Convenience Big Store: Houston agency was supposed to help Third Ward. It built a $22M tower instead.

January 7, 2025

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Yasmeen Khalifa, Audience Engagement Producer

yasmeen.khalifa@houstonchronicle.com

The Midtown Redevelopment Authority completed construction of One Emancipation Center, a five-story office building and parking garage at Emancipation and Elgin, in 2021. The building, which contains no housing units despite being built with dollars dedicated to affordable housing, remains half-empty.

Photo by: Photos by Yi-Chin Lee/Illustration by Susan Barber (Photos by Yi-Chin Lee/Illustration by Susan Barber)

A Houston agency was supposed to help Third Ward fight gentrification. It built a $22M tower instead.

For nearly 15 years, Houston's Midtown development zone quietly bought hundreds of lots in and around Third Ward as part of a large-scale effort to slow gentrification and build affordable housing in the historic Black neighborhood.

But the Midtown development zone's largest housing expense? A half-empty, $22 million office tower no one lives in.

According to a Houston Chronicle analysis, if Midtown had put the housing money it spent on the office building and accompanying parking garage into actual housing, at the per-unit cost of the adjacent apartment complex, it could have built 72 additional units.

That office tower, for many Third Ward civic leaders, has become a symbol of Midtown's broader struggle to seize the opportunity provided by its affordable housing funds.

The tower isn't the only questionable use of those dollars. Former Midtown executive Todd Edwards and two landscaping vendors are facing felony charges for allegedly misusing $8.5 million in housing funds.

Read more about the Houston Midtown development zone in this investigative series from Mike Morris.

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