City of Brownsville working to build industrial park
Brownsville city leaders are working to create more industrial areas for the city's growing trade and space travel industry.
"Brownsville is in a boom right now. We lack housing and also warehousing and infrastructure," Brownsville City Commissioner At-Large A Tino Villarreal said.
The industrial park would be located on FM 511 near Devon Drive in north Brownsville. Next fall could have crews building an 800,000 square foot retail and industrial location going all the way to the 550 Toll Road.
During a Brownsville city commissioners meeting, commissioners allowed the city to apply for a $2 million grant from the U.S. Department of Commerce.
The company building the retail and warehouse space will match a portion of what they would get from the feds. Because of an agreement between the city and the developer, Brownsville taxpayers will not have to contribute money as part of getting the grant.
"A lot of attention is shifting from California to Texas, and that shift of Texas is moving towards South Texas," Villarreal said. "If there's grant money available that we can facilitate for the development of our needs as a city, we need to take advantage of them."
Villarreal says the future industrial park will be a place for possibly high-tech industries with SpaceX and even artificial intelligence.
But there's also a need for logistics, with factories in Matamoros sending parts back and forth across the border.
Once the city receives the $2 million grant from the feds, construction can begin off of FM 511 starting this fall.
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