Council to discuss downtown projects

Oct. 24—The Odessa city council is expected to decide Tuesday night if it wants to enter an agreement with Sina Realty that would result in two downtown restaurants and a rooftop bar.

Casey Hallmark, executive director of Downtown Odessa, said the council is considering entering what's called a 380 Agreement with the company.

Under the terms of the agreement, the city would deed property at Fifth Street and Grant Avenue to Sina Realty. In exchange, Sina Realty would be required to make a $2.5 million investment into the lot, construct two restaurants within 30 months and once in operation, add 25 new jobs to the existing 20 full-time positions they currently have, Hallmark said.

A seven-year monitoring agreement would also be part of the deal to ensure the benchmarks are met, she said.

"There are claw back provisions in this 380 Agreement that would allow the city to come back in and take that land back and that would include any development on that land if they're not meeting their contractual obligations," Hallmark said.

The plan would be for the current El Sinaloense Mariscos & Bar to move to the new location, Hallmark said. The second restaurant, which would include the rooftop bar, has yet to be determined.

"The great thing is, in my opinion, the move would open up a restaurant move-in ready spot for a new restaurant to come in," Hallmark said.

This would not be the first time the city would enter into such an agreement, Hallmark said.

"This was done with Torchy's Tacos, this was done with Icon and so these are a pretty common tool that cities will use," Hallmark said. "They give cities some control over what's coming in, what's coming into our downtown area and making sure that we see progress."

Early next year, Downtown Odessa plans to put out two additional requests for proposals for other lots downtown, she said.

Also on Tuesday's agenda is a discussion on selling water to the Greater Gardendale Water Supply Corporation.

Odessa City Manager Michael Marrero said the company approached the city of Odessa a few years ago about the possibility of entering the same sort of agreement the city has with the Ector County Utility District for wholesale water.

Under the terms of the agreement, the city would sell the company water at $4.01 for every 1,000 gallons, Marrero said.

The company, which will continue using several wells for their primary source of water, projects it's average daily demand to be .095 million gallons of water a day, Marrero said.

"It's taken from early 2021 to now to get to the point where they've been able to design the system that would be necessary to carry water to Gardendale," Marrero said. "We've also got a much better understanding of what sort of volumes they would be wanting and really what they're looking for represents less than 1% of our typical daily use for the City of Odessa."

The company would be responsible for any infrastructure costs, Marrero said.

The initial contract would be for 30 years, but they could potentially extend it twice for 10 years each time, he said.