Houston startup hub The Cannon is beginning its expansion into Montgomery County with the opening of new workspace in the Woodforest area Dec. 5.
The 8,100-square-foot space is within The Park at Fish Creek retail center, at 618 Fish Creek Thoroughfare in Montgomery. Neither Jon Lambert, CEO of the Cannon, nor Ronnie Matthews, who owns the retail center, disclosed the financial details of the lease.
As of the Cannon's soft opening, it already has several coworking tenants. The Cannon Fish Creek offers 19 private offices, three conference rooms, several flex space seating options and an on-site coffee shop.
Matthews told the Houston Business Journal he approached the Cannon to fill the space, which is about a third of the retail center. Fish Creek Animal Hospital already occupies a smaller portion of the building.
“We had a couple of proposals for the site, but I really appreciated [the Cannon’s] willingness to come down and look and have a plan for what they wanted to do here,” said Matthews, who also is chairman and principal of Spring-based Great American Title.
The Cannon usually works with local governments and economic development organizations when searching for potential locations, but the fact that Matthews reached out to the Cannon made the process of securing the Fish Creek space easier, Lambert told the HBJ.
Although there were several existing opportunities for spaces in The Woodlands, Lambert noted that most of those were already occupied, and entrepreneurs in the Montgomery area found it inconvenient to drive into Houston to take advantage of options inside the Loop.
“We're confident that [Fish Creek is] going to kind of become an epicenter development of that community,” Lambert said.
The Fish Creek location is the Cannon’s first step into Montgomery County, with plans for a Woodlands location in the works for 2023, Lambert said.
The county’s growing population centers and rapid developments make it a target for the Cannon’s strategy of embedding into local communities. New Montgomery County communities announced in recent weeks include Johnson Development Corp.'s 1,400-acre unnamed project near Magnolia, Pulte Homes' 80-acre Montgomery Bend near Lake Conroe, and Shea Homes' 300-acre Woodhavyn near The Woodlands. Lambert said the Cannon’s goal is to grow alongside new communities.
“One of the things we’re talking about is, how can we be part of the developer conversation,” Lambert said. “Nobody’s thinking about embedding something like a business dimension to the amenity structure, and we could easily be the provider of that.”
Lambert acknowledged that due to a different real estate environment, the Fish Creek space might evolve in a different direction from the Cannon’s other campuses.
“This is our first time in anything like this because we’re usually in high rises,” Lambert said. “Our hope is that the community’s energy will show us that we’ve received success over time. That’s the cool part about engaging these communities. … We kind of let the identity follow the community.”
The Cannon, founded in 2017, opened its 120,000-square-foot facility on Brittmoore Road in 2019, as well as its Post Oak location at 675 Bering Drive and The Cannon Tower on Main Street downtown in the same year. The Cannon also now has locations in the Esperson Building downtown, MarMo Plaza in Galveston and on North Eldridge Parkway in the Energy Corridor. A North Texas location in Frisco is planned for 2023.
