Brownsville developer mulls hotel near SpaceX inside 20-acre mixed-use project

Decades ago, Brownsville executive Mark Hodgson remembers the family riding horses from the ranch about 20 miles to Boca Chica Beach. At the time, there was hardly any vehicular traffic. He grew up on the east side of Brownsville, which lacked restaurants and other retail businesses. 

“My grandfather had thought that owning an intersection would always be valuable,” Hodgson said. “When we kicked this off six years ago, trying to get people to understand or to invest in that side of Brownsville was very difficult.” 

Back then the company measured vehicle traffic and there were about 11,000 vehicles at the intersection of South Indiana Avenue and Boca Chica Boulevard or Texas Highway 4. That has surged past 30,000 vehicles each day. The Texas Department of Transportation earmarked funding to widen the highway to four lanes. 

That’s because the landscape has changed significantly since then, and Brownsville has grown. Its next-door neighbor, Space Exploration Technologies Corp., has grown alongside it, and in the coming years, Saronic Technologies expects to build a massive shipyard down the road.