Why Brownsville is laying the foundation for a new industrial park

As Eleazar Rodriguez drove a black SUV along a highway that intersects with the TX-550 toll road, he gestured out the window towards a sweeping 18-acre industrial site punctuated by a large white tower with a blue emblem. 

“Through the tower, they will capture all of the carbon dioxide from the air and separate the gases,” said Rodriguez, Director of Industrial and Project Development for the Greater Brownsville Incentives Corporation. 

Rodriguez found an access road that led to a bridge with a better view of the massive project along Paredes Line Road inside the North Brownsville Industrial Park, estimated by officials to be worth $100 million. 

That tower is known as an air separation unit, which is operated by Linde, a chemical manufacturer based in the United Kingdom that produces industrial gases for customers in space exploration, petrochemical companies, and other industries. 

SpaceX, the Elon Musk-led venture in Cameron County, which launches test rockets and aspires to travel regularly to Mars, would be a likely client of Linde since the site is 20 miles away. But neither company has confirmed such a relationship. Linde already has several retail locations across the Rio Grande Valley and sells specialty gases used by welders, such as argon.

Linde’s air separation unit will sell liquid oxygen, nitrogen, and argon, “addressing the needs of its customer’s space operations in the region,” and expects to “expand merchant capacity across Texas” for those gases. The plant is anticipated to start up during the first quarter of 2026. 

To seal the deal, Rodriguez and his team worked with nearby landowners to secure enough acreage for such a large project, ensuring it was near a sufficiently powerful electric substation. Then it took another three months to guide it through zoning, planning, and permitting. 

Just a few years ago, the North Brownsville Industrial Park had sold a few lots to interested manufacturing companies, like a longstanding plastic injection molding business Exel Bobbins & Plastic Components. Back in 2021, the 72-acre site about three miles away from the Port of Brownsville had about 10 more lots to sell, but now there’s not a single space left.

“In the past three years, we were able to sell out everything,” Rodriguez said. “The most important [thing] is having the property ready with all the infrastructure and having electricity.” 

The Linde site needed significantly more power than a typical industrial customer, he said. 

The industrial park “was the only place in town,” he said, that was able to provide the amount of electricity required. 

Instead, there’s a flurry of construction crews erecting industrial buildings, from corporate sites to speculative real estate. 

For example, there’s an $800,000 new facility for Superior GHQ, a metal fabrication company with a 14,000 square foot building, Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation records show. Superior expects to hire up to 20 employees when it opens within the first year and another 12 workers within three years thereafter. Brownsville officials estimate the value of the project investment to be about $3 million. 

There are several brand new spec spaces, like Ayusa Warehouse, spanning 103,300 square feet with 16 loading docks, which cost $7 million to build on a 6-acre site in the industrial park. Plus, Luceca Warehouse, which is a 70,000 square feet building with 10 tractor-trailer dock doors. 

“We have a little bit more spec buildings coming in just because we have been seeing projects that really need the buildings to be up and running because the business is moving in within the next couple of months,” Rodriguez said. 

Spellman High Voltage Electronics Corporation operates a recently built logistics warehouse in the Brownsville industrial park to receive high-voltage transformers and circuit board parts manufactured in its twin plant in Matamoros for assembly before shipping to customers.  

And yet, the generations-old industry of ranching was still alive on a recent weekday, as ranchers herded their cattle into trailers using their easement through the brush to the roadway, while at the same time, a tractor-trailer was delivering materials to Spellman’s brand-new facility. 

While the bustling pace of construction has been a boon to the local contractors and subcontractors, there are growing pains, such as one of the most expensive concrete markets, officials said. 

Amazon owns a 13-acre plot of land between the Linde air separation unit and TX-550. Amazon is already building a shell for a future 62,000 square foot delivery station, a place where packages from a fulfillment center are shipped as the last stop before a customer’s doorstep. 

To meet investor demand, economic development officials are building yet another industrial park known as the Greater Brownsville Tech District – a 729-acre swathe along TX-550. 

For the tech district, the initial utilities and land preparation work began in April 2025 and is expected to be completed for the first phase by January 2026.

“We already have several [letters of intent] that made us start phase two,” he said.