As region grows, UH expandsits footprint
The University of Houston is spending more than $26 million on 100-plus acres across the Houston region to expand campuses in Katy, Sugar Land and downtown Houston.
The expansion comes during a heated higher education turf battle in Houston sparked by the University of Texas’ plans to build on 300 acres here.
UH leaders have called the move an “invasion,” arguing UH serves the growing Houston region well.
With UH’s latest development plans, its footprint in the region will become much bigger. A new campus in Katy, a new building on its Sugar Land campus, a big chunk of land to grow the landlocked downtown campus and a new student housing development on the ever-changing main city campus are in the works.
Officials say the expansion isn’t a response to UT’s plans to build in Houston. Rather, it’s an example of how UHserves Hous- ton’s evolving higher education needs.
“Frankly all of these discussions — about expanding in Sugar Land, the new building in Sugar Land, expanding in Katy, the new building in Katy — were in discussion long before anybody knew” about UT’s plans, UH
Provost Paula Short said. “We are totally focused on serving the needs of this greater Houston community. That’s what drives the decisions we’ve made.” Going westward
The majority of UH’s planned growth is west of Houston, in Katy and Sugar Land, both of which have seen population booms in recent years.
Making the commute to UH’s main campus south of Houston has become harder for many students, so university leaders say they’re bringing the education to them.
“People are getting to the place that they believe it’s really a hardship to travel all the way across Houston to go to a location outside of the radius they live in order to go to school,” Short said. “Since we are Houston’s university, we feel it’s our responsibility to be responsive to
“People are getting to the place that they believe it’s really a hardship to travel all the way across Houston ... in order to go to school. Since we are Houston’s university, we feel it’s our responsibility to be responsive to those needs.” UH Provost Paula Short
those needs.”
The UH board of regents this year approved the acquisition of 46 acres near the Grand Parkway and Interstate 10 for the Katy campus. The land comes with a $13.8 million price tag and the contract with the seller includes an option to buy another 15 adjacent acres for $6.3 million if UH chooses to buy it within 12 months. UH, meanwhile, is selling a 10-acre Cinco Ranch satellite campus that opened in 1989. The campus is landlocked with no room for expansion, so officials decided to move north to Katy instead.
The move will double the office and classroom space. The new Katy cam- pus, on which UH plans to start construction within the next two years, will have 80,000 square feet of space. Cinco Ranch had just 36,000 square feet. Sugar Land expansion
UH also recently pulled its Sugar Land teaching center under the flagship, essentially bringing that coveted university presence to one of the area’s fastest-growing communities. Officials plan to expand the existing 272-acre campus after the Texas Department of Transportation donated 16 acres to the university.
UH will add 150,000 square feet of classroom and office space with a new building on the growing Sugar Land campus.
UH’s growth isn’t exclusive to Houston’s west side. In May, the regents gave school officials the green light to spend $13.2 million on a 17-acre swath north of UH-Downtown’s Main Street campus. UHDowntown plans to build an academic building devoted to science, technology, engineering and math — often referred to as STEM subjects.
The Legislature approved $60 million in bonds for the building designated for STEM courses, which UH-Downtown officials hope to open in 2019.
“We have to be relevant to Houston, and this is what we are attempting to be,” Short said. “The only way a university can really be relevant to a community is by addressing its workforce needs, its educational needs, its research needs.”