Sugar Land to get two new industrial buildings

Sugar Land is poised to get two industrial buildings constructed in its business park off Gillingham Lane between Jess Pirtle and W. Airport boulevards after City Council approved a tax abatement agreement with Johnson Development Associates during the June 4 meeting.

With the tax abatement agreement—a property tax deduction offered to businesses to help spur economic development in the city—JDA will develop the two buildings totaling 315,892 square feet across 18 acres, Devon Rodriguez, assistant director of economic development said.

“These are going to be built speculatively, but JDA will be marketing them for lease while it is under construction, and they anticipate the buildings to be leased by March 2021,” Rodriguez said.

JDA, a nationwide industrial real estate developer based in South Carolina has built over 22 million square feet of industrial space across the country, Rodriguez said.

Through tax abatement agreements the city does not lose any money but rather sees value added to the tax roll, she said. The investment on JDA’s part will be about $11.6 million and they will benefit from a tax reduction of 35% over the 10-year agreement, Rodriguez said.

“We’ve looked at this pretty hard,” District 1 council member Steve Porter said. “It complies with all of our guidelines. We get 65% of something instead of 100% of nothing. The [Economic Development Council] was unanimous in its support of it.”

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