With the on field product for the Houston Texans in very good shape, with an ascending team, a franchise quarterback, and a head coach beloved by everyone, attention has turned recently to off field topics. More accurately, the topic has been the actual field itself.
Currently, the county, the rodeo, and the Texans are conducting various feasibility studies to find a long term stadium solution. The stated first choice is to renovate NRG Stadium to make it more current and, presumably, more luxurious. A new stadium, though, is not out of the question.
It stands to reason then that many Houstonians are trying to read into the latest Texans off field news. Courtesy of Jonathan Alexander of the Houston Chronicle, the team is seeking to move its team headquarters away from NRG Stadium to a to-be-determined location somewhere else in the greater Houston area.
Cal and Hannah McNair told the Chron the team would be seeking a venue for its practice fields, weight rooms, meeting spaces, and business offices. Currently, the Texans are one of just four teams who house their office space within their home stadium. The other three are the Cincinnati Bengals, New England Patriots and Carolina Panthers.
The unique situation for the Texans, as compared to the other 31 teams, is that they share their stadium with the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. No other team has a partner for their stadium that stands on nearly as equal footing as do the Texans and the rodeo with one another. Between the rodeo, and the numerous other dates the stadium is being used for events that are NOT booked by the Texans, the McNairs told Alexander that conducting day to day business has become more difficult at the stadium:
“It’s disruptive,” Hannah McNair said. “It’s something we struggle with throughout the year. We don’t know who is going to be there, whether it’s a contortionist or Princess Disney on Ice, whatever it is you’re constantly walking through it… We’ve outgrown the space.”
If you’re looking for a similar situation, the Houston Rockets opened their own 75,000 foot practice facility last summer, about 10 minutes from Toyota Center, a facility that cost the Fertitta family around $70 million to build.
Unlike the Rockets, who control the Toyota Center, though, the Texans are tenants in NRG Stadium. Important tenants, but tenants nonetheless, so the next iteration of an NRG Stadium lease, or obviously with a new stadium, will likely entitle the McNairs to more control over use of the stadium. One thing the McNair family has insisted, though, is that the Texans will not be leaving Houston according to what they told the Chronicle:
“I think most of us in Houston remember that feeling back in the ’90s and we don’t want to experience that again, as a city,” Hannah McNair said, referencing when the Houston Oilers left for Tennessee in 1997. “Personally, for the families, for businesses, it definitely left a hole in the heart of Houston when that happened.
“But the best outcome was that we were able to bring a franchise to Houston. That is part of our duty to the city, to our fans as well, to make sure we have good outcome here.”
As for the new headquarters and practice facility, and any correlation between that and the pending renovation of NRG Stadium, the only tie I see is the removal of the Texans business offices from the stadium allowing the facility to become a tad more modular for upgrades, and the vacating of the practice fields across the street allows for far more open space outside a revamped NRG Stadium.
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