After nearly six years of dormancy, land on the outskirts of the Tomball city limits is finally moving toward development. Harris County and other community partners have announced plans to build an art museum, oil and gas training facility and a county campus, featuring an annex and administration building.

The site for the projects rests on 600 acres on the edge of Tomball, west of Hwy. 249 located within Harris County Improvement District No. 17, according to an environment study prepared by Belaire Environmental Ltd.

“The district was created in 2009, and not a whole lot had taken place until 2014 when the district had really started getting some potential buyers and developers out there,” Tomball City Manager George Shackelford said.

Since the district’s creation, more than 300 acres of land has been purchased by Harris County Precinct 4, Lone Star College-Tomball, and Houston-based energy companies Nabors Industries Inc. and Tandem Energy Corporation, according to site plans for HCID No. 17.

“It changes the landscape literally and figuratively,” Precinct 4 Communications Director Mark Seegers said. “That [area] used to be considered the far western stretch of the precinct, but as the precinct has changes from redistricting year to year, that Tomball area is now almost dead center of the precinct.”

County campus

Harris County has purchased about 130 acres of land in the district, which includes a 30,000-square-foot satellite campus to serve the northwestern portion of the county. The campus includes an administration building for county employees and an annex building, which will house offices for a Harris County constable and a justice of the peace, Seegers said.

“[In the] long term, the county is looking at a replacement for the very outdated Cypresswood [Drive] annex,” Seegers said. “So what is likely to be [a replacement for the Cypresswood annex] is likely to be located on that property.”

Seegers said because construction on the new annex is likely several years away, the county has not determined what it plans to do with the existing annex. Funding for the new buildings will come from Precinct 4’s capital improvement budget, he said.

For the rest of the county land in the district, Seegers said county officials could eventually consider additional county services similar to those located around the Cypresswood annex, such as the Barbara Bush Branch Library or a county clerk’s office. However, the county has no immediate plans for additional buildings.    

“[Harris County Precinct 4] Commissioner [Jack Cagle] is looking at long-range planning and would like to think that there is room for growth as funding allows for facilities like that,” Seegers said. “I have not seen anything that would indicate that funding is in place for that at this time.”

Educational opportunities

LSC-Tomball has purchased about 18 acres of land adjacent to the county facilities for the college’s new Oil and Gas Training Center. The facility is tentatively scheduled to open to students in fall 2017, LSC-Tomball President Lee Ann Nutt said.

The training center will include a functioning oil rig and well to give students fieldwork experience in addition to lecture and science courses.

“[The rig and well] allow us to simulate as real-to-life a simulation as possible,” Nutt said. “It’s not just, ‘Here’s a rig, this is what it looks like and here are all the parts.’ The students will actually have the field experience of working on a training rig and being able to do what they need to do to learn.”

Nutt said college officials have been working with a council of professionals in the energy industry to determine if the timing for the center is still ideal following the recent oil slump.

“We actually think our timing is pretty good, even in the slump,” she said. “When [the demand for oil] comes back, we’re going to be poised and ready to start doing the training that [energy companies are] going to need again for either rehires or new hires as they start bringing on more people again.”

Cultural expansion

Hoping to be a part of the new county campus, the Pearl Fincher Museum of Fine Arts board of directors announced plans earlier this year to begin construction on a second museum location near Tomball in 2020.

The museum partners with Precinct 4 and is located within the existing annex at Cypresswood Drive and Stuebner Airline Road. The new 50,000-square-foot facility will serve the growing population in Northwest Houston, said Laura Baker, development director for the PFMFA.

“We are anticipating a lot of growth in that area, and bringing culture to the Greater Northwest [Houston] area is the goal of the Pearl,” Baker said. “This much larger facility will be able to serve a much larger population.”

Seegers said county officials have spoken with PFMFA staff members, but he could not confirm if the county would be able to partner with the museum on a second location. Both the existing and future museum locations are privately funded.

Although the new facility is expected to have its own permanent collection and will be much larger than the 10,000-square-foot museum in Spring, Baker said the existing facility will not close.

“The Pearl [Fincher Museum in Spring] is not going anywhere; it will be here,” Baker said. “The other facility will be an expansion of [the current museum]. We’re not entirely sure exactly what role specifically this building will fill; it will probably still be an exhibition and educational space in some capacity.”

Museum officials eventually hope to partner with local artists as well as students and faculty within the Lone Star College System to feature community art, Administrative Assistant Kayla Osby said.

“Tomball itself has a really good wealth of art,” Osby said. “There’s already a lot of art in the suburban areas. [The Tomball location would] give everyone access to these private collections that nobody has ever seen before.”

City, district collaborations

To provide utilities for the new developments, HCID No. 17 partnered with Aqua Texas Inc. to determine how best to provide water services.

“This is an area that’s not a part of any incorporated city,” said Butch Callegari, attorney and representative for Aqua Texas, Inc. “HCID 17 was formed legislatively so that the district over this area can provide water and wastewater services. What the district has chosen to do is enter into a contract with Aqua Texas to provide that as an investor in utility.”

While the entirety of the land is within Harris County, it lies on the border of two city extraterritorial jurisdictions, with 30 percent of the land in Tomball’s ETJ and 70 percent in Houston’s ETJ. In a situation like this, a district is typically allowed to choose a jurisdiction to partner with, Callegari and Shackelford said.

“[The founding board of the district] opted to go with Houston and since that time the board has changed over,” Shackelford said. “They finally recognized the fact that it really needed to be in Tomball’s ETJ, not Houston, so they’re in the process of trying to get that [reversed].”

During the March 7 Tomball City Council meeting, Aqua Texas representatives approached the council to approve a memorandum of understanding. The agreement authorized the city to consider providing water services to the district.

“The initial response from the city was that the city would provide service but only if the property were annexed into the district,” Callegari said.

The memorandum was approved by the City Council during the meeting to open up future discussions about water services, although Shackelford said an annexation would likely not occur until roads and utilities within the district were complete.