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TEEX-CS 890406City hunts ash to build Aggie training center By LEONA ALLEN Stal~ Writer COpPell win be Agsieland in two Coppell Road. That land. is in the mi&lie of a 115-acre busme~ im'k being developed .b.y Centre .Deve ,l?p_- ment, The coundl appr0ven s zomng At least, that is the dream of the phmled develollment, li~ht ~., u,smai Texas A&M Board 0f RegentS, the for the property an~l a l~eemnma~ Coppell City Coun~ al~i. Coppell pht..for the ..c/~.p_t~_~Y,..~.~.~ School Board who nope .w m~.ve . ~ sma...me ~y Texas A&M's Texas En~neenn~ o~strict sre gemng a ../~t uN E. xtension Service, TEEX, to the cause they wi~ ~ puttm~ no money sty and boost the economy by $14 u~p frO~. t,. H.e ~ m~a~,~ ~ wit financ~ plan, me ~.y arm '"~r~'~md dtv officials made ~ get value oo ~and it presently ~s the~'~n'~mc'ement a'bout plans for rec~ving no wlue from. the cooperative effor~ at a press con- The developer w~l be p~ying the feren.~ Wednesday. They said by moving an institution of higher education into the city, the corpo- rate vocational and technical Waining needs for the Dallas-Fort Worth area will be met. Mayor Lou Duggan said_the, first phase of the project _was .~n.mng a, location. The Baptist l~'oundation oz Texas, owner of the property, has donated 10 acres of land with bound- aries on the west side of Denton Tap R~d,. t~e north side of ~ Cnt~n- Betbe~ Rou~ ~ ~ ~ s~oe estimated $.500,000 to build two ac- ceas roads: The city and district are working to create an abatement dis- tfict whereby the taxes on the entire net !t0-acre' prc~ect will be abated a certain percentage until the deve[op- er recoups its cosL After the .c~..ts to build the ~roads are recovered by the developer, abatement will stop and the owner will be as/essed at the ~ 56-cant city and 86-cent school In additiout that property had been on the tax rolls as agricultural exempt, paying minimal taxes. Be- cause the property is now zoned for the bus,ess park use, the developer must pay five-year rollback taxes to the district and the city. Dug. gan estimates the city and district will receive about $500,000. The value of just the I0-acre A&M portion of the project is esti- mated at $5 million to $6 million be- fore university officials occupy the building. The value of the land alone on the 90 acres is estimated at $3-$4 a square foot, or $11.8 million-S15.7 million. "We have been trying ~o attract a major educational institution to our city for about two years," said Mayor Lou Duggan. "The need for training for those people already in the workplace is acute. Coppell has cOmrmtted to being in on the fore- front of that training in this area. We are reaching out tt~ cooperate ~r,dn- ing," he said. "We anticipate this facility to actively draw from a 150omile radius. We estimate the attendance to be about 300-500 students per week and one-third of the occupancy of a 200~room hotel. What that means for our city is that those stu- dents will need places to eat and a phce to stay while they are in town. For us, that means more · businesses, including more res- taurants ~md hotels. The spinoffs are limitless," he said. The university, through exten, sion ser~'ices, has provided voca- tional and technical training through~ out the state since 1948. The agen- cy's 13 training divisions conduct more than 3,000 classes for about 70,000 students each year. Current- ly, there ~e training facilities in San Antonio; Abilene, Corpus Christi, Houston, Galveston and Arlington. Th~ Arlington location, which is the North Texas Regional Training Cen- ter, will be moved to the new facdity in Coppell when construction is com- peted. Jim Bradley, TEEX director, said chsses more accessible and avail- er support economic development in the state. "We are veq grateful to the city of Coppell, in partnership with the Baptist Foundation c/Texas and the schod district, for their support of the Texas Engineering Extension Service's training programs in North Texas," Bradley said. "The avalh- bility of land and facilities in Coppell North Texas. We are looking for- ward to maintaining a presence here," he said. Phase II of the plan, Duggan said, will be PUtting together a task force to raise the money for the $1.3 to $1.5 million, 30,000-square-foot build~.. He said that work will start immediately because the plans call for the building to be on the ground in two years. "Construction will start as soon as we have ,the money in hand," Dug- gan said. "We anticipate starting the fundraising activities immediately ~ hope to have the fadlity oper- al/anal within two years. After that Ume. the future for the university presence here will be whatever the educational needs dictate," he said. Councilman Bill Smothermon said credit should be given whexe credit is due. He said the project could not have gotten this far without the perseverance of Mayor Duggan. "This thing would have died several times had the mayor not per- sisted. Because of his hard work. we now will be the focal point of the entire No~.h Texas region. This is an excellent project for our city," he said.