$2B Convention Center Redevelopment Plan Hits Early Road Bump With Neighbors

Houston First Corp. CEO Michael Heckman stood in front of a tense room of East End residents Monday night defending an early misstep in his organization's $2B master plan to redevelop the George R. Brown Convention Center and its surrounding area. 

He acknowledged the neighborhood's decadeslong history of being cut off from the rest of Houston by a busy freeway and of its residents being excluded from giving input on projects that disrupt their lives and commutes.

But they felt slighted again when the city’s destination marketing organization unveiled its plan to partially close Polk Street, a main artery for traffic between the East End and Downtown Houston, by the end of this year. 

Activists first learned of the planned closure from city signs placed on Polk Street near the GRB just last month. Heckman and Houston Mayor John Whitmire announced the $2B project in a press conference two weeks ago.

“I will take responsibility for that, that we should have done these things a little bit sooner, maybe a lot sooner, than what we did,” Heckman told the crowd at the town hall Monday. “OK, buck stops with me. I'm in charge of Houston First. I take that responsibility.”

An advocacy organization called People for Polk helped pack the room at Monday’s meeting. The group was formed after someone brought up the signs at an Eastwood Civic Association meeting, member Lisa Hunt said.

“It was clear that nobody had heard of it. Our council member was in attendance at that meeting and didn’t know anything about it,” Hunt said. “Immediately it struck me that the process seemed illegitimate.” 

Monday night’s environment was a stark contrast to almost two weeks earlier, when Heckman and Whitmire stood onstage under a tent across the street from GRB Convention Center to announce the details of a plan they touted as essential to Houston's future as a convention destination.

The first phase of the project includes building GRB Houston South, a 700K SF building that would add two 150K SF exhibition halls to the convention center’s offerings in time for the 2028 National Republican Convention in Houston. 

That building will be just south of the existing convention center. Polk Street currently separates the convention center from a restaurant and parking garages for Hilton Americas-Houston, the city’s largest hotel. An elevated portion of Highway 59 is just east of the convention center, bisecting East Downtown from the rest of Downtown Houston.

Polk Street is the first street that crosses 59 south of the convention center, which stretches five city blocks. Polk connects Downtown to the Greater East End, which encompasses the Second Ward and Eastwood, one of Houston’s first master-planned subdivisions.

Eventually, the lanes of Highway 59 that bisect Downtown adjacent to the convention center will be depressed by the Texas Department of Transportation’s North Houston Highway Improvement Project, which would also cut off Polk Street from crossing the freeway. 

But TxDOT doesn't plan to start depressing the freeway lanes in the area until 2030, according to a project timeline.

That project, in the works since 2003, has created years of tension by forcing numerous business owners and residents in East Downtown to move or close. The NHHIP paused for nearly two years following a shutdown by the Federal Highway Administration but resumed in 2023 when TxDOT signed an agreement that takes “significant steps to address project impacts to the community.” 

“I probably underestimated the concern about Polk Street from some of the residents simply because the NHHIP is going to radically reshape and change Polk into the future,” Heckman told Bisnow Tuesday. “It will not be what it is today.” 

Residents said the sooner-than-expected closure, which cuts off one of the only east-west connectors under the highway, would create unsafe traffic conditions on other streets and lengthen bus commuting routes.

The local engagement level on the issue has already exponentially exceeded any other joint referral committee process, which is the process Houston First used to request Houston’s permission to close Polk, District I Councilman Joaquin Martinez said at Monday’s meeting. The comment period for the process was extended to now close April 3, Martinez said. 

“The feedback has created more urgency to create that timeline for when those east-west connectivities could be opened up,” Heckman said. 

Heckman told Bisnow that while the convention center project accelerated the timeline of closing Polk Street, the master plan is based on what TxDOT will do to the area.

East-west connections were considered throughout the master-planning process, he said. The city plans to make Leeland, three blocks south of Polk, a two-way street, adding another east-west connection, he said. 

Polk’s closure is estimated to happen in October, and the city will try to open a two-way Leeland Street as close to that date as possible, Heckman said during the meeting. 

The first phase of the GRB redevelopment will also include a new 100K SF pedestrian plaza that will connect the convention center and the Toyota Center, about a block southwest. An extension of the Avenida Plaza of Discovery Green, the 12-acre park directly in front of the convention center, would connect to the new pedestrian plaza, creating blocks of pedestrian-friendly streetscape. 

The convention district master plan eventually calls for a park to be put on top of a Highway 59 cap. The park is not yet funded but is slated for development once the NHHIP has finished depressing that part of the freeway in around 2038.

Developers in East Downtown told Bisnow they are excited about the transformation the project will bring.

The portion of Highway 59 “in its current state is a scar on an otherwise vibrant part of town,” Scarlet Capital Managing Partner Daniel Ron, who is redeveloping 815 St. Charles St., about five blocks away from the freeway on the opposite side of GRB, said in a statement.

“A high-quality, pedestrian friendly connection between downtown and East Downtown should be a significant improvement,” Ron added. 

City officials say the master plan is just as much about reconnecting the city’s East End with Downtown as it is about redeveloping the convention center district. 

“I’ve known my entire adult life, certainly my public official service, that the East End has been left out,” Whitmire said at the March 6 press conference, garnering exclamations from a couple of protestors outside of the event.

The convention center redevelopment plan stems from 2023 state legislation authored by then-Sen. Whitmire. The law allows the project to be funded by the state’s portion of Hotel Occupancy Tax revenue growth within a three-mile radius of the GRB for 30 years, estimated to total nearly $2B.

“This project is truly transformative for downtown Houston, a lasting legacy that will solidify our position as a top-tier convention and entertainment destination,” Whitmire said in a statement. 

Heckman conceded at Monday’s meeting that he wouldn’t do everything right throughout the process and that residents “feel like we're late to the game again,” but he stressed that the project should improve the community and better connect the city.  

“We have gone to great lengths to try to create a project that does a number of different things at one time,” Heckman said Tuesday. “When you create spaces like this, sometimes there are adjustments that have to be made. We just have to work really hard to make sure those adjustments don’t have a negative impact and that we have clear plans for people.”