City of Sugar Land Comprehensive Plan

Vision 2025

Vision 2025 represents an ideal, but realistic view of what Sugar Land can look like in the year 2025. Embedded in the Vision statement are 11 value-based principles that highlight key areas of importance for the City’s future. As a supplement to Vision 2025, each guiding principle is listed separately with means statements that specifically describe the intent of each principle.

The Vision 2025 and Guiding Principles document was first drafted at a March 2009 Council work session.  The Sugar Land City Council then received remarks and modifications to these principles at a Community Summit in June 2009.  (For more information on this process, see the “Community Summit.”)  Results from the Summit were then used to help refine the vision at an August 2009 council work session, before the document’s formal adoption on September 15, 2009 (Resolution 09-34). Click here to view Vision 2025 and Guiding Principles.

 

Community Summit 2009 - Executive Summary

Background

At the March 2009 City Council retreat, the City Council revised the Vision 2025 and Guiding Principles and directed that the document serve as the framework for a future amendment to the Comprehensive Plan. Before proceeding, the City Council identified the benefit of receiving public input on the Guiding Principles via a community summit.

Accordingly, the Community Summit was held on June 18, 2009, at the Sugar Creek Country Club. Approximately 70 residents participated in three rounds of activities designed to gather input on the draft Vision 2025 document. Round I – “Visualizing Sugar Land’s Future for 2025” – was a photo exercise for residents to share pictures of things to both encourage and discourage. Round II gave participants a chance to review and modify the Guiding Principles, and during Round III, the groups recommended their top five priorities, or “Key to Success,” to successfully realize the vision for 2025.

Results: Analysis & Summary

Overall, the draft vision prepared by the City Council was affirmed by the community. There was no substantial rejection of any Guiding Principles. The greatest amount of input from the community came in the form of prioritizing principles and providing further clarification and direction on “means” statements. However one new principle was suggested.

Top Priority Principles

When analyzing all three rounds of activities, the top three priority principles of the community are “Regional Business Center of Excellence,” “Superior Mobility,” and “Balanced Development & Redevelopment.” Whether it was through pictures showing a desire for more performing and cultural arts and inter-city transportation, or pictures showing that residents do not want to see continued traffic problems, it was clear that these priorities were the top three.

Participants also seemed to hone in on the importance of two additional principles as key to achieving Vision 2025: “Outstanding Cultural Arts, Educational and Recreational Opportunities” and “Destination Activity Centers.” During the first part of Round I, quality education (from pre-K through the post-graduate level) was the single most reoccurring item that participants wanted to see in their future, though some groups noted this was not necessarily the role of the City Council. In later rounds, groups increasingly identified the Entertainment District and further commercial development within the City as key to becoming a regional destination and realizing Vision 2025.

"Hot Topics"

Lastly, several additional “hot topic” items were observed and discussed.

• “Safe Community” was demonstrated as an important Guiding Principle, yet it did not receive much attention in Round I, possibly because the concept is difficult to capture in photographs.
• “Beautiful Community” was also identified as an important principle. Attendees showed clear concern about anything which may negatively impact the aesthetics of the community, such as visual pollution from power lines and billboards, or blighted commercial centers.
• “Environmentally Responsible Community:” Of the groups who discussed this principle, many mentioned incentivizing environmentally responsible behavior -- whether by encouraging residents to recycle or offering economic development incentives for LEED buildings.
• Imperial Site: Many participants expressed a great deal of concern regarding Imperial. As expected, there is a clear desire to preserve this landmark and the historical identity of the City, but also a growing feat that it is being neglected.
• Quality & Diverse Housing Options: Many tables had discussions on various housing options, and how prevalent apartments should be in that mix. While many concerns exist over large and concentrated apartment complexes, there was some willingness among most groups to consider high quality multi-family housing.

New Principle Suggested

Only one group suggested a new principle – “Fiscally Responsible Government.” Despite being suggested by only one table, it should be noted that of all the “Keys to Success” listed in Round III, those that could not be categorized into an existing principle could easily align with the idea of responsible City government. These items include not only being fiscally responsible, but also ensuring a continued culture of high quality elected officials and staff.