Johnson Development, the company behind that sugar-company-themed master-planned community in Sugar Land, announced yesterday that it has officially handed over the land for the project’s refinery-centric Imperial Market mixed-use district to the folks who will develop it. The 26 acres freshly sold are along Oyster Creek just north of the crossing of Hwy. 90 (visible on the far left of the rendering above, which faces south). That’s Kempner St. running directly alongside the proposed development and crossing the creek as well; a pair of former railroad bridges currently upstream of Kempner are shown replaced with car and pedestrian bridges respectively.
Plans for the development incorporate structures from out-of-use former facilities of the Imperial Sugar Company. The refinery’s silos (instead of becoming an art space) are marked to host a couple of fast-casual restaurants; the 1925 char house, where huge quantities of carefully burned animal bones were once used to whiten and filter cane sugar syrup, will become a boutique hotel. Both structures are more prominently visible in the southeast-facing view below — the boxy brick char house appears to the left of the single-pour-concrete silos:
There are still no set plans for what will 
“Yes, it is ‘a vestige’ of history, but only that. The interior doesn’t have a century-old feel — because every century-old vestige is removed! I would have thought to keep rooms evident in the interior, since it looks like a home from the outside . . .  this can be achieved and meet fire safety requirements. I hope the place succeeds. But if [the building] gets torn down in 3 to 4 years, I won’t be sad — it’s already gone.” [
The blue 
