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The Downtown Launch Pad will be an innovation space for entrepreneurs and startups from around the world. It’s one of the latest spaces being developed in Houston’s innovation corridor that will run along Main Street from downtown to the Medical Center.
The Launch Pad will take up 17,000 square feet on several floors of the Amegy Bank building downtown, and is anchored by startup accelerators MassChallenge and gener8tor.
The space will include incubators, labs, coworking offices and areas for corporate innovation.
It's another piece in the puzzle to make Houston a strong innovation city, said Bob Eury, president of Central Houston, which coordinates downtown development.
"We really needed to take advantage of what already was happening in downtown with MassChallenge and with gener8tor coming in and really setting up so we can more permanently co-locate all these new entities that are basically popping up here in our city," he said.
The Launch Pad will be connected by Metro rail to The Ion, the innovation center that's being built at the former Sears building in Midtown.
At a Central Houston luncheon Thursday, Mayor Sylvester Turner praised the fast developments in the city's innovation efforts.
"We are not second to any," he said. "We are not second to Silicon Valley or to what they're doing on the East Coast. In Houston, we're doing it our way."
The space is expected to open in spring 2020.