Annex under budget, ahead of schedule

By T.J. Aulds

The Daily News

Published August 2, 201

TEXAS CITY — The conversion of an old Walmart into a county government office complex and medical clinics is on schedule to be done by the end of the year, the county’s architect said. The $33 million project is expected to come in under budget.

The annex construction, approved by voters in a 2008 bond referendum, is scheduled to be done by the end of the year, but some tenants will be moving in starting in November, Galveston County Architect Dudley Anderson said.

“It’s beginning to look like we are doing something,” Anderson said, noting that until recent weeks, most of the work on the building, which is near Mall of the Mainland on Emmett F. Lowry Expressway, was being done on the interior. “We are starting to see the outside taking shape.”

The annex will be the home of the Galveston County Health District and its medical and dental clinics, the Galveston Central Appraisal District, the Precinct 3 commissioner’s office and Veterans Affairs services office. The building also will have room for a mid-county tax office that essentially would merge the tax office operations in Texas City and the West County Annex.

For now, the tax offices will remain on state Highway 6 in Santa Fe and on Texas Avenue in Texas City.

The health district will take up the bulk of the building’s space. The move will allow the district to consolidate unconnected offices. The health district’s 4C’s clinic also will be given a new name: Coastal Health and Wellness, health district spokesman Kurt Koopmann said.

The Galveston Central Appraisal District, which is vacating its offices on the Gulf Freeway, is scheduled to be the first tenant to move into the 129,000-square- foot building. The schedule calls for the appraisal district to move sometime in November, Anderson said.