SUGAR LAND, TX-Construction is underway on an $18-million medical office building, the first of two phases planned for the last tract of developable land in the 65-acre First Crossing. The three-story, 80,000-sf building will deliver in September 2005.

Developer and owner, Transwestern Commercial Services of Houston, and the Kelsey-Seybold Clinic, an affiliate of the St. Luke's Episcopal Health System, have inked a long-term lease for the undertaking. The Fort Bend Medical & Diagnostic Center's first phase will take up 8.5 of 11 acres along University Boulevard, the last tract of land in the Houston-based Wolff Cos.' development. The project was designed by Kirksey Architects in Houston, with the locally based Kudela & Weinheimer as landscape architect. Bid packages will be going out soon to general contractors.

David Lane, executive vice president of the Wolff Cos., tells GlobeSt.com, that three acres were banked for a second phase to the clinic. The second phase work won't get underway until the first phase delivers. "It's still a couple of years away, I would guess," Lane says. The healthcare provider's long-range plan includes an outpatient surgery center.

The Sugar Land clinic and medical office building is patterned after Kelsey-Seybold's development along Holcombe Boulevard near Houston's Texas Medical Center. "Kirksey Architects created a definitive look that our patients would recognize as ours and we intend to extend that visual branding with each new facility we build," Nicholas H. Ro, a senior executive for Kelsey-Seybold Clinic, says in a press release.

The Kelsey-Seybold project will build out First Crossing, which has been under development for six years at the intersection of Texas 6 South and US Highway 90A. Anchored by a Sam's Club and Wal-Mart Supercenter, First Crossing contains more than 350,000 sf of retail space and another 11,000 sf is under construction with frontage on Texas 6.