MCALLEN, Texas - New buildings for manufacturing and logistics are in short supply in the upper Rio Grande Valley, local economic development corporation leaders agree.
Keith Patridge, president of McAllen EDC, Raudel Garza, executive director of Edinburg EDC, and Teclo Garcia, CEO of Mission EDC discussed the lack of industrial space in their cities during a recent webinar.
The webinar was hosted by the Greater McAllen Area Chapter of the Asociación de Empresarios Mexicanos. Francisco J. Peña-Valdés, president of AEM’s McAllen chapter, moderated the discussion.
Garza explained what is happening in Edinburg.
“Right now, I got five blocks in our industrial park under contract. We'll be closing on those probably in the next 30 to 60 days. We’ll have well over 300,000 square feet under construction in the next six months or so. And that's still just meeting the current demand for people who are end users. That's not spec space. We still need spec space,” Garza said.
“I’ve got well over 1,000 acres at the Edinburgh airport that's available as well. So the land, we have, and the will to show people how and help them expedite the construction and the permitting process is there, from all of the Valley cities, I think. And so we just need to make sure that people recognize the market. And once they understand the market, then they'll know that there's not really a whole lot of speculative building going on because once you start building that building they will lease it out.”
Mission EDC’s Garcia used to be in charge of the City of Laredo’s economic development activities. He said he is trying to get land developers in Laredo to come to the Valley.
“Five hundred thousand square foot places were beginning to be common in Laredo. And Laredo has a ton of land. Yeah, it’s a little constricted by the ownership of land around Laredo. But I think we're primed for that sort of range, what Raudel was saying, 50,000 to 200,000 or even 300,000,” Garcia said.
Listening to the commentary provided on the webinar, it would appear that of the three featured cities, Edinburg, Mission, and McAllen, the latter may have the least amount of land available.
“Of the 32 companies that we're working right now, if we were to get them all, and that's a big if, but if we were to get them all today, that would be almost 3.7 million square feet of space that we need,” McAllen EDC’s Patridge said. “Currently, right now in Reynosa, there is between three and four million square feet of space that is either under construction or has been built in the last year. A lot of people don't realize that. That's more than we've ever done in 35 years. We’ve never done three to four million square feet in one year.”
Patridge said McAllen has hardly any new buildings available.
“We don’t have any space right now. That is the big opportunity. The membership of the AEM, most of them are looking for investment opportunities. This is the No. 1 investment opportunity for them, to start looking at building industrial buildings. We don’t have anything on the ground. We have a few small buildings around.”
Patridge said some people tell him not to publicly admit that McAllen has no new industrial facilities available. His response is:
“It is pretty obvious. I mean, when you start reading the CBRE report for the (McAllen) metro area, when you start talking to people, there aren't any buildings to speak of. So we really need them (AEM members) to look at building buildings. And again, Teclo and Raudel, they are correct. We need the buildings. Where they build them, that really is up to them (the developers). But we need them in the metro area here because we don't have anything to sell. We're selling out of an empty basket.”
Here is an audio recording of the part of the webinar that focused on industrial space:
Editor's Note: The above audio news story is the second in a four-part series on the recent webinar hosted by the Greater McAllen Area Chapter of the Asociación de Empresarios Mexicanos. Click here to listen to Part One.
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