Fluor to sell 50-acre tract in Sugar Land

After a decade of stalled development, Irving-based Fluor Corporation is reportedly selling off its 50-acre tract in Sugar Land.

While keeping tight-lipped about the project, Fluor confirmed to the Houston Business Journal that its property at University and Lexington boulevards under contract with an undisclosed buyer.

“We have not seen any formal layouts or site plans or anything,” says Elizabeth Huff, Sugar Land’s economic development director. “But it is a very high-level mixed-use development discussion.”

Brian Mershon, Fluor’s director of global media relations, did not provide a specific reason for the decision to sell the property instead of building a campus on it. Meanwhile in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, the company is looking to sell a roughly 22-acre tract next to its headquarters at 6700 Las Colinas Boulevard.

The tract is a 2,018-acre master-planned community called Telfair, which was built on the land of a former prison. It was developed by California-based Newland Communities in 2018.

The sale of the land marks a significant change in plans for Fluor as the company was set to break ground on a new campus on 28.5 acres of the property more than three years ago.

Fluor purchased the land in 2012 to be able to stay in Sugar Land after the lease for its current facilities at 1 Fluor Daniel Drive was set to expire in 2021. However, it recently renewed its lease and will be staying put until at least 2026.

“(We had) a memorandum of understanding that we would pursue an incentives package with options for them when they were ready to move forward with construction, and it was very high level, but we never actually formally approved any incentives agreements,” Huff said. “They never put any money towards the project.”

The city of Sugar Land even offered the company a hefty incentives package for developing the site that included a tax abatement on Fluor’s $165 million in capital investment and workforce of at least 2,000 employees. The city even put forward plans to grant some sales tax rebates on construction of the campus and help the company land state incentives.

— Maddy Sperling