During one of its first in-person meetings in over a year, Brookshire City Council moved forward with plans to improve city streets and approved platting for Phase II of the Empire west Business Park.

“We’re proposing the Empire West Business Park Phase II. It’s a total of 144.31 acres and is located north of I-10, west of Woods Road and South of (Highway) 90,” said Salvador Cisneros, a platting coordinator with BGE, one of the developers of the site.

The site will have a total of five blocks with eight reserves and six buildings providing a total of 2.3 million square feet, Cisneros said. Completion on the project is expected around July of 2022 and large equipment was expected to be delivered to the new portion of the business park on Sept. 20. Cisneros added that the city’s engineer had already reviewed the plat and other information about the development and recommended approval before the issue coming to council.

Council members said they were impressed with the first phase of Empire West and were grateful for developers’ interest in working in good faith with the city.

Alderperson Lee Nelson Jones asked his fellow council members to move forward with repairing and beautifying the intersection of Fifth and Cooper streets just west of city offices. A decorative mural in the center of the intersection has become quite worn and does not reflect the pride the city should have in its appearance and heritage, he said. As a result, with an expected cost of less than $50,000, he asked council to direct city staff to move forward with the project.

Public Works Director Earnest Kelley said the project would be able to get done relatively quickly with some resurfacing and suggestions for assistance from community members and businesses that had offered to assist with the project.

Alderperson Kim Branch said she had worked with the art department at Royal ISD to work on beautification projects such  as the mural in the intersection and thought other community businesses and organizations such as the owner of A.R.T. Studio may be willing to help.

“Also, the gentleman at (Brookshire Hardware) at one time explained that he would like to donate paint if we would like to do the circle, so that might be something that we could go back to,” she said.

Councilmembers also:

• Appointed Paula Favors to the TML Benefits group to represent Brookshire employees in determining employee benefits.
• Received an update on COVID-19 cases from Police Chief Brandal Jackson that indicated the city had 52 active cases of the virus that day.
• Approved permitting for storage buildings for a fireworks company that had failed to apply, though they required double fees to be paid for the permits. The owner of the buildings said the storage there is minimal and all building exceed the state requirements for storing fireworks.
• Renewed an interlocal agreement with the Brookshire Municipal Water District for tax assessor collector services.
• Discussed hazard pay for city staff during the pandemic but tabled the issue due to insufficient caseloads among staff.
• Discussed the hiring of a new city engineer but took no action as more information was being gathered.
• Approved repairs to Heritage Drive which had been damaged by construction vehicles.