Real estate company unveils plans for 45-acre biomanufacturing campus in Northeast Houston

life science upgrade

Generation Park has announced additional biomanufacturing facility development. Rendering courtesy of McCord

A Houston-based real estate company has reveals its plans to create a 45-acre biomanufacturing campus in the first phase of a life science development in Generation Park.

McCord Development released its plans for BioHub Two this week. The project will include 500,000 square feet for manufacturing, lab, and office space located in Generation Park, a 4,300-acre master-planned development in Northeast Houston.

The news of the BioHub follows Generation Park's December announcement of the San Jacinto College’s Biotech Training Center, a project in partnership with the National Institute of Biotechnology Research and Training. The institute will have a "bioprocessing pilot plant operated in a realistic GMP simulated and operational manufacturing environment," according to a news release from McCord.

“Houston has consistently been ranked as a burgeoning life science cluster, and BioHub Two has the unique advantage of being a short walk from the region’s only Biotech Training Center at San Jacinto College’s Generation Park campus," says John Flournoy, senior director of sales and leasing.

Last year, the Greater Houston Partnership released data showing the potential for the Bayou City as a hub for biomanufacturing, cell and gene therapy, cancer treatment, drug development, and more. Earlier this summer, Houston maintained its standing as a hub for life sciences on an annual report from CBRE.

“Houston’s high concentration of life sciences employment, healthy funding landscape, access to the Texas’ $6 billion CPRIT grant fund, and commitment to translational research is making it one of the country’s fastest growing life science ecosystems,” says Ryan McCord, president of McCord Development, in the release. “BioHub Two’s location in Generation Park is strategic and cost-effective, as the world-leading research and development facilities at the Texas Medical Center, Houston International Airport and Port of Houston are in close proximity.”

The larger Generation Part plans include two multifamily complexes, a mixed-use development called The Commons, and retail and green spaces.

The Texas Medical Center unveiled its plans for the TMC BioPort, a biomanufacturing and medical supplies distribution engine, almost a year ago. This new campus will span several hundred acres just down the road from TMC and will drive the much-needed repatriation of critical medical supplies and new cell and gene therapies, per a news release.

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This week's roundup of Houston innovators includes Armand Paradis of ComboCurve, Matthew Nojoomi of Ictero Medical, and Ryan McCord of McCord Development. Courtesy photos

3 Houston innovators to know this week

who's who

Editor's note: In this week's roundup of Houston innovators to know, I'm introducing you to three local innovators across industries — from health tech to energy software — recently making headlines in Houston innovation.

Armand Paradis, co-founder of ComboCurve

Armand Paradis joins the Houston Innovators Podcast to discuss how his energy software business is scaling rapidly. Photo courtesy

Houston-based ComboCurve is growing rapidly. The energy software company has raised over $60 million in venture capital investment — $50 million of which was closed in the company’s series B round earlier this year. Since the original product launched in May of 2020, CEO and Co-Founder Armand Paradis says the platform has almost 200 companies on it.

“We built something that resonated with the market — and we were super passionate about the product and taking care of our industry,” Paradis says on the Houston Innovators Podcast. “We don’t want to be the best in oil and gas. We want to be the best software company." Click here to read more.

Matthew Nojoomi, CEO and co-founder of Ictero Medical

This innovative medical device company has closed $6 million for further product development and clinical trials. Image via TMC.edu

Houston-based medical device company Ictero Medical closed its oversubscribed series A at $6 million. The funding round was led by MedTex Ventures, S3 Ventures, and an undisclosed strategic investor. The company's novel cryoablation system was designed to treat high-risk gallstone disease patients and provide a less invasive and lower risk alternative to gallbladder removal surgery — something over 1 million Americans undergo annually.

“Our technology provides an immediate solution for critically ill patients who currently have no good treatment options, and also has the potential to benefit healthier patients who want to avoid surgery,” says Ictero Co-Founder and CEO Matthew Nojoomi in the release. Click here to read more.

Ryan McCord, president of McCord Development

Houston real estate expert shares why he thinks the city is prime for smart city tech and implementation. Photo courtesy

Houston has every tool in its toolkit to be able to emerge as a smart city leader. In a guest column for InnovationMap, Ryan McCord of McCord Development explains the momentum the city already has and the existing smart city opportunities already in town.

"Houston’s diversity, business-friendly environment, and workforce make it a prime candidate to become a smart city. Becoming smarter in our transportation, public safety, sustainability practices, and infrastructure will create a better future for Houstonians." Click here to read more.

Houston real estate expert shares why he thinks the city is prime for smart city tech and implementation. Photo via Getty Images

Houston has what it takes to emerge as a smart city leader, expert says

Guest column

While Houston has long been known as the Energy Capital of the World, there’s no reason we, as a city, cannot hold more than one title. What if Houston could take on the title of Smartest City in the World?

There are many factors that create a smart city, and it is deeper than just implementing new smart technology – it is a city that better supports the lifestyles of its residents seamlessly and unobtrusively. To effectively understand what the needs of the community are and the right types of technologies to implement when urban planning, data collection and data security measures are vital.

The City of Houston has already begun to use data and emerging technology to improve the quality of life for citizens, share information with the public, drive economic growth, and build a more inclusive society. To be successful and provide enriching experiences for Houstonians, these updates must happen at the infrastructure level, working as an integrated system that can be continuously optimized.

In 2015, Houston adopted an Open Data policy to support data sharing efforts between the government, its citizens, businesses and researchers. In addition to this, our city has made strategic investments in artificial intelligence, the Cloud, the Edge, smart sensors, big data, and more. These investments are being bolstered by private companies and institutions, building on these technologies to tackle urban problems, identify better solutions and enact privacy protections. These companies, such as McCord, are helping execute the city’s vision around development, transportation, public safety and community engagement.

Houston already has a case study

Citizens also play an active role in building the future of Houston through their behaviors and consumption patterns.

Take Generation Park, one of the largest privately held commercial developments in the country, sitting on 4,200 contiguous acres in Northeast Houston. As this land continues to be built out, developers at McCord partnered with Bosch technologies to implement sensors and other smart technologies to better understand how visitors are utilizing the trails, parking and space. These insights will then help McCord recognize parking patterns or which areas of the trails are most heavily trafficked, allowing the company to make more informed decisions regarding maintenance and infrastructure updates, ultimately providing a better experience for their visitors.

The data can also be factored in when planning events for the community. McCord will be able to use the data collected to determine things like the optimal times, preferred days and the need for parking at Redemption Square.

But the data use doesn’t stop at just events - tenants can use it to determine when to expect the dinner rush and apply that to staffing, prepping, happy hour specials and ultimately, factor it into better servicing their customers. Those living at Redemption Square’s 255 Assay Luxury Apartments will also benefit as McCord uses data trends to optimize their curbside management practices to better accommodate rideshare and food delivery services.

The plans for Redemption Square and Generation Park continue to adapt as data is collected and visitor behavior better understood. The goal of this data collection is to make Generation Park a citizen-optimized environment via cutting-edge technology where residents, visitors, employees, and businesses will thrive while knowing that their privacy is not at risk.

The bottom line

Houston’s diversity, business-friendly environment, and workforce make it a prime candidate to become a smart city. Becoming smarter in our transportation, public safety, sustainability practices, and infrastructure will create a better future for Houstonians.

Creating secure, holistic systems that work and learn together is central to successful smart city infrastructure. Private and public organizations must work together to collect data, pivot plans when needed and implement the correct technologies to ensure that these efforts ultimately make Houston a better place to live.

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Ryan McCord is president of Houston-based McCord Development.

A new executive hire for McCord is going to focus on bringing smart city technology to Generation Park. Rendering courtesy of McCord

East Houston development launches smart city initiative with new hire

smart city

A 4,200-acre master-planned development that's rising on the east side of town has created a new role within their executive suite to drive innovation and a new smart city initiative.

Houston-based real estate developer, McCord, has hired Nick Cardwell as vice president of digital innovation. In the newly created role, Cardwell will be tasked with bringing data-driven solutions, digital transformation, and other smart city innovation to Generation Park.

"Sensor technology, machine learning, and big data capabilities have exploded in the last decade and are rapidly outpacing the built world," says Ryan McCord, president of McCord, in a press release. "Bolting this digital future onto aging cities is no easy task. With Generation Park, we have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to start from the beginning and rapidly prove up hardware and software technology solutions, at a massive scale."

Both the size of the development — which is larger than Google's Sidewalk Labs project in Canada and Toyota's Woven City in Japan, according to the release — and location are what provides Generation Park with this opportunity for smart city technology.

"Generation Park, while being physically many times larger than most smart city projects, also benefits from being located in a more physically, socially, and economically diverse test bed of a notoriously low-regulation part of the United States — Houston, Texas," McCord continues.

As the development is currently still being worked on, McCord's current focus right now is tapping into data to drive project and design decisions.

Cardwell has a background in technology and was previously overseeing operations and engineering at Austin-based construction software company, Bractlet.

"McCord's vision for Generation Park is the future of commercial development, pushing digital innovation into the forefront and leveraging cutting-edge technologies throughout their portfolio. I am beyond thrilled to join the McCord team and help make that vision a reality," says Cardwell, in the release. "Through the use of experiences, data, and collaborations, we will accelerate learnings and, in turn, advance resources that will truly improve people's lives."

Nick Cardwell has been hired as vice president of digital innovation at McCord. Photo courtesy of McCord

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Pharma giant considers Houston for $1B manufacturing campus

in the works

Another pharmaceutical giant is considering Houston’s Generation Park for a manufacturing hub.

According to a recent filing with the Texas Jobs, Energy, Technology and Innovation (JETI) program, Bristol Myers Squibb Co. is considering the northeast Houston management district for a new $1 billion multi-modal pharmaceutical manufacturing campus.

If approved, the campus, known as Project Argonaut, could create 489 jobs in Texas by 2031. Jobs would include operations technicians, engineering roles, administrative and management roles, production specialists, maintenance support, and quality control/assurance. The company predicts annual average wages for these positions to be around $96,000, according to the filing.

The project currently includes the 600,000-square-foot facility, but according to the filing, Bristol Myers Squibb “envisions this site growing in scale and capability well beyond its opening configuration."

The Texas JETI program offers companies temporary school property tax limitations in exchange for major capital investment and job creation. E.R. Squibb & Sons LLC applied for a 10-year tax abatement agreement in the Sheldon Independent School District.

The agreement promises a $ 1 billion investment. Construction would begin in 2027 and wrap in 2029.

“The proposed project reflects [Bristol Myers Squibb Co.’s] enduring commitment to bringing innovative medicines to patients and ensuring the long-term supply reliability they depend on,” the filing says. “The proposed project is purpose-built to support and manufacture medicines spanning multiple therapeutic areas and modalities, positioning the site as a long-term launch and commercial campus for decades to come. These medicines will provide therapies to the [Bristol Myers Squibb Co.’s] patients located in markets both nationally and internationally.”

The Fortune 100 company is considering 16 other cities for the new manufacturing facility in the Central and Eastern markets in the U.S. According to the Houston Chronicle, Bristol Myers Squibb Co is still in the “evaluation process” for its potential manufacturing site.

Last fall, Eli Lilly and Co. selected Generation Park for its $6.5 billion manufacturing plant. More than 300 locations in the U.S. competed for the factory. Read more here.

Houston health tech co. lands NIH grant for AI cancer prediction tool

fresh funding

Houston-based CellChorus and Stanford Medicine were recently awarded a Phase I Small Business Innovation Research grant for the company's AI platform to test how certain cancer patients will respond to therapies.

The funding comes from the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health. According to a filing, the grant totaled just under $400,000.

CellChorus, which spun out from the University of Houston’s Technology Bridge, has developed TIMING (Time-lapse Imaging Microscopy In Nanowell Grids), which analyzes the behavior of thousands of individual immune cells over time and can identify early indicators of treatment success or failure.

The company will work with Stanford's Dr. David Miklos and Dr. Saurabh Dahiya, who have built the Bone Marrow Transplantation and Cell Therapy Biobank. The biobank manages and stores biological samples from patients treated at their clinic and in clinical trials.

"Predicting which patients will achieve durable responses after CAR-T therapy remains one of the most important challenges in the field,” Miklos said in a news release. “We aim to uncover functional cellular signatures that can guide treatment decisions and improve patient outcomes.”

The project will specifically profile cells from patients with relapsed/refractory large B-cell lymphoma (r/rLBCL). According to CellChorus, only about half of r/rLBCL patients who receive CAR-T therapy "achieve a durable, long-term remission." Others do not respond to therapy or experience relapse.

“The sooner we know whether a cancer therapy is working, the better. To maximize patient benefit, we need technology that can provide a robust and early prediction of response to therapy. The technology needs to be scalable, cost-efficient, and capable of rapid turnaround times,” Rebecca Berdeaux, chief scientific officer of CellChorus, added in the release. “We are excited to work with Drs. David Miklos and Saurabh Dahiya and their colleagues on this very important project.”

CellChorus has previously received SBIR grants from federal agencies, including a $2.5 million award in 2024 from its National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) and a $2.3 million SBIR Fast-Track award from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences in 2023.

Houston museum showcases America's founding documents in rare exhibit

Experience History

As the United States prepares to celebrate its 250th birthday, Houstonians have a chance to see rare documents from the founding of the nation. Freedom Plane National Tour: Documents That Forged a Nation, presented by the National Archives Foundation, will be on display at the Houston Museum of Natural Science through Monday, May 25.

The collection includes a rare engraving of the original Declaration of Independence; official Oaths of Allegiance signed by George Washington, Aaron Burr, and Alexander Hamilton; a draft of the Bill of Rights; the Treaty of Paris, the documented that recognized America's independence from Great Britain; and the tally of votes approving the Constitution.

The National Archives specifically chose Houston as one of only eight cities in the country to host the exhibit as a means to help the documents reach a wider audience outside of the main hub of semiquincentennial events in New England and the Washington, D.C. area.

"One of the things we decided when we put the tour together because we wanted to be off the East Coast," said Patrick Madden, CEO of the National Archives Foundation, who was onsite for the exhibit's opening in Houston. "There's a lot of 250th celebration stuff happening in the original 13 colonies. How do we get it to major markets where larger numbers of people can see it? So in the case of Houston, obviously, [is a] major market in this part of the country, but also we've partnered with the museum twice before with National Archives exhibits, so we knew that they would be up to the task of handling the exhibit and the crowds."

The star of the collection is a rare engraving of the original Declaration of Independence. Secretary of State and future president John Quincy Adams commissioned 200 exact replicas of the document from engraver William J. Stone in 1823. Less than 50 now remain. Madden joyfully pointed out that there are errors in this document, a potent reminder that the men who forged a nation made mistakes.

"There's a couple of typos in it where they had to make corrections," said Madden. "So even the founders, you know, they're all human. That resonates because here these people are making this move against the most powerful nation in the world and putting their lives on the line for a country based on ideas."

Other impressive parts of the collection include official Oaths of Allegiance signed by George Washington, Aaron Burr, and Alexander Hamilton, as well as one of the drafts of the Bill of Rights. Many states would not ratify the Constitution until certain rights were included in the document, leading to Washington going on a national tour assuring state leaders enshrining protections was first on the list. The draft copy on display specifically shows the First Amendment in progress.

Houston is the fourth stop on the exhibition's tour, which will take the documents to Denver, Miami, Dearborn, and Seattle through the summer. Freedom Plane is just one part of a larger patriotic celebration at the HMNS, which includes a film series celebrating American science and culture and general Americana decoration throughout the main hall.

Admission to Freedom Plane is free to the public, but separate from general admission to the museum. Space is limited, and passes are available on a first-come, first-serve basis. Non-members should expect long waits or the possibility that the day's passes are sold out. Only museum members can reserve passes for specific times. Flash photography is prohibited due to the fragile nature of the documents.

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This article originally appeared on CultureMap.com.

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