A small community charity near Houston is listed as the owner of a planned $9.5 million indoor sports complex. That is not how these deals usually look, and the paperwork behind it raises a question nobody has answered yet.
A Texas state filing registered on May 19, 2026 names Hope Active, a Webster-based nonprofit, as the owner of a planned 65,639-square-foot facility on the southeast edge of the Houston metro. It puts the estimated cost at $9.5 million and lists a July 1, 2026 construction start with a July 1, 2027 completion. As of now the record shows the status as "Project Registered," not under construction.
The press coverage has led with the building. The filing points somewhere more interesting.
What Hope Active Is, and What the Filing Actually Shows
Hope Active is a Webster-based nonprofit founded in 2017 by Raymond Steward II, a Houston native with a community-services background. The organization's community programs page says it has served more than 2,800 students and families in the local Houston-metro community since launch. Steward and Shonbay Jones are leading the Hope Center Sportsplex project together, per local media reporting.
The Architectural Barriers record is a regulatory document, not a deed or a title. It does not prove who holds the land or the money, but it is the first public paper trail anyone looking at this deal will find, and it lists Hope Active as the owner and WYCOFF DEVELOPMENT as the design firm of record. The funding-type field carries standard state language: privately funded, on private land, for private use.
That ownership line is the unusual part. In the indoor sportsplex deals YSIR typically tracks, the owner or project sponsor is usually a for-profit company backed by some mix of private equity, family-office money, local investor groups, or a developer's own balance sheet. Sometimes a city funds them with municipal bonds, especially in fast-growing Sun Belt suburbs. A community-services nonprofit owning a competition-and-training facility built on private land for private use is not a structure that shows up often.
The Money Question the Filing Doesn't Answer
Hope Active's most recent public tax filing is a 990-EZ (the short-form annual return small nonprofits file with the IRS) for the fiscal year ending December 2021, filed April 13, 2023, and available through Cause IQ and ProPublica. That filing shows $30,427 in revenue, $30,427 in expenses, and $0 in total assets. The most recent public financial picture looks like a small community nonprofit in its early years, nowhere near the size needed to pay for a $9.5 million building on its own. Nothing in the sources reviewed explains how a nonprofit with that profile lines up project money at this size.
The project may well proceed. The financing behind it is simply not disclosed in the sources reviewed. The state record notes that the tenant is not providing the private funds, while also listing the tenant as "Not Assigned," so the more precise read is that the form neither shows tenant money nor names a tenant. Either way, it points the reader straight at the obvious questions without answering any of them. The usual ways a build like this gets paid for are familiar to anyone tracking these deals: a construction loan, a fundraising campaign tied to naming rights, a single large donor, a developer partner who fronts the build and earns it back later, or sponsor money committed up front. The filing does not say which one is in play.
For an investor watching deal flow in this space, the financing question is the one worth tracking. Builds at this size usually need a recognizable money structure behind them: an anchor donor or sponsor, a construction loan against committed revenue, a major capital campaign tied to naming rights, or a developer partner who carries the build risk and gets paid back through long-term lease economics. Each of those answers tells a different story about what Hope Center is, how it will run, and what comes next.
Why a Nonprofit Owner Operates Under Different Rules
Unlike a for-profit developer, a nonprofit owner does not face the same pressure to hit a target return. For-profit sportsplex developers usually need a high return to justify the cost of building 65,000-plus square feet, and that pressure tends to push most of them into the same playbook: build big, chase regional tournament traffic, make the money on weekends, and lean on out-of-town visitors for the hotel-and-meal spending around the event. It works when it works. When it doesn't, the building gets repurposed or sold at a loss.
Running the same physical building as a nonprofit changes that calculation, at least in theory, though the public record does not yet confirm Hope Center will use the flexibility. If Hope Active uses the nonprofit structure to set aside court time for community programming, hold subsidized league play, or run scholarship-supported participation alongside paid rentals and tournaments, the operating model could look meaningfully different from a conventional private sportsplex. Those details have not been announced.
What Hope Active already has, that many new sportsplex operators do not, is a documented community-services history in the same market. Its community programs page describes programming aimed at at-risk youth in the Houston metro since 2017. New private operators often have to earn that kind of local trust after opening, through marketing, league discounts, and partnership outreach. Whether Hope Active turns that head start into a different on-court mix is an operating question the filing does not answer.
The $145-Per-Square-Foot Reading
The estimated cost of $9.5 million across 65,639 square feet works out to roughly $145 per square foot. That sits well below published vendor estimates for US indoor multi-sport arenas, with an Estimate Florida Consulting reference putting the typical range at roughly $240 to $420 per square foot. Two caveats matter on that comparison: the published figure is a vendor benchmark rather than a Texas-specific audited dataset, and the cost listed on the filing is an estimate at registration rather than a final all-in budget covering land, soft costs, equipment, financing, and contingencies.
A lean cost per square foot at this size points toward a more functional build than a flagship destination complex. Many of the destination-style complexes built to pull national tournament attention run well above 100,000 square feet, at several times the cost basis this filing carries, and they are designed specifically to draw out-of-market crowds. A leaner cost basis fits a build aimed mostly at local and regional customers, though Hope Center's own materials describe a facility that supports both training and tournament programming, and the operating mix has not been publicly detailed.
What Could Stall This
The nonprofit-owner model is uncommon at this scale in indoor sportsplex operations, and there are real reasons to be cautious about reading too much into a single $9.5 million filing.
The Financing Is Unknown
A nonprofit building at this size will almost certainly need an identifiable money source, whether that is donations, grants, debt against future fundraising, an anchor donor, a developer partner, or sponsor pre-commitments. The public record does not yet show which, and a project this size would typically need a clearly identifiable capital source before moving from registration to construction.
The Operating Model Hasn't Been Disclosed
Hope Center's materials mention training, leagues, tournaments, and events, which is a broad surface to operate across, and how court hours actually get allocated will determine whether the nonprofit advantage turns into a different revenue mix or whether the facility ends up running on conventional sportsplex economics.
The Record Doesn't Show Construction Underway
The status reads "Project Registered," with a July 1, 2026 construction start. As with any first-time facility project of this size, the schedule remains subject to permitting, financing, construction, and operational execution risk.
The Design Firm Isn't a Sports-Facility Specialist
WYCOFF DEVELOPMENT is listed as the design firm of record, and the public project history visible in the registration record leans toward medical-office and retail-interior buildouts rather than indoor sports facilities. That does not put the firm out of scope for a project of this size, but operators with strong opinions about programming flow, court sightlines, and event-day logistics tend to prefer design firms with sports-architecture history on these builds.
Takeaways for Investors
The Capital Structure Is the Story
The most interesting fact in the filing is what it does not disclose. A $9.5 million build under a small Webster-based nonprofit requires a money source that is not yet public, and the financing structure that emerges will tell investors more about what Hope Center actually is than any press release.
Nonprofit Ownership Opens Up Options That Haven't Been Defined Yet
A nonprofit owner can in theory run a different revenue mix than a for-profit developer, including subsidized league play, scholarship-supported participation, and grant or sponsor-funded community programming. Whether Hope Active uses that flexibility is a question the public record does not yet answer.
A Lean Cost Basis Hints at a Different Kind of Build, Without Confirming One
The $145-per-square-foot estimate runs well below published vendor benchmarks for indoor multi-sport arenas. Hope Center's own materials describe tournament and training programming, so the lean cost basis tells investors something about the build approach but not necessarily about how the facility will be run.
Watch the Money Source and the Court-Hour Split
The two pieces of information that will determine what this filing actually means are the financing structure and the court-time mix once the facility opens. Both come after the filing itself, and both are worth tracking.
