MATCH Gathers Die-Hard Arts Fans

HOUSTON—Houston covers 655 square miles–so vast that New York, Washington, DC, Boston, San Francisco, Minneapolis and Miami could fit inside its boundaries and have room to spare. While Houston is a sprawling metropolis that has continued to grow as a cultural, arts and creative melting pot with strong support, there was no neighborhood or district to bring smaller artistic groups together with patron access.

That meant that even the most devoted arts fans had to drive far and wide to get a fix. And visitors to Houston rarely traveled beyond the Museum District or Theater District to experience the array of creative offerings that can be found in one of the fourth-largest US cities.

Arts organizations are dispersed across the city, so there are few opportunities for collaboration and synergy. Also, many operate out of inadequate facilities that significantly limit program offerings and growth ability.

Moreover, there are more than 540 cultural arts organizations in Houston and the creative economy–people employed in creative businesses (arts organizations, media and film, and architecture) plus creative people employed in other businesses (for example, graphic artists employed in energy companies). This totals nearly 147,000–more than the number of people employed in the Texas Medical Center, GlobeSt.com learns.

And Houston generously supports the arts. Cited as the second-most philanthropic city for the arts in the United States, Houston annually gives some $600 million to cultural institutions, where a $70 million and a $450 million capital campaign can take place at the same time.

To address these issues, the arts organizations met above Treebeard’s in Market Square back in 2003 to talk about the need for an arts-centric place. The informal group formed a nonprofit organization and spent several years looking for an appropriate location to renovate an existing facility or build a new one. And the group realized a professional leader with business experience and time was needed to move the project past the idea stage, and a board of directors with deep community connections and commitment was required to guide the project and raise funds.

Jewett Consulting was retained for the management leadership and the board soon grew to include 18 members. The Houston economic development division partnered with several organizations to finance the center. Philanthropist Michael Zilkha also pledged $1 million to help launch the project and encourage other funders.

With support from its neighbors and 52 donors, the nonprofit team purchased the land at 3400 Main St. in Midtown, a neighborhood situated between downtown and the Museum District/Texas Medical Center at the HCC/Ensemble MetroRail stop. The site was a former parking lot between Main Street and Travis.

As a nod to its new neighborhood, it was named the Midtown Arts + Theater Center, Houston, to be forever known as the MATCH. After an extensive review process, the MATCH’s board of directors selected the team of Lake/Flato and Studio Red to design a new building. More than 40 groups participated in this process, as well as in the business plan developed by a national expert to ensure that the facility would be affordable and its annual budget would be sustainable. The team also researched other multi-tenant venues but found none that had been custom designed to meet the needs of such a wide number of diverse organizations, GlobeSt.com learns.

The mission of the MATCH was to provide a home for a broad spectrum of Houston’s arts organizations, and create an accessible destination that will bring Houstonians together to enjoy art and enliven the neighborhood. By developing a centralized hub of creativity, an array of artists and art lovers can gather from across the region’s diverse cultural, economic and geographic communities. And indeed, this hub has filled that void to become a meeting place for Houston’s eclectic and previously decentralized art scene.