Houston's East End Market holds grand opening 'with over $3 million' for businesses

East End Maker Hub (EEMH), which celebrated its grand opening on Thursday, June 3, works to help the Urban Partnerships Community Development Corporation (UP CDC) and TXRX.

The Hub site, previously a single tenant industrial building later renovated into the now 300,000-square-foot facility, presents opportunities to the East End community through a $38 million project that now houses Houston innovators and other manufacturing businesses including fabricators and crafters, the Houston Daily reported. 

"Today #TeamAlvarado attended the grand opening of the @HoustonMakerHub, Houston’s premier manufacturing and fabrication facility with over $3 million of state-of-the-art equipment, classes and technical support for local manufacturers, fabricators, crafters and innovators," state Sen. Carol Alvarado (D-Houston) wrote in a tweet.

Patrick Ezzell told Houston Daily that the facility is more than just a hub for businesses, manufacturers, fabricators and crafters. He said that it also acts as a place where scientists and engineers have memberships to further help the community and business within the community.  

“TXRX Labs runs a makerspace, but it's more than that, they're large, they're a nonprofit and they're staffed by engineers and scientists, and they have a membership and their membership is largely a lot of engineers, a lot of makers, lots of people that do things hands-on,” Ezzel, president of the Urban Partnerships Community Development Corporation, told Houston Daily. “TXRX, prior to this building, had about 40,000 feet that they occupied. They found that they were losing their space because the landlord is going to redevelop the building. And so, the other nonprofit in this group is Urban Partnership CDC or UP CDC, I'm the CEO of that company. We're a nonprofit real estate development company.”

Part of the uniqueness of the hub is that created more than 400 jobs for the community, and will continue to introduce approximately 200 jobs annually to the area. It also hopes to pull in people of Hispanic and African American descent from the surrounding neighborhoods, Ezzel told the Houston Daily. 

“My hope is that the high percentage, say in excess of 70 or 80% of the people that work here come from the surrounding neighborhoods which are Hispanic and African American, and they were successful and bringing those individuals to train for these jobs,” Ezzel said. 

Ezzel said he would like to see the project continue to be an "ongoing vehicle" to help train people for future careers, and offer them good-paying jobs even if they do not attend college. 

“Secondly, I would see this as being an ongoing vehicle to train individuals that are not college-bound, so they can have good-paying jobs. And for creative individuals to help them have a pathway to create new manufacturing businesses, so that from now into the future this particular economic engine has a big impact on the folks that live in these neighborhoods so that they can earn more money and build more wealth and prosper more,” he said. 

According to Click 2 Houston, the hub is expected to create nearly 1,000 new companies with the next five years alone. The hub, a joint effort between UP CDC and TXRX Labs, will leverage "$1.25 million in equity to raise $37 million in capital through New Market Tax Credits, funding partners, the City of Houston and the U.S. Economic Development Administration," Click 2 Houston reported.