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Fort Bend / Southwest • Volume 40 • No. 23
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Public gets peek at Telfair development plan Jessica Lynn Musante
Giuseppe Briguglio
Arrests made in Stafford homicide Teens found in Connecticut charged in case Compiled by Joe Southern JSOUTHERN@FORTBENDSTAR.COM
Police in Connecticut have arrested two teenagers and charged them with the New Year’s Day murder of a Missouri City man. Investigators with the Stafford Police Department and the Texas Rangers identified Jessica Lynn Wilber James Musante, 17, Outlaw II and Giuseppe Va lent i no Briguglio, 19, as suspects in the murder. The body of 22-year-old Wilbert James Outlaw II of Missouri City was found in the breezeway of an apartment complex at 10498 Fountain Lake Drive in Stafford at 1:47 a.m. after officers responded to a report of shots fired. Both Musante and Briguglio were taken into custody at 9:52 p.m. on Jan. 11 in Ansonia, Conn., where they await extradition. Briguglio is charged with murder and being a fugitive from justice and is being held with a $250,000 bond. Musante is charged with murder and is being held with a $100,000 bond. They were to have been arraigned on Jan. 12 in Connecticut. Musante had been reported as a missing person, according to the Ansonia police. The arrests were the result of an investigation between the Stafford Texas Police Department, the Texas Rangers, and the Ansonia and Shelton (Conn.) police departments. “We ordered the occupants out of the house over our (public address) system,” Lt. Patrick Lynch with the Ansonia Police Department told a local newspaper. “There was no weapon recovered in the (Stafford homicide) and we weren’t sure they were still armed.”
Residents told there will be no apartments By Joe Southern JSOUTHERN@FORTBENDSTAR.COM
No apartments. Period. The message came through loud and clear last Wednesday at a meeting hosted by Newland Communities and the City of Sugar Land to give residents a look at revised preliminary development plans for the southeast corner of Highway 59 and University Boulevard near the Smart Financial Centre. Although there were no plans for apartments included in the revised plan and repeated assurances from presenters that apartments would never be included at the development site, many of the more than 150 people crowded into the meeting room at the University Branch Library still asked questions and voiced opposition to apartments being built there. The opposition stems from a 2015 proposal by Newland that would have included 900 apartments on the Telfair Tract 5 property. That plan was met with fierce opposition and quickly scrapped. The purpose of the meeting Jan. 10 was to have an informal gathering where Newland Communities could present their revised plan to the public and receive feedback before taking the plan to the city to begin the lengthy approval process. What Alan Bauer, Senior Vice President of the Central Region for Newland Communities, presented is a 95-acre
Alan Bauer of Newland Communities points out some of the features proposed for the Telfair Tract 5 development at the southeast corner of the Southwest Freeway and University Boulevard. (Photo by Joe Southern)
entertainment district that includes two hotels, a conference center, community theater, medical center, office and retail outlets, parking garages and an age-restricted senior independent living community. “What we are calling it is an office and entertainmentcentric development,” Bauer said. “It consists of offices, retail establishments, parking structures, a hotel site … and what it doesn’t have is multifamily developments.” It’s the senior independent living community that most concerned residents in attendance. Several people voiced concern about a “bait and switch” to later have
the senior living turned into apartments. “There is no switch and bait going on,” Bauer said. “It’s going to be age-restricted, much like a Del Webb (senior living community).” Sugar Land Mayor Joe Zimmerman also addressed concerns about apartments, saying that the city stipulated that the project cannot include multi-family housing and adding that the city will not build apartments on cityowned property north of the Smart Financial Centre that is being reserved for future development. Bauer gave a brief history of the project, explaining how Newland Communities took
input from the public and the city from the previous presentation and revamped it into the proposal they rolled out that night. He then turned the meeting over to Hal Sharp, a principal with the Gensler design firm, to go over more specific details of the project. “We’ve made it pedestrian friendly and a more walkable development,” he said. “One of the key drivers is the walkability of the site.” He said they reduced the height of office buildings down to about four levels, shrank the number of parking garages, added space for a second hotel and rearranged the layout. “Instead of having one ho-
Astros Caravan to Sugar Land
Missouri City man sentenced in fraud case From staff reports
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tel we contemplate two. The city is interested in having one on the city side of Lexington and the private investment side could potentially have a second hotel,” he said. Sharp said the medical center has already been spoken for. “The property has been purchased by MD Anderson. They plan to build some sort of health facility there,” he said. Sharp explained that the new plan is better coordinated with the city-owned developments across Lexington Avenue by Smart Financial Centre.
The World Series champion Houston Astros players Tony Kemp, left, and Brady Rodgers, of Richmond, look back and laugh after Orbit the mascot delivers a rimshot from the drums during the Astros Caravan Jam event Friday evening at the Sugar Land Town Square. A small, cold, but very dedicated group of fans came out for the festivities. (Photo by Joe Southern)
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A Missouri City man has been ordered to federal prison for perpetrating a scheme that caused a loss of more than $4 million to several local banks, U.S. Attorney Ryan K. Patrick announced last week. Gregory Rogerson, 65, of Missouri City, pleaded guilty June 14, 2016. Last week, U.S. District Judge Gray Miller, who accepted the guilty plea, handed Roberson a 24-month sentence and ordered him to pay $3,081,942.14. The ringleader of the scheme, Andre Chenier, 44, of Houston, had previously been sentenced to 48 months in federal prison and ordered to pay more than $4.5 million in restitution. Both will also serve three years of supervised release following completion of their sentences. From 2004 to 2012, Chenier obtained multi-million dollar commercial loans from several Houston-area banks by submitting false and fraudulent documents, including Bank of Texas and Third Coast Bank. The loan applications included falsified financial statements and fake income tax returns and were obtained using the Social
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