BUSINESS INCUBATOR, CO-WORKING SPACE TO LAUNCH AT HOUSTON’S SPACEPORT

September 24, 2015

The city of Houston plans to include a new incubator and co-working space on the grounds of the new spaceport located at Ellington Airport.

Plans are still very early, airport and city officials point out, but the idea is to have small and large companies housed on the same campus to collaborate. The co-working space would conceivably include an incubation space for early-stage companies, more permanent offices for developing companies and even larger facilities for companies that need room to mass produce their products, Mario Diaz, Houston Airport System's aviation director, said during a presentation at a startup happy hour Sept. 22.

"There will not be a single cent of city general fund revenues (spent)," Diaz said. "This is all enterprise money from the Houston Airport System and private-public partnerships that would drive this entire development."

These are long-term plans for the spaceport, which likely won't see any operations until 2018 or 2019. That said, there are some plans in place to purchase a Boeing facility on the grounds, Diaz said. Once that's done, the expansion plans at the spaceport will expand from that point.

Aerospace companies are certainly interested in what the city's serving up, but there are still a lot of questions concerning the future of the spaceport. Aerospace company Sierra Nevada has said it's considering a local expansion, and smaller companies have shown interest as well. More plans on the co-working space will be announced at the SpaceCom Conference in November.

Learn more at Houston Business Journal.