A new museum for the Sugar Land Heritage Foundation is officially set for the Imperial Market mixed-use development. Sugar Land City Council approved a lease for the museum as well as a city visitors' center Tuesday.

About the terms

Under the lease terms, the city will pay the Imperial Redevelopment District a rent of $1 per year for 99 years for 12,000 square feet on the second floor and 600 square feet on the first floor of the former container warehouse building at Imperial Market.

The heritage foundation museum will go on the second floor and the visitors' center will be downstairs.

Imperial Market Development LLC owns Imperial Market but the Imperial Redevelopment District will serve as landlord and provide repairs and maintenance as needed for the container warehouse. Under the lease terms, the city and the Fort Bend Children's Discovery Center next door in the building will reimburse the district for the cost of those repairs.

Sugar Land will be liable for 49 percent of the cost with the discovery center picking up the remaining 51 percent. But the city will be exclusively responsible for maintenance and repairs to the elevator system and the second floor’s HVAC system, under the lease terms.

Repairs needed

Design plans are still under development for the heritage foundation's museum. Interior construction work is slated to begin around spring and rehab work on the container warehouse has been ongoing for the past year, according to city documents.

At Tuesday’s meeting, council members said the heritage foundation hoped to hold events on the building roof, but were told that would require additional work costing approximately $1 million.

The lease also gives the city the option to purchase the container warehouse and land. Doing so would mean the city would become the landlord, but the lease agreement stipulates that option expires Dec. 31 2019.

University Boulevard project progresses

At the meeting, the city also approved a $10.8 million construction contract for a bridge over Oyster Creek as part of phase II of the University Boulevard North Extension project.

The bridge will connect the new portion of University Boulevard to Stadium Drive next to Constellation Field. Lockwood, Andrews & Newman Inc. will perform the engineering work, according to the contract.

The project’s first phase is nearly finished. Phase II construction is slated to begin in February and will last approximately one year, according to city documents.