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https://www.houstonchronicle.com/bus...k-18651616.php

Magnolia Fund is planning to convert former industrial warehouses into a “food maker” campus in the East End’s Magnolia Park neighborhood. Pictured is a conceptual rendering the seller, Immaginare Facendo, used for marketing purposes. Magnolia Fund’s project would also add air-conditioned shipping containers converted into commercial kitchens.

Immaginare

East End warehouses to be converted into 'food-maker' and dining complex aimed at helping entreprenuers

By Marissa Luck,
Staff writer
Feb 7, 2024

A Houston real estate firm plans to turn a trio of old industrial warehouse in Magnolia Park area into a 1-acre "food-maker" campus with restaurants and kitchen space for food entrepreneurs, adding to the ongoing transformation of Houston’s East End.

Magnolia Fund, a real estate firm co-founded by East End native and serial entrepreneur Erik Ibarra, has agreed to buy 6600 and 6614 Harrisburg Blvd. from Houston investor Paolo Fronza. The sale is expected to close by this summer, Ibarra said. The site is about 4 miles east of downtown Houston.

The three buildings date to the 1920s and 1940s. A 4,500-square-foot warehouse would be converted into two restaurants, a bar and coffee shop. A 9,100-square-foot building would house a café, a meeting/event venue and coworking space. The firm hasn’t decided what to do with the silo-shaped structure at the site.

Between those buildings, Magnolia Fund would add two to four shipping containers converted into commercial kitchen space that could be rented out on a flexible and short-term basis to food entrepreneurs, restaurateurs, bakers and caterers. (The containers would be air-conditioned and have access to utilities.)