Houston First Corporation, the city’s destination management organization, has announced a five-year strategic plan to make the city a top production destination in Texas and across the South. The plan will grow the city’s film and media production sector by improving incentives, developing the local workforce, improving and increasing production infrastructure and investing in Houston’s creative economy.
Developed by the Houston Film Commission in partnership with consulting firm KHM, the plan builds on Houston’s advantages. Those include diverse filming sites, the city’s diversity and global connectivity, and major-market infrastructure, while enhancing production infrastructure and bolstering the local workforce.
“Houston has all the ingredients to become a much larger player in the film and media industry—extraordinary locations, a diverse population, talented professionals and the scale and infrastructure of a global city,” Michael Heckman, President and CEO of Houston First, said in a press release sent to Chron. “This strategic plan gives us a clear path forward to turn those assets into greater economic opportunity—creating jobs and attracting investment so that the film industry can thrive here.”
The strategic plan will begin by continuing to improve and build on Houston’s local film incentive, which officially launched last year. The Houston Feature Film Incentive Program offers 10 percent back to producers of qualifying projects on local spend. Houston First has allocated $400,000 annually for the incentive program, which is already one of the most competitive in Texas.
Along with improving the city’s incentive offering, the five-year plan will also increase marketing and promotion for Houston’s film-ready locations and assets and streamline permitting and location access. Later objectives of the plan call for advancing infrastructure, like studio spaces that can accommodate larger and more frequent productions.
“Growing Houston’s film industry requires more than attracting individual productions—it requires building an ecosystem that can sustain production year after year,” Alfred Cervantes, Executive Director of the Houston Film Commission, said in a statement. “Our focus is on creating the conditions that make Houston an easy choice for producers while developing opportunities for Houstonians to build careers in this industry.”