Ion District: Rice Developing Major Midtown Building

In Houston, Rice Real Estate Company, in partnership with Lincoln Property Co., will develop a 200,000-SF research and development building called the Arc at the Ion District in Midtown Houston.

The Ion District is a 16-acre innovation hub in Houston created by Rice on several blocks of land near Main Street, Wheeler Avenue and Fannin Street.

Rice Real Estate, a subsidiary of Rice University developed the first building in The Ion district at 4201 Main Street, a 266,000-SF office building. It was the redevelopment of a 1939-Vintage Sears store, one of the first retail stores to venture outside of downtown Houston.

The Arc will be building on land used for parking by the Sears customers of yore.

The original Ion/Sears building, now over 90% leased, includes tenants and corporate partners from Chevron, Microsoft, Aramco, Baker Botts, ExxonMobil, Oxy, BP, Shell, United, Transocean and Woodside Energy as well as leading startups and investors such as Persona AI and Liongard.

“This impressive roster demonstrates the Ion’s strong market demand as a destination for innovation-driven companies,” Rice Real Estate said in a press release Tuesday.

The Arc, which will share a plaza with the Ion, will be purpose-built to accelerate the transition of ideas from the lab to the marketplace and support research and enterprise activities.

Rice University will be a lead tenant at The Arc, occupying almost 30,000 SF of office and lab space for its faculty and students. Rice’s presence will offer cross-disciplinary research and idea exchange with a focus on key fields of energy, artificial intelligence, data science, robotics and computational engineering.

Construction on The Arc is slated to begin in the second quarter of 2026, with completion anticipated in the first quarter of 2028. Preleasing is being handled by Gabe Lerner and Scott Irby of Lincoln Property Co.

In The Arc will offer floor plates ranging from 28,000 to 31,000 SF and15, foot floor-to-floor heights. Infrastructure will be future-proofed to accommodate advanced HVAC, high-capacity electrical and emergency power systems and core lab systems that meet demanding research requirements.

“The Arc at the Ion District will be more than a building, it will be a catalyst for the partnerships, innovations and discoveries that will define Houston’s future in science and technology,” said Ken Jett, president of Rice Real Estate Company.