farther as Houston claims a growing share of distribution into the nation's interior.

"We're looking beyond being a regional port to being a third entry point into Middle America," Tanner said. "Our future is extremely bright in that regard."

Stephen Fuller, a professor of public policy at George Mason University who conducts research for the commercial real estate development association NAIOP, concurred, citing the confluence of shipping routes and rail lines that can reach as far as Canada without making costly ascents over mountains.

"Between the Appalachians and the Rockies," Fuller said, "you've got a pretty good swath of people."

Demand for warehouses rises, fueled by population growth, online shopping - Houston Chronicle