Salinas: The Greater Brownsville Tech District will be an ecosystem of innovation

This morning I was on a call with a fellow economic developer, actually from the Upper Valley, and he called me up and congratulated myself and all of us here at the GBIC, in regards to this groundbreaking ceremony.

My initial, knee jerk response was, you know, I’m on the hook to sell this property. You know, we’re on the hook to sell 770 acres of this land to prospects. Not just to prospects, but to manufacturers. So, we just kind of joked about that, because that’s the business that we’re in, that’s economic development, and it’s (all about) selling.

At the end of the day, that’s what we do. We have to sell. And we sell door-to-door, knocking on doors. And when I sell, we sell a product, and that product is Brownsville, Texas.

So, with that, let me paint the vision for you today, as far as what we have here. This dirt we have around us, specifically the 700-plus acres of dirt behind us here that you can see there’s going to be a matrix of streets. They’re all going to be connecting a string of manufacturing operations, business parks within this Tech Park, tech facilities, training institutions and ancillary businesses supplying our manufacturing base. They’re all going to be interconnected, which in turn is starting to become an ecosystem. It’s an ecosystem of innovation, and innovation is what drives economic growth.

Now that first phase, which is these first 86 acres, is the launch pad for that ecosystem which is going to support the space sector, the energy sector, and advanced manufacturing tech. And we’re hopeful that there’s going to be some AI in that as well.

So, all of this is being done to support that first big wave of suppliers for these major players that are coming into this region. And I don’t know about you all, but we’re already seeing that first wave of suppliers coming into the area. We’ve got two SpaceX suppliers already coming in. Amazon. You’ve heard us say, for the last few months, there was another big brand coming into the community. That’s no coincidence. They see the potential here, hence, that’s why they’re moving dirt just a stone’s throw away from here, right next to us.

Big names draw big names, and just down the road there’s the Port of Brownsville. Talk about some economic heavyweights: Rio Grande LNG, Texas LNG, Forza Steel. Those are all new construction, and we still have formerly known as Keppel AmFELS, now Seatrium, ship dismantlers. And the list goes on as far as what’s happening at the Port of Brownsville.

And then just a little further down the road, we have a small little project by the name of Space Exploration Technologies. So, in essence, this is becoming the front door to manufacturing, which stretches from here through the Port of Brownsville into that new little town now called Starbase City, Texas.

So that’s the vision. Now, then, we will move on to some numbers. Thirteen lots in our first phase here. Let’s just say it’s about 100,000 square feet of facilities per lot. That comes out to a total of 1.3 million square feet of space, industrial space that has the potential to create 2,000 to 4,000 jobs in this dirt that we’re on right now. That is $500 million in capital investment, easily $500 million in capital investment, if not more. The economic impact of that? Three billion dollars, just being conservative. Three billion dollars of economic output on this dirt that we’re in right now.

Now they (the GBIC board of directors) are the ones that has have given us that clear direction as to what we’re doing, why we’re doing what we’re doing, and to go do it. And that is to expand our economic base. They’re very, very clear about that, expand our economic base. And the objective is to develop an advanced manufacturing cluster, which in this case is space, energy and tech.

And the strategy is simple. You heard me say this a few moments ago. It’s good old-fashioned knocking on doors. At the end of the day, that’s what we do. We sell and we sell a lot, and our product is Brownsville, Texas.

So, I’m going to leave you with this, this dirt that you see around us, this is the platform for economic progress. This is how we and everybody here, this is how we create opportunity and wealth for future generations. This is how we develop prosperity for the region, and this is how we transform our city.

Editor’s Note: The above commentary was given by Gilberto Salinas, CEO of the Greater Brownsville Incentives Corporation, at a groundbreaking ceremony for eagerly anticipated Greater Brownsville Tech District, which is being built in phases on FM 511 between Old Alice Road and Paredes Line Road in Brownsville.

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