By David Diaz
Texas Border Business
Another major retail and entertainment complex, complete with a hotel, is in the planning stages for Edinburg, a project that could bring in as much as $300 million a year into the city’s economy, Agustín “Gus” García, the Executive Director for the Edinburg Economic Development Corporation, featured second from left, has announced.
The EEDC is the jobs-creation arm of the Edinburg City Council. García delivered that news and provided other insights into the strength and future of Edinburg and its economy during the Public Affairs Luncheon, sponsored by The Bert Ogden Auto Group and the Edinburg Chamber of Commerce, on Thursday, July 24.
His remarks were made before about 225 community and business leaders who attended the function, held in one of the main reception rooms at the Edinburg Conference Center at Renaissance. García said the EEDC has been working with Burns Brothers, LTD, a local development firm which in 2008 created the 726-acre La Sienna Master Planned Community in north Edinburg, to help bring about the adjoining planned retail/hotel conglomerate to be known as Resaca Market. “They are changing the shopping industry with Resaca Market,” García said.
“We are currently working with Burns Brothers, LTD to develop that project, which would feature about 500,000 square-feet of retail, restaurants, hotel, shopping, entertainment, movie theaters, and so on. What a wonderful opportunity for shopping this will be, which would bring many more Mexican consumers and American dollars to that area, and into our city.”
García said Resaca Market would take advantage not only of the growing residential subdivisions within the La Sienna Master Planned Community, but especially with the tens of thousands of prospective customers who would travel by it every day on U.S. Expressway 281, which on May 30, 2013 was designated Interstate 69-Central.
Resaca Market and La Sienna Master Planned Community are located by the U.S. Expressway 281/169C six-lane thoroughfare, near the interstate’s intersection with Monte Cristo Road.
Resaca Market and La Sienna Master Planned Community are about 3.5 miles north of Edinburg’s downtown, and approximately six miles north of Edinburg’s city-owned, planned $54 million, 8,500-seat arena to be constructed along U.S. 281/I69C in south Edinburg.
García said Resaca Market has the potential to generate as much as $5 million a year in local sales tax revenue for key public services – additional money that can be used by the Edinburg City Council and EEDC for a wide range of its duties, from public safety, infrastructure improvements and youth programs to economic development and job-creation efforts.
The EEDC executive director’s overview also included summaries of more than one dozen other ongoing and upcoming major projects, ranging from new hotels coming to the city to more than $200 million in new construction now underway, approved, or proposed for the The University of Texas-Rio Grande Valley in Edinburg and the UT-RGV school of medicine in Edinburg.
“Ladies and gentlemen, that is a lot of activity going on in Edinburg right now,” García concluded his presentation, then predicted, “We’re helping lead the way in education, medicine, and government. In partnership with all cities in the Valley, I know that South Texas is going to become one of the epicenters of economic development for Texas.”
