Houston’s East End is peppered with fields between former industrial brick buildings, bungalows, recently remodeled parks, farmers markets and new condominiums, but a 6-acre lot stands out. Behind purple fencing, the parcel marks two construction trends spreading across the country: adaptive reuse of buildings and the use of timber in commercial projects. The site at the moment houses a pop-up drive-in movie theater, but Houston developer Triten Real Estate Partners plans to turn the lot into a mixed-use project that is expected to be a critical part of the East End’s ongoing transformation. Called the Mill after a former 1890s-era industrial lumber mill on the site, Triten’s project is expected to be one of Houston’s first cross-laminated timber office projects, in addition to restaurant and retail space and a 340-unit apartment complex.

On November 13, Houston City Council approved $24 million in federal funding to develop a new high-tech maker hub in East End Houston. The long-awaited project will be a hub for education, job training and manufacturing opportunities aimed at supporting and scaling small batch manufacturing in Houston’s historic East End community.

Formed 18,000 years ago, the Buffalo Bayou is Houston prime’s waterway extending some 54 miles from the Katy area all the way down to the Ship Channel and Galveston Bay. Its history in Texas goes back to the early Anglo-American settlements and the Texas Independence with the Battle of San Jacinto. The docks in the Harrisburg area just East of Downtown Houston became the foundations of what became the modern Port of Houston.