8/2/2023 0 Comments Surgar factory town square![]() ![]() The new Imperial Sugar site will take its cues from modern Sugar Land, which has grown from about 8,800 residents in 1980 to an estimated 84,000 today. Now, lots of things are going on that define Sugar Land." "But it's evolved, like everything evolves. ![]() "Imperial Sugar drew the community together," Leon Anhaiser said. They eventually agreed to balance preserving its heritage with setting a new course for the property that might be as vibrant as the industrial operations that had persisted for more than a century.įrom 2011: Imperial Sugar redevelopment gets student input ![]() The Imperial Sugar site sat vacant, at times overrun with weeds and vagrants, as community leaders and developers debated its future. "It was a very stable community, but there more choices of places to work than there had ever been."īy the time the plant shut in 2003, the company town had boomed into a city. "I never thought about Sugar Land as a company town," said Leon Anhaiser, 76, who grew up in Sugar Land, earned a company scholarship and worked decades there in roles ranging from sugar engineer to vice president. 6 along with your name and phone number so she can contact you. She wants to hear stories about life in a company town and its evolution into a well-educated suburb. Reporter Jayme Fraser is preparing a second story about life in Sugar Land for the Houston Chronicle's Gray Matters blog. Workers nationwide shifted away from careers built up within a single company, further weakening the binding community ties of company towns. Fewer children followed their parents into the sugar industry, and if they did, they weren't as likely to stay on the job for decades. This marked the start of a boom that diversified the economy and expanded the community. Sugar production soared from 100,000 pounds of refined white sugar a day in 1896 to 2.5 million pounds a day after World War II.Īs Houston went on an annexation spree, gobbling up land, Sugar Land incorporated as a city in 1959. is the unusual and outstanding situation at Sugar Land, Texas, one the most unique industrial establishments in the United States," read a 1927 story in the Galveston Tribune. ![]() "Making an investment in humanity as well as getting financial returns. Guided by the welfare capitalism of the Eldridge and Kempner families, who operated the company, Sugar Land went from "a convict camp full of fever and disease in a country full of reptiles and insect pests" to a model of industry and community, according to a 1928 Southern Pacific Farm News article. The tenant farmers who supplied sugar cane, as well as the town that Imperial later built for its workers, survived an invasion by the Mexican army shortly before the mill was built, the leveling winds of hurricanes and frequent flooding until levees were built in 1913. The mill site would grow into the state's longest continuously operating company: Imperial Sugar. When it burned down, they rebuilt it next to a low water crossing of Oyster Creek near modern-day Highway 90. Austin, constructed a sugar mill on the Oakland Plantation by 1843. Texas' first authorized settlers, among the "Old 300" families granted land by Stephen F. The refinery stood at the center of Sugar Land's transformation into a bustling suburban city from its early days as the "Hell hole of the Brazos" River, a nickname earned for its alligators, wild woods and jerry-built shacks. "The historic aspect makes it very marketable," said Shay Shafie, who is managing the project for Johnson Development Corp. While it will be much like Market Street in The Woodlands or Sugar Land Town Square, developers say Imperial will be different. The Historic District, as it's been named, will house shops, offices, restaurants, bars, hotels and apartments facing a landscaped plaza. More than a decade after refinery operations ceased, part of the 165-acre site will reopen in 2016 to anchor a new role in the city. Now Sugar Land is poised to reinvent the place that built it. "It was a community unto itself and everyone did everything together," said Bettye Anhaiser, 73, a local preservationist. ![]()
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