Urban Genesis, Housing Authority, East Downtown Apartments

Local developer Urban Genesis plans to bring 258 apartments to East Downtown with the help of the Houston Housing Authority.

The five-story project at 3122 Leeland Street, CoOp at EaDo, is set to begin construction this summer.

The 315,000-square-foot project is estimated to cost upwards of $31 million, or about $120,000 per unit, according to a filing with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation. Filings from the state’s licensing and regulation department are only preliminary estimations, however, and are subject to change.

CoOp at EaDo, composed of for-rent apartments, is expected to be built out by 2025, according to the filing. Urban Genesis and the Houston Housing Authority didn’t immediately respond to interview requests. It is unclear how many affordable units the development will have. But another proposed project from Urban Genesis and the Houston Housing Authority, called COOP at Farmers Market, would make 26 units available to those earning 30 percent of the area median income ($14,300 for one person); 127 apartments would be for those earning 80 percent AMI ($49,600 for one person); and 158 apartments would be market rate.

The complex will include a dedicated parking garage as well as surface parking. It will also house a fitness center, bike room, swimming pool and dog park, according to the filing. Houston’s Housing Authority operates 5,600 units, which include 1,600 at Low Income Housing Tax Credit projects, across 25 affordable housing communities in the city.

The nearly 3-acre lot on Leeland Street was appraised at $4.2 million in 2022 by the Harris County Appraisal District.

Houston-based architectural firm W Partnership is heading the project design. Urban Genesis has built other apartments in the city’s Inner Loop, including in the Medical Center and Greater Heights.

East Downtown, five minutes from Minute Maid Park, has been rife with development by growing entrepreneurs. On Feb. 6, Houston law enforcement agents cleared out the Tent City that had been erected near Minute Maid Park, where dozens of unhoused residents were living. The unhoused residents were relocated to a navigation center to help them find permanent housing.

Houston’s push to rehouse its unhoused population and reorganize previously dilapidated areas in East Downtown has brought interest from enterprising developers. Concept Neighborhood’s new $350 million “walkable, car-free” neighborhood plan, the Plant, is expected to transform the area. The Plant seeks to bring Brooklyn to the Bayou City with four blocks of mixed-use developments including 1,000 multifamily units. The mixed-use project isn’t the only new development coming to the city’s growing East Downtown.

And much like Brooklyn, the landscape of Houston’s East Downtown has undergone a massive transformation. The poverty rate in the area decreased from 44 percent to a low of 7 percent over the span of 20 years, according to a December report by Houston Tenants Union.