In making bid for Amazon site, city weighed UT property

As Houston developed its bid to host the second headquarters for Amazon.com, Mayor Sylvester Turner urged the city to consider including in its proposal the controversial property owned by the University of Texas System, new documents show.

City officials approached the UT System regarding the property, which regents voted to purchase in fall 2015, according to fall communications obtained by KTRK-TV 13. Chancellor William McRaven called off any development on the property in March after lawmakers and newly appointed regents criticized the system for spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a project that was not publicly defined.

Houston’s Chief Development Officer Andy Icken said in an email that UT Regent Jeff Hildebrand rejected the city’s idea for the land, in part because UT “was not prepared to commit” $25 million in infrastructure development on any large campus.

“We (did) have conversations with UT and Jeff Hildebrand specifically,” Icken wrote to Turner in an email. “Jeff did not want to put the land in the package as his charge from the (Legislature) and Governor are to fully recover the (money) UT spent on the property. In addition, any large campus we offer requires a committed developer to put in sizable infrastructure. That is likely at least $25 million, and UT was not prepared to commit that.”

A UT System spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment Friday.

Hildebrand, founder and executive chairman of the Houston-based Hilcorp Energy Co., is one of four regents developing a plan to unload the land. A progress report on that process is expected in February.

McRaven, who announced last year he would retire from his position in the coming months, never got Gov. Greg Abbott’s support for developing the property in Houston. After he called off the project, documents revealed that a UT task force was considering using the property for a data science center.

Turner endorsed that plan in his May State of the City address.

Amazon eliminated Houston as a candidate for its second headquarters last week.