Life Time to open a new coworking space and fitness club in downtown Houston

Work — then work out

GreenStreet will soon have coworking space and a gym from Life Time. Courtesy of Midway Cos.

Life Time has announced its second Houston location of its coworking concept, Life Time Work, before it's even opened the first. Life Time will open an athletic club and coworking space in GreenStreet in downtown Houston. Houston's first Life Time Work in CITYCENTRE, which was announced last year, is expected to open in May.

"GreenStreet aligns well with our vision to meet the changing needs of consumers by bringing Life Time — through our athletic destinations and coworking space — as a lifestyle asset to bustling and successful developments," says Parham Javaheri, Minnesota-based Life Time's executive vice president of real estate and development, in a release. "We look forward to becoming an anchor to this new model of urban living in 2020."

Opening by 2020, the new location will be at 1201 Main Street and will have more than 56,000 square feet of wellness space and more than 38,000 square feet of coworking space.

"Being able to attract and retain workers who place a premium on work/life balance sets a company's culture apart," says Fernando Urrutia, vice president for Lionstone Investments, which owns GreenStreet, in the release. "Combining GreenStreet's state-of-the-art work environment with the highest level of health and wellness amenities, in the middle of downtown's expanding variety of new residential developments, will be a game-changer."

Both CITYCENTRE and GreenStreet are operated by Houston-based Midway Cos.

"We are happy Life Time has selected another Midway development after our successful collaboration at CITYCENTRE," says Chris Seckinger, vice president and investment manager for Midway, in a release. "Life Time adds an all-important healthy living component to GreenStreet, a mixed-use district that is being redeveloped as the new model of urban lifestyle. "

Midway also recently announced that Spaces, an international coworking space company, will open new locations in Houston, and the company chose CITYCENTRE and GreenStreet as two of the locations for their Houston expansion. Additionally, MassChallenge Texas announced its Houston accelerator program will operate out of GreenStreet.

Health and business

Courtesy of Midway Cos.

GreenStreet will soon have more than 56,000 square feet of wellness space and more than 38,000 square feet of coworking space from Life Time.


Houston snags only the third location of Life Time Work. It opens in City Centre early next year. Courtesy of Life Time

Life Time reveals details of first Houston coworking space

From work to workout

Houston is just the third city to be chosen to have a location of Minnesota-based Life Time's new coworking center. Life Time Work should be open in early 2019 in City Centre Five, adjacent to Life Time Athletic.

The first Life Time Work opened in Pennsylvania, and the second will open just outside of Minneapolis ahead of Houston's location in early 2019. Other locations are expected to be announced in the next five years, according to a release.

"We all have seen the impact of technology advancements and other changes influencing how work gets done. However, workspaces haven't adapted nearly enough to address this evolution," says Bahram Akradi, founder, chairman, and CEO of Life Time.

The 25,000-square-foot City Centre space will have both private and open-plan office space with 48 rentable offices and conference rooms, phone rooms, and open meeting space.

Life Time Work has three types of memberships — private office, reserved desk, or access to the lounge. Members have access to events, food, and coffee. The coworking space also boasts month to month membership, Herman Miller furniture, unlimited wifi, and printing, copying, scanning, and shredding services.

Pick your poison

Courtesy of Life Time

Coworkers can choose from one of three memberships, depending on whether they want a private office, a desk, or just access to the lounge.

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NASA unveils Artemis III astronauts at Johnson Space Center in Houston

To the moon

NASA on Tuesday, June 9, revealed the crew for its Artemis III mission, the next step in the space agency's plan to eventually land astronauts on the moon.

The announcement came two months after Artemis II's record-breaking trip around the moon that surpassed the distance record of Apollo 13.

NASA's Randy Bresnik, Frank Rubio, Andre Douglas and the European Space Agency's Luca Parmitano won't fly to the moon or land on the surface. Instead, they’ll orbit Earth while practicing docking their Orion capsule with two lunar landers.

“To the Artemis III crew, we wish you Godspeed on the journey ahead,” said NASA administrator Jared Isaacman.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin are racing to deliver the lunar landers. The two-week demo is targeted for 2027. Blue Origin suffered a recent setback when its massive rocket exploded during an engine-firing test on the launch pad in Florida, shaking nearby homes and illuminating the sky with an orange fireball.

NASA's Jeremy Parsons said the setback is a learning opportunity and that the space agency is confident Blue Origin's rocket will be ready in time.

NASA's Artemis program aims to return astronauts to the moon's surface for the first time since the 1970s. A recent revamp of the program announced by Isaacman aims to fast-track it similarly to the Apollo era, adding the upcoming spaceflight around Earth before eyeing a lunar landing in 2028.

“We are certainly humbled as a crew to be able to be your crew that executes this Artemis III mission in space,” said Bresnik, Artemis III commander.

Added Douglas, mission specialist: “My brain — it is going a mile a minute right now. But my heart, it is so warm. It is so full."

In May, NASA awarded hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts to four companies, including Blue Origin, to build landers, rovers and drones for a future moon base. Isaacman said the goal of the moon base is to lay the foundation for a Mars expedition.

Meta to bring $115 million AI data center training initiative to Houston

ai workforce

Meta and Associated Builders and Contractors have entered into a partnership to invest $115 million in training programs for the construction of AI data centers, with a portion of the project launching in Houston.

The companies announced June 8 that they would open America’s Workforce Academies at ABC chapter training centers in Houston; Indianapolis; Baton Rouge, Louisiana; and Columbus, Ohio.

The academies will offer career readiness and safety training, plus five weeks of hands-on education. Participants who complete the program will be granted a job offer from contractors working on Meta projects.

“The AI revolution is bringing change but also historic opportunities,” Dina Powell McCormick, Meta president and vice-chairman, said in a news release. “Skilled workers electrified rural America one pole at a time. They manned the factories that built the arsenal that won World War II. Now a new generation will pour the foundations and lay the fiber that secures American strength in this new age.”

Overall, the Meta and ABC aim for the academies to build a more sustainable pipeline of skilled construction workers and ensure safety and job readiness for the surging number of data center projects underway.

“This new program is an innovative talent solution that is a critical part of addressing the construction industry’s ongoing workforce shortage and creates an accelerated, new-entrant strategy for job seekers ... The sustained demand for data center construction technicians means the industry needs an all-of-the-above approach to address this shortage and grow the construction talent pool,” Michael Bellaman, ABC president and CEO, added in the release.

In Texas, Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has launched or broken ground on data centers in El Paso, Fort Worth and Temple. The company announced in March that it planned to grow its El Paso Data center by 1 gigawatt, representing more than a $10 billion investment.

Apart from Meta, Texas has attracted data center development to power other giants like Google and Amazon in recent years. In turn, Texas has been predicted to become the biggest data center market. Commercial real estate services provider JLL reported this spring that the state could topple Northern Virginia as the world’s largest data-center market by 2030. Similarly, CBRE predicted that Houston's data center capacity could double by 2028. Read more here.

New Houston biotech co. lands $30M for pulmonary fibrosis drug

drug money

Most of us can claim a scar or two on our bodies. But when scarring develops inside the body, it’s known as a fibrotic disorder. A freshly launched Houston company, Oorja Bio Inc., is working on a treatment that can help to repair cells and reduce the damage wrought by the growth of fibrotic tissue in patients.

Late last month, Oorja Bio hit the scene with a pair of big announcements. Not only has the company raised a $30 million Series A thanks to founding investor California-based Westlake BioPartners, but it has also already paved the way for a Phase 2 study to take place this year.

Oorja Bio received Investigational New Drug (IND) clearance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), allowing the company to test its treatment in patients with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), a scarring of the lung tissue. IPF affects more than 150,000 adults in the United States and can result in a range of symptoms from shortness of breath to organ failure and death as it progresses.

Oorja Bio’s lead drug candidate, ORJ-001, was shown in a Phase 1 in-human trial to demonstrate “therapeutically relevant exposure and favorable tolerability” in 64 healthy adult volunteers in whom it was administered daily or weekly, according to a news release. Pre-clinical studies of ORJ-001 showed durable target tissue engagement and biomarker activity in bleomycin-induced lung fibrosis.

Administered subcutaneously, ORJ-001 is intended to improve and even restore function in cells that can reduce the signaling that causes IPF. It stops advancement of IPF and also allows for tissue repair. Currently available treatments for the disease can slow the development of IPF down, but do not address the declining lung function that’s inherent in its progression.

“The clinical and preclinical results from our studies to date give us confidence that ORJ-001 represents a novel treatment approach with the potential to repair and reverse fibrosis and modify disease progression in IPF,” Dr. Janethe Pena, CMO of Oorja Bio, said in the release.

“Our team is energized to deliver on our goal of redefining the future of fibrotic diseases, beginning with ORJ-001,” CEO and founder Sujay Kango added. “As we advance ORJ-001 in the clinic, we are embracing the paradigm shift in our biological understanding of IPF pathology that aligns with the central role of the alveolar epithelium. ORJ-001 was designed with this biology in mind and may provide, for the first time, a therapeutic intervention that repairs and reverses fibrosis and promotes disease modification.”

Most patients live only three to five years following their IPF diagnosis. Soon, ORJ-001 and Oorja Bio could give them a fighting chance.

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