Talk:Ion District

Draft article
Hello! I'm Katrina, here on behalf of the Ion. I'd like to suggest some improvements to the Wikipedia article about the innovation district. I'll be submitting requests here on the Talk page instead of editing the article myself, in order to comply with the site's conflict of interest rules. Per User:Drmies, who has already complimented the quality of the draft at a glance and requested clarification about my COI at User talk:KB Ion, allow me to confirm my employment.

I'm here because there are many problems with the current Wikipedia article. For example, the text relies heavily on press releases, company websites, government documents, and Rice's student newspaper over secondary journalistic sources. Additionally, the article seems heavily skewed, focusing on the community benefits agreement (CBA) and funding more than the campus and facilities. There is also some incorrect text and some outdated information. For these reasons, I've worked to draft a much improved Wikipedia article, which I've saved here for editors to review: User:KB Ion/Ion District.

In terms of overall structure, my draft starts by giving readers a description of the district, with subsections dedicated to the Ion building and Greentown Labs. Then, the History section focuses on the district's development as well as the CBA. I've further subdivided the development section to separate text about tenants and property management from the district's partnerships and accelerators. I believe this is an improvement over the current layout, which leads with History then prioritizes the CBA and funding details before actually providing readers with an overview of the campus and facilities. I realize there's a lot of content here to review, so I'll be submitting a series of requests to address the issues I've identified, and I hope editors can use my draft to copy over content appropriately.

Add proposed "Description" section and remove existing "Campus section"
Currently, the Wikipedia article starts with History and ends with a Description of the campus. However, I think the article should actually do the reverse, and start by introducing readers to the topic. Therefore, I propose leading with the Description section I've proposed in my draft, which provides a general overview of the innovation district and has subsections dedicated to the Ion building and Greentown Labs. If this text seems reasonable, then I would also propose removing the current Campus section at the bottom of the page, which is merely an unsourced table with three entries. (You'll see I've kept both images in my draft.)

The Description section I've proposed uses journalistic sources such as the Houston Chronicle, Fast Company, Houstonia magazine, and local news outlets. The same cannot be said for the current Campus section, which has no sources. I understand text on Wikipedia must be neutral and based on quality sources, and I've tried my hardest to be accurate and fair to all sides involved in this project. If reviewing even just the Description section is too big for an initial ask, I'm happy to break down my requests into smaller chunks, but I'm hoping editors will consider this draft section a significant improvement over the existing text.

Can someone please review what I've proposed and copy over the content appropriately? I will be keeping an eye on the article and this Talk page, so I am happy to answer questions or address any concerns which may arise during this process. I'm looking forward to working with editors to improve this page.

Thanks! KB Ion (talk) 17:52, 6 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Yes check.svg Done PK650 (talk) 03:53, 10 June 2022 (UTC)

History
Thanks for reviewing the above request and adding the Description section to the article.

Next, I'd like to tackle the History section. Currently, this section has a few helpful facts about the former Sears building, but also there's some unnecessary information. For example, the text says HR&A Advisors has "offices in New York and various other cities", and also mentions the media and press contacts.

I propose replacing this section with the History section I've proposed here, which has subsections for Development and the Community benefits agreement. Furthermore, the Development section has sub-sections specific to Tenants and property management and Partnerships and accelerators. Recognizing this is a lot to review at once, I'm willing to focus on just the first four paragraphs of the Development section for now, if that's easier.

The current History section uses the HR&A Advisors website as a citation multiple times, as well as the Ion website and a press release. I don't believe these are supposed to be used on Wikipedia, so I've drafted an overview of the district as a whole based on reputable news coverage. I propose replacing the current History section, and if the tenants/property management and partnerships/accelerators content is also approved, then I propose removing the current Facilities section because these topics are covered elsewhere. I'm happy to tackle the CBA and funding sections separately if preferred.

Can User:PK650 or another editor please review my proposed draft and update appropriately? Thanks again for your help! KB Ion (talk) 20:02, 10 June 2022 (UTC)

❌ Closing this request as the editor has broken it into separate requests below. Duke Gilmore (talk) 01:16, 27 December 2022 (UTC)

Development
After submitting the above edit request, I sought editor assistance at the Teahouse and was encouraged to break the request into smaller sections and consider sharing proposed text on this Talk page instead of sending reviewers to a separate draft page. Here is my proposed text for the Development subsection:



Rice Management Company (RMC) and its partners announced plans to convert a former Sears store into an innovation center in April 2018. The department store chain had a 99-year lease agreement with Rice University since 1945, and RMC bought the company out of the lease in 2017. RMC led the expansion and renovation of the store, which closed in 2018. SHoP Architects, Gensler, James Carpenter Design Associates, and Walter P Moore designed the new structure.

In July 2019, Houston mayor Sylvester Turner, Rice University president David Leebron, and representatives of the city attended a groundbreaking ceremony for the Ion's redevelopment. Master plans for the district were revealed in November 2019. Jan Odegard, the former executive director of Rice University's Ken Kennedy Institute, became the Ion's executive director in June 2020. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Ion hosted online programming, including "Family Tech Night" and events for startups.

In mid 2020, Greentown Labs announced plans to open a second incubator in Houston, having considered the city since 2019. In September 2020, the firm confirmed plans to retrofit a former Fiesta Mart store, which the operator had closed two months prior because of declining sales. Additionally, Greentown Labs revealed plans to raise $10 million for the renovation project and three years of working capital. The firm had raised approximately $8 million by September 2020, and building construction began the following month.

In February 2021, Turner hosted a "reveal" ceremony for the incubator, which had approximately 20 corporate partners and 16 inaugural startups at the time. Companies that contributed to the project included BHP, CenterPoint Energy, Chevron, Gexa Energy, Shell, Vinson & Elkins, Wells Fargo, and Williams. In April 2021, Greentown Labs received a certificate of occupancy and 30 companies began moving into the space. The incubator opened on Earth Day 2021. The grand opening ceremony was livestreamed and had limited in-person attendance because of the pandemic, which also forced Greentown Labs Houston to scale back programming temporarily.

This content is intended to serve as the first subsection of "History" and give readers an overview of the district's development. I will be submitting separate requests for the "Tenants and property management" subsection, the "Partnerships and accelerators" subsection, and the "Community benefits agreement" subsection. The markup for the proposed text and citations can be found here. I've tried to share text which is neutral and based on journalism rather than company websites, government documents or student papers. Can someone update the article on my behalf?

Please let me know if you have questions or need this submitted in a different format. Thanks! KB Ion (talk) 21:52, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

@ KB Ion ✅ Cheers  Duke Gilmore (talk) 01:24, 27 December 2022 (UTC)

Tenants and property management
Related to the district's development, I'd like to suggest specific text about tenants and property management as a subsection of "Development".

Here's what I propose (as seen here), which gives a brief and chronological overview of tenants and also mentions the property management company:

Chevron Technology Ventures was named the first tenant and program partner for the Ion in August 2020. Microsoft, which also became a program partner, announced in August 2020 it would invest $1 million into social entrepreneurship programs as part of its participation, and was confirmed as a tenant, along with Common Desk, in late 2020. Houston-based Transwestern became the property manager in November 2020.

The Austin-based innovation and mentorship provider Capital Factory has Houston headquarters in the Ion, as of 2021. In October 2021, the musical theatre production company Theatre Under The Stars (TUTS) announced plans to establish an education and arts center as an anchor tenant in the next phase of the district's development. TXRX Labs has operated the Ion Prototyping Lab since January 2022. In addition to the tenant restaurants in the Ion building, Stuff'd Wings has been a district tenant since April 2022. Established in 2019, the restaurants previously operated as a food truck.

I hope editors consider this an accurate and neutral overview and can update the article. Thank you! KB Ion (talk) 21:52, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

@KB Ion ✅ Cheers Duke Gilmore (talk) 01:29, 27 December 2022 (UTC)

Partnerships and accelerators
Continuing the process of breaking the initial "History" request into smaller sections, I'd like to submit a request with specific text for the "Partnerships and accelerators" subsection of "Development", which gives readers a chronological and neutral overview of Ion partnerships and accelerator programs:

The Ion district announced its first academic partnership in January 2020; Rice University's Susanne M. Glasscock School of Continuing Studies offered courses on computer and data science, financial services, human resources, leadership development, and project management to Ion members. In March 2020, the Ion and the Austin-based nonprofit organization DivInc announced a partnership to develop programs for women and minority entrepreneurs. The Latinx Startup Alliance partnered with the Ion to support Latino entrepreneurs and began hosting virtual programming in October 2020. The Houston-based law firm Baker Botts joined Chevron Technology Ventures and Microsoft as a founding partner in March 2021. According to Community Impact Newspaper, the energy, life sciences, and technology-focused firm "has supported The Ion since its inception and has provided programming over the last few years". Aramco Americas also joined as a founding partner. In addition to being a tenant, Capital Factory formed a programming partnership with the Ion in October 2021 to offer events and resources on-site for startups.

The Ion's Accelerator Hub includes the Ion Smart and Resilient Cities Accelerator (ISRCA), the Aerospace Innovation Accelerator for Minority Business Enterprises (AIA for MBEs), the Rice Alliance Clean Energy Accelerator, and DivInc Houston. The Ion team established the ISRCA in September 2019 to focus on disaster recovery. Community Impact Newspaper has said the ISRCA "addresses the needs of Houston and cities across America by deploying technology into existing civic infrastructure", and participating startups "have the chance to build relationships with mentors, corporate networks, municipality decision-makers, and stakeholder partners, and gain exposure in the Greater Houston region". The AIA for MBEs supports startups in their development of solutions for aerospace-related challenges, and the Rice Alliance Clean Energy Accelerator focuses on sustainable energy projects.

In September 2020, the district received $1.5 million from the Economic Development Administration's Build to Scale program to support the Accelerator Hub's creation. The district received a $1.4 million federal grant from the Minority Business Development Agency in October 2020 to establish an aerospace engineering accelerator in partnership with NASA's Johnson Space Center and DivInc. The ISRCA's third cohort began a 12-week program at the Ion in March 2021. The AIA for MBEs launched in April 2021, with four BIPOC-owned companies selected to participate in the first 12-week program.

Again, this draft page has markup for text and citations, if needed. Can an editor please review and update the article appropriately on my behalf, given my conflict of interest? Thanks again for reviewing in advance! KB Ion (talk) 21:52, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

@KB Ion ✅  Cheers  Duke Gilmore (talk) 01:34, 27 December 2022 (UTC)

Community benefits agreement
Since the "History" request might be too much for editors to review at once, and with the "Development" subsections posted above, I'd like to submit a request specific to the community benefits agreement as a "History" subsection. The current text is skewed, unnecessarily subdivided by entity/party, and heavily based on student reporting. The following replacement text is a more accurate and neutral overview based on reputable news coverage:

In January 2020, Turner announced that the City of Houston would negotiate a community benefits agreement (CBA) with RMC in response to concerns about community impact raised by individuals representing a variety of organizations largely concentrated in the nearby Third Ward, a neighborhood to the east of the Ion. The Ion's groundbreaking ceremony in July 2019 had also attracted students from Rice, Texas Southern University, the University of Houston and local high schools, who had formed the Student Coalition for a Just and Equitable Innovation Corridor to advocate for community benefits.

In January 2020, representatives of 17 student groups wrote a letter to university president Leebron asking RMC to guarantee community benefits to local residents. Students asked Rice to collaborate with the Houston Coalition for Equitable Development Without Displacement (HCEDD), a group of community organizations, residents, and students concerned about the potential gentrification of the Third Ward, a historically and predominantly African-American community. The group tried to develop an exclusive and separate CBA with RMC which would not include the City of Houston as the counterparty.

After Turner and Rice agreed to negotiate a CBA, RMC and the City of Houston organized a workshop series which included a presentation of the district, a panel discussion of community experts, and breakout sessions for public input. Following the series, RMC convened a working group of civic and community stakeholders to help identify commitments to be documented in the CBA between Rice and the City of Houston. Stakeholders included representatives from Houston's Black and Hispanic chambers of commerce as well as residents of communities surrounding the district. RMC invited HCEDD to participate in the working group. After several months, the working group produced a report that recommended commitments for both Rice and the City of Houston in three focus areas of economic opportunity: housing affordability, inclusive contracting, and hiring. HCEDD, which did not participate in the working group after being offered four positions, criticized the working group's report and process saying the "recommendations did not go far enough".

HCEDD proposed an alternative set of commitments that included demands for RMC to construct affordable housing for "existing and long-time" Third Ward residents, support cultural preservation and sponsor of Juneteenth and Kwanzaa celebrations hosted by local groups. HCEDD also continued to demand an exclusive agreement with RMC which would not include the City of Houston. After the working group released its report, the City of Houston and Rice began negotiations and presented a proposed CBA to the City Council for approval that included $15.3 million dollars in direct community investments to affordable housing, community capacity building, and support for underrepresented entrepreneurs as well as project-based contracting and investment opportunities for minority- and women-owned business enterprises (MWBEs) and underrepresented individuals.

The proposed CBA was introduced to City Council for approval on November 3, 2021. The mayor was not present for the City Council meeting and six councilmembers initiated a procedural delay of the vote for a week. The following week, the Houston City Council approved the agreement by a vote of 14 to 3. According to the Houston Chronicle, the agreement includes a "$5 million investment fund for minorities and women in tech, $4.5 million for affordable housing developers, and $2 million in technology sector job training", among other community-focused initiatives. District K Councilmember and Vice Mayor Pro-Tem Martha Castex Tatum said the agreement sets a new precedent for community members and developers to work together in Houston and that it was "more than any developer has ever done in the history of development agreements."

Same as my previous requests, I hope editors can please review and update the article appropriately on my behalf. You can find markup for text and citations here if needed, and the draft should help demonstrate how the text appears within the article as a whole.

If these sections are implemented as proposed then there should be no need for the current "Facilities" section. For all of these requests, I've tried to be as fair as possible and base the text on published journalism instead of official websites, student papers and government documents. Too much of the article's current text is skewed, overly detailed, based on less reliable sources, or otherwise problematic. I hope these requests can be used to help improve the page and I thank editors for reviewing and updating for me. Let me know if you have questions. Thanks! KB Ion (talk) 21:52, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

@KB Ion ✅  Duke Gilmore (talk) 01:39, 27 December 2022 (UTC)

Requested move 13 July 2022

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. 

The result of the move request was: moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) Extraordinary Writ (talk) 05:31, 22 July 2022 (UTC)

Ion Innovation District → Ion District – On behalf of The Ion, I propose moving this page from Ion Innovation District to Ion District, per the official name as well as secondary sourcing, which uses "Ion District" much more frequently. Using Google, a search for "Ion Innovation District" yields 1,080 results, while a search for "Ion District" yields over 18,000 results. The Ion District is an innovation district, but the innovation district is known as simply Ion District. Thanks! KB Ion (talk) 15:19, 13 July 2022 (UTC)