Fort Bend County will open an annex in the Houston Community College Sienna Plantation site.[/caption]

City Council voted to annex a 33.07-acre tract along Sienna Springs Drive into the Sienna municipl utility district No. 10 on May 2.  The land is adjacent to Houston Community College’s Sienna Plantation campus, which will be converted into an annex for Fort Bend County.

Classes are being relocated to a future campus along Texas Parkway in the city. Annexing the land into MUD No. 10 allows the city to distribute water, wastewater utilities and drainage services to the site.

“The county had an agreement with the developer to acquire a tract of land for the purpose of building an annex at some point in the future,” said Beth Wolf, executive assistant and communications specialist with Fort Bend County. “The opportunity to purchase the HCC building allowed a significant savings in this plan as well as an opportunity to provide this service sooner.”

HCC is constructing a new $21.5 million campus along Texas Parkway, set to open in 2017. In the meantime, the land in Sienna Plantation will be redeveloped. Johnson Development, the company that constructed the master-planned community, will take the remaining property around the campus and make it available for housing in the master-planned community.

“We’re getting the largest project in the history of Texas Parkway, and [the disannexation] is a part of that happening,” Council Member Jerry Wyatt said. “Throughout this election I keep hearing, ‘What are we doing for Texas Parkway?’”

The property was part of a 49.33-acre tract annexed by the city in 2004 for HCC’s Sienna Plantation campus, according to city documents. HCC sold 33.07 acres to Johnson Development this year.

The 33.07 acres sold to Johnson Development were previously exempt from city property taxes while a governmental entity—HCC—owned the land. Now, the tract will be subject to property taxes, council members said.

The county will place a tax assessor’s office and an office for the county clerk at the annex, Wolf said. Services offered at the site will include automobile registrations, court fee payment processing and tax payments,

“Renovations for [the] county clerk offices and county tax offices began [in May],” Wolf said. “The expected completion date is the end of February 2017.”