The Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo announced plans to spend $300 million to build a new arena, two large barns and an administrative building a few miles south of Reliant Park.
Courtesy of RodeoHouston/RodeoHouston
The Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo announced plans to spend $300 million to build a new arena, two large barns and an administrative building a few miles south of Reliant Park.
Courtesy of RodeoHouston/RodeoHouston
The Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo announced plans to spend $300 million to build a new arena, two large barns and an administrative building a few miles south of Reliant Park.
Courtesy of RodeoHouston/RodeoHouston
The Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo will spend roughly $300 million to build a new arena and agricultural complex a few miles south of Reliant Park (formerly NRG Park), the largest investment of the nonprofit’s history and one that cements its future in that part of Houston.
The rodeo announced Wednesday it will expand with a 5,000-seat arena to replace the aging one at Reliant Park, along with two large barns and an administrative building that amount to more than 1 million square feet in new space. The new complex will be on land the rodeo owns west of Texas 288 between Reed Road and Airport Boulevard. It is expected to be ready by the 2029 Rodeo.
The rodeo’s annual event then will be split between Reliant Park and this complex, with the latter hosting horse shows, auctions and agricultural events. The bulk of programming, including concerts and the carnival, will remain at Reliant Park, though the new arena could host concerts, comedy shows and other events in the offseason.
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Chris Boleman, the rodeo’s president and CEO, said the organization started discussing this project before the COVID-19 pandemic. He described it as an expansion – not a relocation – that will allow the rodeo to program year round in addition to its marquee annual event in March. The rodeo’s headquarters will remain at Reliant Center.
“Home for us is still Reliant Park, and specifically the center… Our commitment is to be at Reliant Park long term,” Boleman said. “It’s really about creating the best environment possible for our horse and livestock exhibitors. This is the next chapter in our evolution.”
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RodeoHouston announced plans to build a new arena and agricultural complex at Texas 288 and Reed Road, near Dick Graves Park, photographed on June 23, 2026.
Elizabeth Conley/Houston Chronicle
Replacing the arena was one key tenet of ongoing lease negotiations between Harris County, the Houston Texans and the rodeo for the future of Reliant Park. Reliant Arena has long been considered past its life span, and the rodeo has been mulling its options for a replacement. The Texans also are considering a new football stadium, and there remains an open question about what to do with the vacant Astrodome in the middle of the campus.
The Texans announced in February that they would move the team’s headquarters and practice facilities offsite to a new facility in the Bridgeland area. Harris County approved $150 million toward that project, to be paid for with a tax increment reinvestment zone (TIRZ), in which part of the county’s property taxes are set aside each year to be spent only within that area.
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The three parties’ lease agreement expires in 2032, and the discussions are complicated by the extensive maintenance needs at most of the park’s facilities, which include Reliant Stadium and Reliant Center. In the early 2000s, the county agreed to own maintenance costs at the campus, but it has never attributed an adequate funding source to do so, and the facilities have fallen into disrepair.
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That is especially true of Reliant Arena, which the rodeo built in 1974 and later donated to Harris County. A 2019 study commissioned by the county found the arena was beyond its life span and should be replaced in no more than seven years. The rodeo hosts its horse show and auctions there every March.
The arena’s electrical system was failing, many of the seating areas lacked handrails needed to meet “life safety or building codes,” and the dated facility met every visitor with a “set of stairs to climb to get to the seating bowl,” the assessment found.
There had been a question about who would foot the bill for a new arena. The county owns the arena and is contractually obligated to maintain it, but it faces a budget gap, and some leaders have balked over the years at the idea of subsidizing a new facility for a nonprofit organization that generates hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue. The rodeo, though, accounts for a significant share of the county’s revenues at Reliant Park.
Wednesday’s announcement means the rodeo is forging ahead on its own, without the county’s money – or its oversight.
“It needed to be an investment from us to take the burden off of Reliant Park,” Boleman said. “We needed to develop this for our needs, and our needs are for our exhibitors, so that’s why we did it.”
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No taxpayer money is expected for the rodeo’s project.
Local elected officials praised the announcement. Mayor John Whitmire said the rodeo “continues to be a great partner to the Houston community,” and County Commissioner Rodney Ellis – whose Precinct 1 includes Reliant Park – said the rodeo “has demonstrated what’s possible when an organization invests in its community.”