High-profile projects in Houston’s Inner Loop are aiming to change the perception of the city’s epic sprawl, the people behind some of Houston’s hottest projects told attendees at Bisnow’s HTX Major Projects event.
“We’re thinking many decades in the future,” McCord Development President Ryan McCord said. “We’re trying to put our finger on why Houston is a lifestyle city. We have no mountains, no beaches. What’s Houston’s intangible? Access to opportunity. There’s something unique and cool about Houston, it’s a little gritty.”
McCord, whose Generation Park master-planned development spans roughly 5,600 acres, has been a passionate advocate for the Bayou City, pitching directly to Jeff Bezos during Amazon’s HQ2 search. “One of the central things about Houston that gets me comfortable is the prospect for growth,” McCord said.
Time will tell if Houston’s perception is really changing. America’s fourth-largest city has changed significantly in just a few years. With pockets of dense infill development, the next step will be connecting them all together, stitching an urban landscape that brings Houston’s diversity together. “The big issue to me is connectivity,” Schultz said. “The city is what it is. It’s vast and getting bigger. We’re not going to change that, so we need to find ways to take advantage of other transportation methods.”
