Downtown Houston’s leaders are walking off the city’s car-dependent reputation, one project at a time.
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The latest progress on that effort is the More Space: Main Street 2.0 project moving into its final design and engineering phase. Downtown Houston+, the organization previously known as Central Houston, is spearheading the project that will permanently transform seven blocks of Main Street, from Rusk Street to Allen’s Landing Park, into a pedestrian promenade.
This is one part of the solution to negating Houston’s notoriety for being a place that requires a vehicle to get around, Downtown Houston+ President and CEO Kristopher Larson told Bisnow.
“It creates a place that is specifically designed to be experienced as a pedestrian,” Larson said. “Those kinds of outdoor places for people are pretty rare, particularly in an urban context.”
Unlike Houston’s parks and bayous, the Main Street promenade is within the dense Central Business District and will be a place for people to enjoy walking, shopping, eating, drinking and seeing historical assets, he said.
“We want people who visit our community to be able to participate in the downtown experience in a comfortable way, in a memorable way,” Larson said.
The More Space: Main Street promenade concept was conceived in 2021 to support local businesses at the height of the pandemic, allowing expanded outdoor dining and pedestrian use, according to a news release. Local businesses and residents responded positively, leading the Houston City Council to approve the permanent conversion in March 2023.
“The Main Street Promenade is a transformative project defining the next chapter of Main Street and Downtown,” Mayor John Whitmire said in the release. “I am excited about the City's future, including downtown, where we are designing a destination that attracts more people to work, live and play.”
The board of the Downtown Redevelopment Authority, a Downtown Houston+ affiliate, on April 9 approved a contract with engineering firm Walter P Moore and its subconsultants for the project, the release says. The design and engineering phase follows the basis of design, which zeroes in on the themes of safety, accessibility and placemaking.
Design recommendations include lighting improvements, maintenance of stormwater drainage capacity, everyday access for business operations, and wayfinding signage, the release says.
The most noticeable change will be elevating the street level so that it is even with the sidewalk, Larson said.
“That's going to create one uniform plane for people to be able to experience,” he said. “Then we're going to be working with the adjacent property owners and business owners to create more of a uniform experience.”
This project fits into Downtown Houston’s “diversification journey,” which aims to bring people downtown for more reasons than just to work in office buildings.
The Central Business District still faces one of the highest office vacancies in Houston. Its total availability was 34.1% in the first quarter, well above Houston’s overall availability of 29.7%, according to Avison Young.
Property owners are excited about the Main Street 2.0 project, and it could spur more business and leasing activity, Larson said.
“They look at this as a competitive positioning piece and how that helps them compete for tenants and ultimately be a place where people want to be, how that helps to really improve their ability to lease out their properties,” he said.
The project is about a year from breaking ground, Larson said. Downtown Houston+ hopes it will be finished in time for the 2026 men’s FIFA World Cup matches in Houston.
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