The east side of Fort Bend County will see more activity as the county prepares to extend two roads to make way for a new residential development. Beginning in June, construction crews will start on the first phase of extending Lake Olympia Parkway at Hurricane Lane east to meet up with Chimney Rock Road at the Winfield Lakes subdivision in Fresno, Fort Bend County Assistant Engineer Stacy Slawinski, said. The $6 million project, funded by the county, will be a four-lane divided concrete road. In future phases, Lake Olympia will connect all the way to FM 521 at Broadway Street on the west side of Pearland, providing Missouri City residents an alternative pathway to I-45, he said. Plans for a 2,000-home community in east Fort Bend County by Skymark Development were presented to the Missouri City City Council.[/caption] The first phase of Lake Olympia is expected to take at least 12 months to complete. Also beginning in June, the county will begin the first phase of extending Chimney Rock in the same Winfield Lakes area to FM 2234. Fort Bend County is also funding this $14 million roadwork that will take 18 months to complete, Slawinski said. The extension of these two roads will enable Skymark Development to begin clearing land for what will ultimately be a 519-acre residential development. Skymark President Clinton Wong said the company is providing the right-of-way for the roads to begin. “We have already started clearing the property and doing engineering work while we wait for the roads,” Wong said.
Fort Bend MUD 24 plans to annex this development area.[/caption] Wong said there will be approximately of 2,000 homes in the new development that is in the process of  getting utilities in place. Fort Bend MUD 24 is working on annexing the land. In December 2018, the MUD petitioned the city of Missouri City’s Groundwater Reduction Plan committee to annex that land into the district for the purpose of joining the city’s Groundwater Reduction Plan. That petition was voted down by the City Council due to the area being in Houston’s extraterritorial jurisdiction, and adding more demand for water within the city’s Groundwater Reduction Plan would negatively impact the city’s mandated surface water conversion requirement, said Daniel McGraw, the city’s utility manager. Following the vote, MUD 24 is moving forward with annexing the tracts and is exploring options for contracting with the North Fort Bend Water Authority to have the tracts included in the NFBWA’s Groundwater Reduction Plan, according to Adisa Harrington, of counsel at Allen Boone Humphries Robinson LLP, the law firm representing MUD 24.