BROWNSVILLE, Texas – The Greater Brownsville Incentives Corporation issued a Request for Interest for a master developer firm or consortium to lead the planning, development, and operation of an approximately 730-acre industrial park.
The park is called the Business I-169 North Corridor Industrial Park and it is located on the south side of frontage I-169 between Old Alice Road and Paredes Line Road less than 2 miles from I-69.
Here are some of the details:
Expressway Frontage on I-169/ 550 Expressway
729 acres
Flat land, can be subdivided to fit project phasing
Potential for expansion
Close proximity to utilities (water, wastewater, gas, electric)
Rail access availability
Less than 2 miles from I-69
SpaceX Launch Site (25 miles)
Port of Brownsville (6 miles)
Brownsville SPI Airport (13 miles)
International Border (13 miles)
Zoned Industrial
Helen Ramirez, executive director of GBIC, said her group was seeking an innovative team that will lead its mission of inducing investment in an environmentally responsible manner to plan and build-out a next generation “Class A” industrial business park with complementary uses that support the Business I-169 North Corridor Industrial Park.
“The Greater Brownsville Incentives Corporation owns approximately 730 acres right off what is going to be Interstate 169. One way to develop it is to do a call for a request for interest from the development community or a consortia of developers, investors and equity partners,” Ramirez told the Rio Grande Guardian International News Service.
“It is a lot of park. It is a lot of acreage. Which is great. It is needed in Texas, for the recruitment of large companies. And so what we are asking is, what is your interest in development of this property and how would you phase the development? It can be rail-served, so how would you integrate rail into that.”
Ramirez said interest from developers is already being shown.
“It has only been 24 hours since we launched the RFI and there have already been over 50 downloads of the document. So, we are very excited as to the proposals we will be getting in, that will be due on May 20 at 3 p.m. There is going to be a visit to the property so they can see it and we are going to entertain questions during that meeting.”
Ramirez said the new industrial park is needed because there is not a lot of space currently available.
“We are very excited about how we are going to negotiate the development of this industrial park because right now with manufacturing industrial space, we have no more space available. There is much more demand and there is an unmet need that the marketplace has right now,” Ramirez said.
“We are in negotiations for almost every lot on the 72-acre park. We are not going to wait until the park is fully built out. Also, those lots are two acres and five acres. The largest is ten acres. It is very small compared to building out 730 acres.”
Ramirez was asked what was driving the current demand for more manufacturing space. Was it the impact of USMCA? Was it disruptions in supply chains caused by the coronavirus pandemic? Was it the impact of SpaceX in Brownsville?
Ramirez answered: “It is all that but it is also good leadership, strong leadership. We have a good, professional mayor, a city commission that has strategic goals, with economic development part of those goals. We have the Greater Brownsville Incentives Corporation, we have an economic development corporation, and so they feel it is the right moment, not only because of everything you talked about, of what is going on in the economy, and near-shoring and the fact that you have the Matamoros connection, but even the new infrastructure the Texas Transportation Commission has approved, like the east loop, Loop 4, the new airport that has been expanded, the Port of Brownsville and all the improvements they are doing.”
Ramirez added: “I would say it is the current economy, the leadership that the city has and also Covid and Omicron, everything like that, that have caused the pain points in the supply chain that (made us realize) we need to bring more companies here.”
More information:
Interested firms/ consortiums are invited to review and submit a Request for Interest (RFI) Proposal by May 20, 2022, no later than 3:00 p.m. CST, by regular mail or in person to:
Greater Brownsville Incentives Corporation
RFI I-169 North Corridor Industrial Park
Attn: Helen Ramirez, Executive Director
500 E. Saint Charles Street
Brownsville, Texas 78520
For more information on the RFI or the Greater Brownsville Incentives Corporation (GBIC), please visit https://greaterbrownsville.com/.
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