Sugar Land, Texas, began as a company town for the sugar industry in the mid-19th Century. Now, the city has made a move to preserve its history, acquiring what’s called the Imperial Historic District.
Devon Rodriguez, director of redevelopment for the city of Sugar Land, says acquiring the property gives the city flexibility when it comes to how the land will be redeveloped. Listen to the interview above or read the transcript below.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Texas Standard: Tell us about the Imperial Historic District and its significance to Sugar Land.
Devon Rodriguez: Imperial Sugar was one of the longest operating businesses in Texas. It’s a cornerstone to our city’s identity. The company’s crown is actually featured in the city’s seal itself.
The company’s approach is they started here in what is now Sugar Land, starting their business and needing to attract people here to come and work at Imperial Sugar. That was the company town approach to building Sugar Land.
They created jobs and that created this demand for housing, created the demand for other businesses and services, and just kind of that whole economic cycle of what it is to build a city. And now Imperial Sugar is how Sugar Land of today got its start.
And so that’s one of the big reasons why we still have these historic buildings here that speak to that history of how we got our start as a community and we want to preserve it.
So why did it take so long for the city to acquire the property?
So it’s been privately held for 20 or so years and I think there were multiple private owners that had the intention of redeveloping the site into something else and so the city’s approach was really supporting those efforts by the private sector to try to redevelop the site, create it into different things. The vision was different types of mixed-use that integrated those historic properties.
But it’s a challenging site to redevelop and a private developer – what they face versus what a city would face in terms of redeveloping a site like this – it’s just a different model, business model, if you will.
And when, after all these years, the site had still not been redeveloped, our city council said redevelopment is Sugar Land’s future. We’re not building out much anymore. And our biggest, most important redevelopment site is the Imperial Historic District.
And so they made those priorities and decisions. And when we tried to continue to work to see how can we make this happen, it just came to the decision of the city’s the one that’s gonna need to be put in the driver’s seat if we really want this site to get redeveloped and we wanna preserve our history.
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Well, give us some details how the City of Sugar Land will be involved in the redevelopment effort.
First of all, we had to assemble six parcels in total. It includes the historic properties as well as some other surrounding land. And so we had to assemble all of those parcels. And then we intend on doing some visioning and community engagement of what this entire site should eventually be.
But the most important piece is the Char House, which is really the most prominent iconic building of the historic district. It’s the one that’s right off of Highway 90 and is about eight stories tall. It is deteriorating and we need to take some steps to preserve it if we want any chance to really be able to reuse the building in the future or just for it to continue standing for the next 100 years.
This year, the Char House and the water tower are 100 years old and we will be celebrating that with our Sugar Land Heritage Foundation. So we’re taking some of those steps to actually preserve the building and that’s really our first step after we finish this acquisition.
We are going to be replacing the roof. There’s some temporary exterior wall repairs that need to be done. We will be repairing and replacing all the windows.
Basically, the building’s like 98% windows. It’s like over 200 windows. The windows on the north side of the building are actually the original windows. And so we will be looking to repair those windows and then hoping to do some replicas for the remaining three sides to bring it back to what its original exterior was, those many years ago. And so some other mechanical, electrical, plumbing upgrade-type things that need to be done.
But those are all really important steps for us – to stabilize the building with the hopes of maybe return it to some usable conditions someday. We don’t know what that use might be, but we want to take these steps to preserve that opportunity for the future.
Well, that gets into my next question. So what is next for this historic district? What’s your vision down the road?
We’re really gonna be using the community to help us just answer some of those questions. We’re gonna be facilitating some community engagement sessions over the next several months and help identify the priorities that will ultimately guide the long-term vision of the site. So we know some of these initial things. We needed to be put in the driver’s seat. We needed to have this acquisition of the sight. We’re moving forward with the preservation.
And then we’ll be engaging the community over the next several months to identify what are those community priorities that will guide the long-term development of the site. And we can’t do this alone, and so we will be looking for a development partner that will help us eventually make all of this happen.
Anything else you’d want the public to know about this effort?
I think that we’re just really excited that we’ve gotten to this point. It reflects who we are and where we’re going as a community.
We’re gonna be doing more redevelopment. It’s shaping the future that honors our legacy while embracing, really, what is this thoughtful, purposeful growth – creating places that are part of our past, but it’s also part of the future generations for Sugar Land. And so we’re laying this groundwork for the reinvestment of our community.
And we’re really starting to see some real momentum and we’re real excited about that. Building a community where people want to live, businesses wanna invest, history that is preserved along with progressing into the future. So Sugar Land’s ready and we are just getting started.
