Synthetic biology unicorn announces new Houston HQ

moving in

Solugen is moving its HQ into Phoenix Tower. Photo courtesy of Parkway

Houston-based Solugen has announced an HQ move. But don't worry. This unicorn chemicals company is just moving down the street.

Parkway Property Investments LLC announced today that Solugen is relocating its Houston corporate headquarters to Greenway Plaza. The biotech company, recently ranked as one of the most innovative businesses in the world, signed a multi-year lease in Phoenix Tower. The building is one of 11 Class A buildings on the 52-acre mixed-use campus.

The space's buildout is expected to be completed in the second quarter, according to a news release, with Solugen moving in after that.

The venture-backed biotech startup, which produces high-performance chemicals through the use of bio-based feedstock and metal catalyst technologies, signed a multi-year lease in Phoenix Tower. The property is one of eleven Class A buildings on the landmark, 52-acre mixed-use campus, which is strategically located between Downtown and Uptown. Buildout of the space is expected to be completed in the second quarter.

“Innovative companies like Solugen are choosing to outsource the design-build process for office interiors to Parkway," says Eric Siegrist, Parkway’s managing director of leasing, in the release. "With several floors of ‘Ready Right Away’ suites fully-deployed, we happily take on this process to reduce the time and energy expended by an incoming tenant, resulting in expedited occupancy.”

Solugen was represented by Nick Terry, managing partner of Rifle Real Estate. Parkway’s senior director of leasing, JP Hutcheson, negotiated on behalf of Parkway.

Founded in 2016, Solugen’s process converts corn syrup into industrial chemicals, cutting down on carbon emissions generated by traditional production of chemicals. Carbon dioxide from chemical production is one of the biggest contributors to industrial greenhouse gas emissions. In September, the company raised a $357 million series C funding round and claimed its unicorn status.

Solugen joins several tech companies already housed in Greenway Plaza, including FlightAware, ThoughtTrace, Detechtion Technologies, and Buildforce.

Phoenix Tower has 627,320 square feet of space across 34 floors. Photo courtesy of Parkway


Honeywell has once again bet on the Bayou City for business. Photo courtesy of Parkway

Fortune 100 company moves materials tech biz HQ to Houston

big move

A nearly $10 billion division of Honeywell International that primarily caters to the oil and gas industry has moved its headquarters to Houston.

On August 11, Charlotte, North Carolina-based Honeywell announced its Performance Materials and Technologies (PMT) division had completed its relocation to the Westchase area's nearly 1.5 million-square-foot CityWestPlace office complex where the company already has operations.

PMT joins one its units, Honeywell's Process Solutions business, at CityWestPlace. The Process Solutions business and about 750 employees relocated there from 1250 Sam Houston Parkway South in 2019.

At CityWestPlace, PMT is adding a customer center where it can showcase automation products and services.

With the PMT relocation, Honeywell now employs more than 850 people in Houston. Representatives of Honeywell decline to say where PMT was previously based.

"Houston [is] a diverse and rapidly growing city, and locating our headquarters here will help us meet our long-term needs to recruit and retain premier talent in our industry. It will also allow us to build closer, more impactful relationships with our Texas-based customers," Vimal Kapur, the new president and CEO of PMT, says in a news release.

Before coming to Houston to take the reins of PMT, Kapur was president of CEO of Atlanta-based Honeywell Building Technologies. He has worked at Honeywell for more than three decades.

Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner says PMT's move to Houston offers another example of how the city is leading innovation in the global energy sector.

"As the energy capital of the world, Houston has the talent and expertise to amplify Honeywell's sustainability work. And with their focus on key components of the energy transition, including carbon capture, energy storage and hydrogen, Honeywell's PMT business unit will serve as a critical partner in Houston's effort to lead the energy transition," Turner says.

PMT provides performance chemicals and materials, process technology, and automation technology for an array of industries, including oil and gas. It posted net sales of $9.4 billion in 2020, down from $10.8 billion in 2019. Honeywell, a Fortune 100 conglomerate, reported net sales of $32.6 billion last year.

Competitors of PMT include ABB, BASF, Dupont, and Emerson Electric.

Houston-based Honeywell Process Solutions is moving down the road in order to expand its local presence. Courtesy of Parkway

Houston-based tech subsidiary moves its headquarters to new space

On to the next

A major technology solutions company announced its relocating it's Houston-based subsidiary to a bigger space. Fortune 100 company Honeywell has executed a long-term lease at CityWestPlace for Honeywell Process Solutions.

The company is relocating its Houston office from off Beltway 8 and Briar Forest to CityWestPlace Building 1, which is just south of its current office. The larger, 114,068-square-foot office space is expected to open by late 2019. The company will have 750 of its employees in the new building

"Parkway is thrilled to welcome Honeywell, a company with an extensive history and acclaimed reputation for creating exceptional products, solving complex problems through software solutions, and implementing cutting-edge technologies in a variety of industries including oil and gas, to CityWestPlace," says Parkway's senior leasing manager, J.P. Hutcheson, in a release.

CityWestPlace, which is operated by Parkway Property Investments, LLC, boasts of 1,473,177 rentable square feet across four campus buildings in Houston's Westchase District. Honeywell was represented by Rich Pancioli and John Morris with CBRE; JP Hutcheson led efforts on behalf of Parkway in the transaction.

The CityWestPlace campus spans 35 acres and has three dining spots, two fitness centers, and recreational offerings, such as a soccer field, outdoor track, sand volleyball court, indoor basketball court, horseshoe pit and bocce ball court.

Honeywell's new Houston office allows the company to expand.Courtesy of Parkway

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Houston bio-based materials startup breaks into footwear

cleaner shoes

A more sustainable shoe can’t be built on a single material swap. From the hard plastics hidden inside a heel to the material covering a sneaker’s upper, footwear is a collection of components—and each presents a different challenge for companies trying to move away from conventional, petroleum-based materials.

Houston-based Rheom Materials wants to change that equation. The biomaterials company has launched a sustainable footwear platform featuring two of its bio-based alternatives: Benree, a biodegradable plastic designed for hard internal components, and ShoraiDura, a durable leather alternative for footwear uppers.

“A shoe is not one material; it is multiple parts working together as a system. Substituting a single material has never moved the needle,” Rheom founder and CEO Zimri Hinshaw said in a news release. “Rheom wants to make it easier for brands to make a positive impact. By providing an assortment of bio-based materials, brands can change the system, not just a swatch of it.”

Benree is Rheom’s alternative to conventional hard plastics used in footwear construction. The company says it is a 100 percent USDA-certified bio-based, biodegradable material with performance comparable to acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS), a widely used engineering plastic.

The material has passed SATRA testing for high-heel applications with Bared Footwear, an Australian footwear brand.

“At Bared, we're constantly on a journey to remove plastic from our shoes. At the same time, our brand won't compromise on quality for the end customer,” Millie Richards, Bared’s head of sustainability, added in the release. “From samples and testing, Rheom has proven to be solving both of those problems for us. We look forward to seeing how they develop as a company and would love to use them in our shoes.”

Rheom says it is also exploring Benree for additional internal components, including toe puffs and heel counters.

Rheom's Benree material was used for a high-heel prototype. Photo courtesy Rheom Materials

The company’s ShoraiDura material addresses another major part of shoe construction: the upper, which must withstand repeated flexing, friction and wear while maintaining its appearance.

Containing about 80 percent bio-based content, ShoraiDura is engineered as a durable leather alternative for footwear. Rheom says the material’s molecular structure is designed to deliver the strength and durability required for demanding applications.

To demonstrate how the material could be used in finished products, Rheom worked with a Los Angeles-based footwear manufacturer to create two prototypes: an athletic sneaker and a textured skater shoe, both featuring ShoraiDura uppers.

The two offerings reflect the company’s broader strategy. Rather than asking brands to evaluate a single material in isolation, Rheom is positioning its platform as a way to explore alternatives across different parts of footwear construction.

The next step is broader industry adoption. Benree’s testing with Bared Footwear and ShoraiDura’s footwear prototypes offer early examples of how the materials could be applied, while commercial use will depend on manufacturers’ evaluations and product-development decisions.

Rheom Materials is a Houston-based biomaterials company developing bio-based alternatives to petrochemical plastics. Its product portfolio includes Shorai, a leather alternative, and Benree, a hard plastic alternative.

The company debuted Shorai at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo in 2025 and showed a bio-based "leather" collection in Milan earlier this year. Read more here.

Houston's Rice University named the No. 1 best Texas college for 2027

We're No. 1

With early application season in full swing, a local university is racking up accolades on a new list of the 10 best Texas colleges for 2027.

Rice University topped the list as the No. 1 best university in Texas in WalletHub's annual "College & University Rankings" report, showing Houston students don't have to travel out of state to earn a top-notch degree.

WalletHub analyzed 738 colleges and universities in the U.S. using 30 relevant metrics, including factors like student-faculty ratios, graduation rates, and many more. Universities were ranked nationally, regionally, and across seven key dimensions: student selectivity; cost and financing; faculty resources; campus safety; campus experience; educational outcomes; and career outcomes.

Rice also ranked No. 2 in the regional comparison of best universities in the South, and appeared No. 11 nationwide.

Across the seven main categories, the university performed best for its faculty resources (No. 4), education outcomes (No. 11), and student selectivity (No. 16), and earned top-100 rankings for its career outcomes (No. 28) and campus experience (No. 58).

Rice only lagged behind in the national rankings for campus safety (No. 632) and cost and financing (No. 666), but neither category swayed the university's top-performing overall position.

Meanwhile, the University of Houston ranked 75th regionally and 339th nationally. UH's cost and financing rank among the top 200 nationally, landing 177th, and it ranked 284th for its campus safety.This is how the report ranked UH in the five remaining categories out of all 738 schools:
  • No. 306 – Career outcomes
  • No. 324 – Student selectivity
  • No. 343 – Education outcomes
  • No. 383 – Campus experience
  • No. 715 – Faculty resources
Four more local schools ranked among the best universities in the South: Houston Christian University (No. 204), Prairie View A&M University (No. 245), University of Houston-Downtown (No. 251), and Texas Southern University (No. 254).The Houston-area universities, including their graduate and online programs, have earned heaps of national and worldwide praise this year from prestigious educational reviewing authorities U.S. News & World Report and The Princeton Review. Rice University also topped Niche's list of the best Texas universities for 2027.

These are WalletHub's top 10 best colleges and universities in Texas for 2027:

  • No. 1 – Rice University
  • No. 2 – Trinity University
  • No. 3 – The University of Texas at Austin
  • No. 4 – Texas A&M University-College Station
  • No. 5 – Southwestern University
  • No. 6 – University of Dallas
  • No. 7 – Austin College
  • No. 8 – Texas Christian University
  • No. 9 – LeTourneau University
  • No. 10 – The University of Texas at Dallas
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This article first appeared on CultureMap.com.

UH expands Medical Center footprint with $77M research facility

breaking ground

The University of Houston broke ground on a brand new $77.5 million Medical Research Building last week that will host clinical trials and a virtual reality behavioral health suite, among other laboratories. Designed by SmithGroup, it will be the second building on the UH Medical Center campus after the Fertitta College of Medicine opened in 2022.

“The Medical Research Building was designed to foster collaboration and discovery while creating a welcoming environment for students, researchers and the community,” Kalman Nagy, higher education studio design leader for SmithGroup, said in a news release. “As the second building on the University of Houston’s medical campus, we wanted to create a strong connection to the College of Medicine and the surrounding woodlands, with outdoor terraces, shared learning spaces and natural views that inspire interaction and innovation.”

Located just behind the Fertitta building at 5150 Medical Service Drive, the 57,000-square-foot building will house wet laboratories, computational research spaces and specialized facilities for clinical research. The virtual reality behavioral health suite will use immersive technology to deliver care through manufactured audio and visual environments. It’s part of the college’s vision for developing new medical advancements in the heart of Houston’s medical community. The groundbreaking comes on the heels of the launch of the university's cross-disciplinary academic venture, UH Health, this summer.

“This groundbreaking marks an important next step in the growth of the Fertitta College of Medicine and UH Health,” Dr. Jonathan McCullers, vice president for health affairs at UH, added in the release. “We are building the research capacity to match our ambitions—bringing together scientists, physicians and experts from across the University to accelerate discovery and turn promising ideas into solutions that improve people’s lives.”

UH’s journey to establish a significant presence alongside the University of Texas and Baylor in the Medical Center started in 2009 when it became an official full institutional member. The university launched its plans for the Fertitta building in 2013, and is pursuing Health Science Center designation from the Texas Legislature in the next year’s session.

“The research that will take place here will directly benefit our community,” UH President Renu Khator added. “Diseases do not recognize disciplinary silos, and neither should our research. This building will bring together experts from across UH to break down those barriers, work across disciplines and tackle some of our most complex health challenges.”

The building is slated to open in 2028.

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