BROWNSVILLE, Texas - Gilberto Salinas, president and CEO of Greater Brownsville Economic Development Corporation, has provided more details about a $3.2 billion high-tech military shipyard that could be coming to the Port of Brownsville.
Salinas cannot name the company his organization is in discussions with because GBEDC has signed a non-disclosure agreement. But as first reported by the RGG Business Journal the company is Austin-based startup Saronic Technologies.
At a hearing slated for March 24, Cameron County will consider providing tax abatements to Saronic if it builds its shipyard at the Port of Brownsville.
Asked what he could say about the project, Salinas said:
“So, we’ve been working with the Port of Brownsville as well as Cameron County and different entities, such as the school district, the workforce entities, the State of Texas has been a huge partner in this project, and, us being an economic development entity, we're helping drive the project,” Salinas said.
“Obviously, it’s (a project of) the Port of Brownsville, but we're there working hand in glove with them.”
Asked how big a deal it is, Salinas said:
“It's a project that, yet again… it’s a game changer, transformative. We thought we had seen it all with SpaceX, and we did and we are. But then the LNG (liquefied natural gas) plants came in, totally different sector, but huge job generators changing the whole area.
“Now you get this project, and I like to say that big fish draws big fish. Big names draw big names. So having SpaceX here… thank you SpaceX because that is helping open the doors for other bigger companies, other bigger names.
“So, this particular project, its economic impact? It’s just hard to quantify it right now, but the supplier base that it's going to create, the economic impact is in the billions of dollars. The jobs that it's going to be creating, now we're talking about more welders, more engineers, tech, computer software engineers, all the above.”
For the longest time, Brownsville and the Rio Grande Valley have been net exporters of talent. All that is changing, Salinas said.
“Brownsville, for that matter the Rio Grande Valley, has had always been an exporter of talent. Our largest export was always talent. Now, the last figure that we saw is that for every one person that leaves Brownsville, three are moving in.”
By way of example, Salinas said nearly 30 subdivisions that are under construction in his city.
“Harlingen is seeing huge growth, all of Cameron County. So a company like this is creating that demand, and it's just spraying all sorts of economic activity here.”
It was put to Salinas that, because he has signed an NDA, he cannot name the company that is considering building military shipyard at the Port of Brownsville. The same goes for Cameron County and the Port of Brownsville.
“In economic development, we protect the identity of the companies. That is what we do from day one until they break ground. But we are working with what I like to call a transformative company. We have always said that when SpaceX came in, we saw the makings of perhaps a tech-type of city, a space-, tech-, AI-kind of city. So we're living that right now. And the next piece of that puzzle is starting to get into place. We just can't wait if it happens, what this place is going to look like.”
Salinas added:
“I'll close with this. We are in an extremely competitive environment for this particular project. We're competing with other states. They're throwing everything and the kitchen sink at it - no different than what we did with SpaceX 15 years ago. We threw everything at it because we said, we can do this. We're Texas.
“We're doing the same thing right now. So it's very, very competitive, stiff competition, that we're seeing. But we've been there before.”
Editor's Note: The above news story is the first in a three-part series on a wide-ranging interview the RGG Business Journal secured with Gilberto Salinas.
