The McAllen Foreign Trade Zone has been quietly shaping the Rio Grande Valley’s economy for 56 years — and CEO Mark Garcia says the next chapter may be its biggest yet.
In this Rio Grande Valley Business Journal podcast, reporter Kristen Mosbrucker-Garza and Garcia break down how the FTZ helps businesses import goods, manufacture or process them, and re-export without paying standard customs duties. Garcia says recent trade uncertainty has driven more companies to explore FTZ benefits as a way to defer or reduce duties.
The FTZ recently partnered with the City of McAllen to acquire close to 1,500 acres in North McAllen near the former Moore Air Base — now the future site of a $750 million USDA facility expected to bring nearly 500 jobs.
Garcia envisions a mixed-use development there with industrial, retail, and an educational component tied to UTRGV.
He’s also pursuing expansion into Willacy County, where new data centers and Port Mansfield redevelopment are creating fresh opportunities.
The following is a rough, AI-generated transcript of Kristen Mosbrucker-Garza’s interview with Mark Garcia, CEO of the McAllen Foreign Trade Zone. Minor errors and misspellings may appear. For the full conversation, listen to the episode above or through your preferred podcast platform.
MARK GARCIA:
The foreign trade zone — we have been there. This October, we’ll be celebrating our 56th year in existence here in the Valley.
People pass by it every day and say, “OK, McAllen Foreign Trade Zone,” but they don’t know exactly what the trade zone is about.
The foreign trade zone program itself was passed by Congress back in 1934. We had the Great Depression, right? The manufacturing base was asking, what are we going to do competing with all these other foreign companies bringing stuff in a lot cheaper?
Congress passed the Foreign Trade Zone Act, which allowed U.S. manufacturers to be a little bit more competitive by bringing in foreign components, manufacturing in the U.S. in their own facility, and then reexporting those goods without paying duties.
Back when we first started, we were probably one of the first developers ever down there in south McAllen, and it was all farm fields and crops. We’ve seen a lot of growth over the 56 years that we’ve been out there.
KRISTEN MOSBRUCKER-GARZA:
Welcome to another episode of the Rio Grande Valley Business Journal Podcast. I’m Kristen Mosbrucker-Garza, a reporter here at the Rio Grande Valley Business Journal.
We have a really special guest today. We have Mark Garcia, the CEO of the McAllen Foreign Trade Zone. Thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate it.
MARK GARCIA:
Thank you for having me.
KRISTEN MOSBRUCKER-GARZA:
For folks who aren’t familiar, what exactly is a foreign trade zone?
I know it’s been around for more than 50 years now, but some folks may not run into it in their daily life.
MARK GARCIA:
It’s a question a lot of people ask.
In the area where we’re located, people pass by it every day and say, “OK, McAllen Foreign Trade Zone,” but they don’t know exactly what the trade zone is about.
A lot of people don’t even realize it’s out there sometimes because we’re way down south.
The foreign trade zone — this October, we’ll be celebrating our 56th year in existence here in the Valley. It’s been a long time, but we’ve been able to grow quite a bit since then.
Back when we first started, we were probably one of the first developers ever down there in south McAllen. It was all farm fields, crops, caliche roads and stuff.
We’ve seen a lot of growth over the 56 years we’ve been out there. Of course, I didn’t see it all myself. That was way before my time.
The foreign trade zone program itself was passed by Congress back in 1934 to help level the playing field and help U.S. manufacturers be more competitive.
As we all know, back in 1934, we had the Great Depression, right? Things were in flux. The manufacturing base was asking, what are we going to do? We’re competing with all these foreign companies bringing stuff in a lot cheaper. The tariff rates were sky high.
So Congress passed the Foreign Trade Zone Act in 1934, which allowed U.S. manufacturers to be more competitive by bringing in foreign components and manufacturing in the U.S. in their own facility.
It can be manufacturing, repairing, cleaning, sorting — all sorts of things — and then reexporting those goods without paying duties.
So it’s a really big benefit to them because normally, as we all know, anything that comes into a port of entry has to pay duties before it comes into the U.S.
Companies located in a foreign trade zone have the ability to store it in bond, what we call activated space, and then reexport. It’s mostly an export program, but it was created at the time to level that playing field.
KRISTEN MOSBRUCKER-GARZA:
So the concept would be, let’s say something is a raw material. It would typically be inside a warehouse on the U.S. side, and then the value-added product would be subject to tariff, essentially?
MARK GARCIA:
Yeah, potentially on the value-added finished product.
A good example is car manufacturing. BMW does that quite well. They’ve been doing it for many years.
They’ll import all their components — steering wheels, tires, columns, clusters. They’ll assemble the car, and each of those components might have an individual duty rate ranging from whatever it may be. Nowadays, you don’t know. It can be 50% all the way to zero.
But they can take all those components, defer those duties, manufacture that vehicle, and at the end of the day, that vehicle has a different duty rate as a completed vehicle. In some cases, it’s almost duty-free.
That’s what we call the inverted tariff option.
But beyond the inverted tariff, there are a lot of other benefits to the foreign trade zone program, including weekly entries.
Companies can consolidate truckloads and do one entry on a weekly basis rather than paying an entry document fee for each truck coming across from Mexico or another country into the U.S.
There are tax benefits, ad valorem taxes, where as long as you’re operating in a foreign trade zone, you don’t have to pay taxes. It’s a federal statute. That’s a big plus for these companies, especially the ones that carry a lot of inventory.
KRISTEN MOSBRUCKER-GARZA:
Interesting.
Are foreign trade zones also opportunity zones? I know opportunity zones have been more popular in recent years. I remember there used to be enterprise zones, and then opportunity zones.
But the foreign trade zone feels like the OG, right? The original.
MARK GARCIA:
Yeah. The opportunity zones are different than the foreign trade zone.
The foreign trade zone program is more of an import-export-based program, where an opportunity zone is more about capital gains avoidance and investments.
There are a lot of zones out there. People call them free trade zones, trade zones. You have opportunity zones, enterprise zones. There are a lot of different zones.
But yeah, we’re the oldest program, really established in 1934. There are a lot of benefits.
It’s not a fit for every company either. A lot of people say, “Well, it’s too complicated to operate in the trade zone.”
Just like anything — whether you brought up opportunity zones, there are a lot of rules and regulations that go into complying with the program.
It’s the same thing with the foreign trade zone program. You have customs regulations, reporting requirements, but it’s nothing too cumbersome.
At the end of the day, a company might say, “Well, it’s not worth it.” But again, it’s not a fit for every company. It depends on their business model.
If they’re heavy in imports and raw materials from other countries, absolutely, there are going to be benefits. But if it’s a company sourcing mostly from the U.S., it might not be the best thing for them.
We always want to sit down and go through their business model and see if the program is going to be a fit. A lot of times it is, but there are cases where we just tell them, “You know what, I don’t see a benefit.”
So it’s case by case.
KRISTEN MOSBRUCKER-GARZA:
For sure.
Geographically, just to help folks, I believe the McAllen one was started in 1970 or so. It spans more than 700 acres, right?
MARK GARCIA:
Back in 1970, when it first opened its doors — in 1968, the program — there were a lot of forward-thinking people back in the day.
The group that established the foreign trade zone were businessmen who came out of the Chamber of Commerce. They heard about the program and said, “You know what? I wonder if that would work for us down here.”
They went through the process, a lengthy process at the time, and finally got approved from Washington for the grant.
Every grant — we call them grantees — every port, every state, every city, whoever has been approved to be a grantee in that port, we call an entitlement grantee.
We were the entitlement grantee for Port 2305 here in Hidalgo County.
When we first started, it was 40 acres, and then we grew to 80 acres. We were at about 80 acres for some time.
Then the Hunts came in and developed Sharyland Plantation. Back in the 1970s and 1980s, you wouldn’t recognize it. It’s changed quite a bit since then.
When Sharyland Plantation came around, they wanted to be in a foreign trade zone to offer it to their customers and developers. It’s one of those resources that doesn’t cost you to have, but it’s always good to know it’s available for companies that want to take advantage of it.
They took in another 700 acres for their development.
And recently, we partnered with the city of McAllen and bought close to another 1,500 acres in north McAllen. It wasn’t annexed as part of McAllen at the time.
But I think a lot of people have been hearing about the screwworm and the USDA facility up there at Moore Air Base. Before all of this happened, we had already purchased land around the base for the foreign trade zone with the city of McAllen.
It was a strategic move because we knew everything was going to grow north. On the south side, where we were located, there’s not a whole lot of land available. And the land that is there can be a little pricey.
Even when we were doing economic development for the city of McAllen, we knew that was going to be a struggle for us to convince these companies to purchase property at a high price.
So we started looking, and the only place to really go was north.
We’re glad we did that because I think there’s a lot of potential, especially with the new Hidalgo County loop that is constructing. We’re about 1.2 miles, more or less, south of section C that goes around on the west side.
KRISTEN MOSBRUCKER-GARZA:
And that’s the overweight corridor loop, right?
MARK GARCIA:
It’s a toll road, overweight corridor. Yeah.
There are a lot of opportunities there with this facility going up — a $750 million facility, close to 500 employees. There’s going to be a lot happening out there.
So I think we’re perfectly positioned to offer some alternatives in development and industrial space.
KRISTEN MOSBRUCKER-GARZA:
So on the south side, you all are south of Military Highway and about where?
MARK GARCIA:
Basically on Ware Road, at the corner of Ware Road and Military. All that industrial park belongs to us, all the way into the back, all the way to 23rd Street, which used to be orange groves at the time.
We’ve got about 40 acres left to develop. We’ve got about 168 total in our industrial park. That last section is designed and master-planned for close to 1 million square feet.
Aside from developing buildings and leasing buildings, we also offer logistics services. So we have different revenue streams, and over the years we’ve been able to expand on that.
The foreign trade zone program itself is sometimes not a big revenue stream as a grantee.
In the foreign trade zone program, you have different stages and levels. You have a grantee, an operator and a user.
Usually the grantees that get the grant from Washington outsource to a third party to do operations. That’s why we call them operators.
Then you have the users that come to the operators and say, “I’m ABC company. I want you to help provide me the service,” or, “I want to rent space from you to do my own operation.”
So we have these three levels, and we actually do all three. We’re the grantee, operator and user.
We have over 80 different companies that we serve as maquilas that we ship to on a daily basis — inventory management, consignment inventory, vendor-managed inventories. We have a 24-hour truck scale.
At the end of the day, we’re there for economic development. We’re a nonprofit 501(c)(6), so we don’t have stockholders getting rich off what we do.
It’s taken a long time for us to get where we’re at. Hopefully, pretty soon we’ll be starting maybe our 28th building.
Right now, we own and operate close to 1 million square feet in the trade zone, across different buildings.
KRISTEN MOSBRUCKER-GARZA:
I had heard there was an application to expand the zone to Willacy County. Tell me more about that.
I feel like a lot of people think, oh, well, it just covers McAllen. It just covers that little piece in south McAllen.
How much purview and flexibility do you all have, and what would it mean to add Willacy County into the scope?
MARK GARCIA:
I’m glad you asked that because just by the name, there’s a misconception that we’re exclusive to McAllen.
You have the McAllen Foreign Trade Zone, but we’ve always been separate.
I think that came about from having MEDC, that kind of development, in the same office. So people assume we were part of MEDC, when in fact we were two separate corporations.
But yeah, we get asked that a lot. “We want to work with you, but I know it’s just McAllen.”
No, it’s not. We are a regional provider.
Our entitlement grant is for Port 2305, but our service area is now all of Hidalgo County.
In the past, it was called a traditional site framework that just covered our park. Whatever was in the fenced-in area, that’s what we had to operate with.
If we needed to expand outside, like when the Hunts developed Sharyland Plantation, we had to go back to Washington and ask for an expansion, and that could take up to a year sometimes.
Things changed in 2010. The board came out with new regulations that allowed us to expand our service areas without expanding our footprint in our park.
It allows us to be more responsive to companies. If ABC company came in and said, “I want to be part of the program,” and we said, “Give me a year,” that wasn’t conducive. It was hard for a company to wait that long.
By changing to what’s called an alternative site framework, we’re able to activate companies that want the program within 30 to 45 days.
In essence, we’ve taken all the work that used to take a year and done it upfront. Now when companies come to us, it’s just a matter of sending out a one- or two-page application to Washington to get designation. Then we get activation from CBP locally, and they’re ready to rock and roll.
Going back to your comment about our service area, yes, we’re looking at Willacy County.
We see what’s happening over there. Judge Guerra from Willacy County has been really supportive of us going into Willacy County.
They’ve got projects with the wind farms, the data center and Port Mansfield. They have a new port director, Oscar Montoya, a great gentleman. I think he has a lot of good stuff planned for the port.
He’s going to have to see how he handles that. There are some people who want growth. I think overall they all want growth. It depends on what type of growth.
KRISTEN MOSBRUCKER-GARZA:
For folks who aren’t familiar, I’ve written a couple of stories about what’s going on in Willacy County.
It’s one of our more rural communities in the Valley. Whenever I look at construction documents, you don’t see a lot of new retail, per se, in those communities.
But there is a multibillion-dollar data center cluster being built there right now. It’s actually because they have existing electricity from the wind turbines.
They had all those wind turbines built however many years ago, when the closest you could get to offshore wind was popular and there was subsidy and a lot of investment in wind across the Valley.
Now data centers are in a position where a lot of them need to bring their own infrastructure. This company out of New York came down and did a deal with EDF, the French operator of the wind turbines, because they had too many wind turbines in the same area and weren’t getting a high price per kilowatt when they sold that electricity.
Data centers require a lot of electricity.
So little Willacy County — cotton fields, wind turbines and now data centers — not a large population, but a lot of industry.
Port Mansfield historically has been commercial and recreational fishing, hunting and that industry. I know there’s a pretty strong community there.
But the Port of Brownsville has been getting so much inbound interest. They certainly have room to grow, but they’re getting quite a few pretty large projects.
I was under the impression that with this potential extension of the foreign trade benefit in Willacy County, that could really open the door a lot more.
MARK GARCIA:
That’s the intent. We’re there as a resource.
If a company goes in there — whether you’re in Raymondville trying to recruit a company, Willacy County, or Port Mansfield trying to grow cargo operations — that’s where the board decides what direction they want to go.
It’s just an extra arrow in the quiver. It’s a menu of options.
We’re not going into Port Mansfield to say, “I’m going to start building something.” That’s not our intent.
But it is a program that can benefit companies once the navigation district decides this is the direction they want to go.
We’re there to support everybody. We are covering Hidalgo County and hopefully, in May, we’ll get our final approval from Washington to expand into Willacy.
We’ve always been regional. Even though we have the McAllen name, we’ve got operators we’ve set up in Pharr.
And speaking of Pharr, we just saw a press release that went out. It looked like it went out on the 23rd, but we just got wind of it.
Avant Technologies in Pharr manufactures special hard drives, solid-state drives and semiconductors. They moved some operations to the U.S. side, and we’ve been working with them for almost a year now to get set up as a foreign trade zone.
They were just announced that they got funding from the governor — $4.3 million. You probably saw that.
KRISTEN MOSBRUCKER-GARZA:
I saw that.
MARK GARCIA:
We’re excited for them.
Those are the kinds of stories that need to go out there. People need to realize we’re working with companies like this behind the scenes to help them remain competitive and have these opportunities.
We have operators not only in Pharr, but we’ve had them in Mission, McAllen and Hidalgo. Hopefully, pretty soon, in Raymondville and somewhere in Willacy County if everything goes well.
KRISTEN MOSBRUCKER-GARZA:
It will be really interesting to watch.
How, if at all, has the past year or so — 2025 into 2026 — been on the tariff side?
I know you all are already set up to defer duties on products. Was it even more of a benefit for companies with the trade situation, with the influx in tariffs and people navigating that?
And now the portal is open to get your refund through your broker.
MARK GARCIA:
Everybody’s out there trying to get those refunds.
But at the end of the day, I think they also realize there might be a shift back to where it was before, really through a different program. Maybe not through IEEPA anymore, but Chapter 122 or some other opportunities.
So for the current administration, it may be to say, “You might have won this battle, but you haven’t won the war.”
They’re going to get their refunds, and I’m glad to see that happening.
But the trade zones are there as a tool and an option. When there was this uncertainty — and there still is to some extent — companies had the trade zones to say, “I’m going to bring all this stuff across,” or “I have these ships in transit, and I’m not sure what’s going to happen with the duty rates.”
They were changing almost daily sometimes.
So companies could bring goods in, store them in a trade zone, and then wait and see what they were going to do or where the administration went with the current tariff scheme.
It provided them a fallback, which was really important.
KRISTEN MOSBRUCKER-GARZA:
Interesting. Did you all see a bump in interest or demand?
MARK GARCIA:
Absolutely.
We’ve always been pretty full in all our buildings. Occupancy has been averaging around 95% to 99%.
But we were trying to squeeze everything we could into what we had.
At the same time, there were other companies, other brokers, other 3PLs, that said, “Now I want activation. Now I want the program for myself because I see the need.”
So we were out there and started activating companies to allow them to do the same thing for their customers because we’re not the only ones that can do it.
These other companies are using our program and working under our grant, and they get the same chance to share those benefits.
KRISTEN MOSBRUCKER-GARZA:
Cameron County and Brownsville have their own foreign trade zone, right?
MARK GARCIA:
Yes.
KRISTEN MOSBRUCKER-GARZA:
And Starr County has its own foreign trade zone?
MARK GARCIA:
Yes.
KRISTEN MOSBRUCKER-GARZA:
So we have three foreign trade zones within the recognized Valley community.
You all are probably the largest, with an expansion to Willacy coming up here.
How has the dynamic changed with the growth of the bridges?
I lived here 10 or 15 years ago, and I remember Anzalduas was still kind of being built out. It wasn’t fully done. I understand, at least on the U.S. side, the commercial truck traffic port is completed.
I’ve noticed there’s this real push for more of our international bridges to have northbound commercial truck traffic.
How has the development of these bridges affected you all, and where do you see it going?
MARK GARCIA:
Everybody is planning for growth.
With Anzalduas coming online pretty soon, everything starts to shift to the west side now. The growth around the land area and the Killam property — unfortunately, with growth comes higher prices for everything, too.
We’ve seen what’s happened over the last 56 years, from caliche roads to what it is now.
I think that growth will continue. I think there’s enough business, and everybody will agree there’s enough truck traffic to go around for every port.
Donna is looking at doing the same thing with their commercial port. Kudos to them. I think everybody should have an opportunity. All the bridges are doing really well.
I don’t think there’s ever going to be too many commercial bridges.
It’s exciting to see people really getting on board with regionalism and what we need to make sure there are options.
If I can’t go through this port, I’m going to go through this port.
Same thing with produce. Right now, you see a lot of it coming through Pharr. You might see a little bit of a shift there, or who knows? Produce might stay in Pharr and you’ll see more commercial coming through Anzalduas.
We’ll have to wait and see what CBP wants to do.
And yes, we have a foreign trade zone in Starr County, one in Cameron County, and now there’s one in Weslaco. Weslaco has a foreign trade zone, although it’s never been really active.
It’s kind of suspended right now — the Hidalgo County Regional Foreign Trade Zone was renamed a while back. It’s inactive at this moment because there are a lot of things they need to do to get back up and running.
KRISTEN MOSBRUCKER-GARZA:
Is that connected to their airport or something?
MARK GARCIA:
That’s where it’s located, at the airport.
We’ve worked with Weslaco, Steve and his group. They’ve come to our office and said, “Teach me about the trade zone. What can we do at our port? How can we work with you in the future?”
That’s what we want to see. We’re here to help everybody. Again, we’re not just McAllen. We’re here to support everybody in our region.
KRISTEN MOSBRUCKER-GARZA:
If companies are interested, it sounded like there was a pretty high occupancy rate at the gated facility off Ware Road and South Military Highway.
Is there the most benefit, or almost more of a turnkey situation, if you’re inside those gates? Or could you reap the same amount of benefits if you’re up the road where Valeo is going, for example?
MARK GARCIA:
You mentioned Valeo. Valeo is another company we’re in discussions with to bring the program to them.
But it’s very preliminary. They’re scratching the surface and asking questions. We don’t know where that’s going to go.
Within our park, we just signed an agreement with our architect to move forward with designing our next 120,000-square-foot Class A building.
A few years ago, we built — a lot of our buildings have a letter designation, starting from A to Z. We’ve built out all the alphabet. We’re already up to building AA and BB.
Our next building will be CC — a 120,000-square-foot Class A building. Hopefully in the next year, we’ll have everything built if that’s the direction our board wants to go.
It’s a struggle right now because the cost of financing is so high. The cost of construction is high.
That’s why you don’t see a lot of speculative buildings coming up where somebody says, “I’m going to build a building and hopefully it gets filled.”
That can be risky. It’s hard to read the market sometimes.
During Covid, you saw everybody rushing out to buy and lease buildings and construct for fulfillment services. Then everything slows down, Covid goes away, things change, and now you sometimes see a softening in the market.
As a developer, you ask, is it time to build again, or should we hold on?
But then you see companies come in and say, “I need space. I need space now.” So it’s one of those, what do we do?
That’s why you see a lot of build-to-suit happening right now. I’ll build it for you, but I need your commitment up front. I’m not going to put up a building and hope something will come.
That’s where we’re at right now.
But that doesn’t stop us from designing it. Once it’s designed and we go out for bids, we can say, OK, is this something we want to do, or do we hold off? That will be up to our board to decide.
But I’m still bullish on the market and the industrial space. We’ll have to see where it goes.
KRISTEN MOSBRUCKER-GARZA:
Do you think the manufacturing sector in the McAllen-Reynosa area is growing overall?
We saw a little bit of softening with Cardone Industries or First Brands, something like that — a little bit in the auto sector. The price of vehicles has been historically high, coupled with higher interest rates.
It seems like we’re a little more exposed to the automotive sector.
What are you seeing in the market? Are you still seeing growth year over year when it comes to new manufacturers? Or even cold storage produce — is that considered manufacturing or not? What are you seeing?
MARK GARCIA:
It’s interesting. The companies operating in Mexico still continue to grow and have future plans for expansion.
Where we’ve seen a slowdown is new companies that want to come in and start operations in Mexico.
We are very heavy in automotive. And of course, we’ve got the Chinese market wanting to come in and penetrate the Mexico market, which they have already.
We see a lot of EVs from BYD and other companies, like Geely, driving around in Mexico. They can produce those pretty cheap.
Of course, the whole issue is, well, you can’t make U.S. citizens come across and drive those vehicles. We can’t buy those in the U.S. and drive them here.
Something has got to give. Either the U.S. says, OK, go ahead and start selling in the U.S. and we’re OK with that, but then you have our own U.S. automotive base saying, hey, we need to pull back and take care of our own first.
Overall, I think we’ll see moderate growth, marginal growth in the automotive industry.
But again, it all depends on the direction the administration goes.
I’ll say it again: There is a lot of uncertainty out there, especially with tariffs on finished vehicles, EVs and other vehicles.
It’s a wait-and-see game. I wouldn’t want to be in the automotive industry as an OEM right now just because of the volatility.
But I think at the end of the day, everything is going to work out once we get the tariffs squared away.
Companies are ready to invest. Regardless of where these tariffs go, there will be investment. But they need to know what that’s going to look like.
Until that happens, you might see some holdback and companies pushing down on the brakes.
The investment is there. These companies are ready to do it. But just tell me what it’s going to look like, and I’m ready to go. If you tell me from one day to the next that tariffs are going to be here or there, I’ll just hold back.
That’s where we’re at.
KRISTEN MOSBRUCKER-GARZA:
What are you hearing from manufacturers about the price of diesel? Has that gotten to the point where it’s slowed anything down?
MARK GARCIA:
Unfortunately, I haven’t heard that on the trade side.
Of course, a lot of those costs are passed on at the end of the day to the consumer. Some manufacturers absorb that cost before they pass it on. It just depends.
We know diesel is impacting everything because everything you get at the supermarket, everything on the shelves, has to be transported by one method or another. It all revolves around diesel.
That’s something we’re probably going to continue to see increasing.
Every day you get up and gas prices are fluctuating so much. The other day, it was almost $4 a gallon, $3.89, $3.90. Then the next day, it’s down to $3.70.
The war doesn’t help either. I don’t want to say the war, because I don’t know the difference between a war and an operation.
KRISTEN MOSBRUCKER-GARZA:
Yeah, that’s another time.
MARK GARCIA:
That’s another story.
But sure, the Strait of Hormuz has an impact. Fortunately, we don’t get a lot from that area in Iran. Most of our crude comes from Canada and some from Mexico, Brazil and Iraq.
So that doesn’t directly impact us. But fuel is a commodity, and speculation is what impacts prices.
KRISTEN MOSBRUCKER-GARZA:
Since the foreign trade zone started, are customers asking for something different now? Are they asking for more turnkey services? What has changed?
MARK GARCIA:
We’ve seen a little bit of both.
Some are saying, “I’m ready. I think I understand the program enough. I’m ready to do it on my own.”
The advantage they have when they start with us — and we have customers that start with a pallet or two and now have grown to 20,000 or 30,000 square feet — is that they understand how it works and the benefits.
Some come to us and say, “I want to start doing it myself now. I’ve grown bigger than what you can do for me, and I want my own building.”
No problem. We’ll go out and get you set up in your own building, and you still have the same benefits.
Some prefer us to do it. Documentation and customs documents are a little different than you normally see under a bonded warehouse facility.
The users themselves can actually do most of the documentation, where in other cases, brokers need to be involved with a bonded warehouse. So there are some benefits there as well.
We’ve had companies, and I’m proud to say, we have never lost a company to a lack of service. They’ve either shut their business or moved to another area that we don’t serve.
We offer great service. We are ISO 9000 certified. We are CTPAT compliant and everything.
We’ve got a great team of individuals working in the warehouse. Sandra, our vice president, is a wealth of knowledge as well. She’s been with me for 25 years. We kind of started around the same time.
We’ve got one person celebrating 40 years with the organization.
There is a lot of knowledge in our organization. We’re happy to have very little turnover and a great group of people working for us.
KRISTEN MOSBRUCKER-GARZA:
We’ve been talking a lot in the Valley, especially in the business community, about infrastructure.
Do we have enough access to water, electricity and transportation infrastructure — roadways, overweight corridors?
Which of those do you think is key to ensuring steady growth of the foreign trade zone?
MARK GARCIA:
In our case for the foreign trade zone, underground infrastructure is always an issue. There’s always a shortfall.
You have Tres Lagos out there in north McAllen, and that’s kind of where everything stops.
Now that we’ve purchased that property about seven miles north of that with the city around the air base, we really need to focus on getting infrastructure to that point because that’s going to be the future.
You see how quickly Tres Lagos grew. The Rhodes development does a great job.
It’s just a matter of time.
We are currently working with the city of McAllen. The foreign trade zone also heads up the infrastructure committee, and we’ve got the MPO, TxDOT, the city of McAllen and a lot of stakeholders involved in infrastructure on our committee.
We meet every quarter and say, OK, where are we now?
We just had a meeting not too long ago, and I brought up that traffic is going to be an issue with the new screwworm facility going into north McAllen at the air base.
We met with TxDOT. They were there in our meeting. What’s the plan? We have to start thinking about how we’re going to handle all that additional traffic.
You’re talking about a facility with about 140 employees now getting up to almost 500. That doesn’t include the traffic construction is going to bring.
So we need to really look at that.
We’re also working with the city of McAllen. We need to get water and sewer up there because it’s just a matter of time before we get companies in front of us that are ready to invest.
The last thing you want to tell them is, “Give me a couple of years and we’ll be there.”
No, we need to be shovel-ready.
If you’re going to market a development — and we have plans for that development to be mixed use with a little bit of commercial retail and industrial — we need to be ready.
Think about it. All those employees at the base need somewhere to eat, and there’s nothing. They have to go all the way into McAllen sometimes just to have lunch.
We’re working with the base right now to maybe set up a temporary food court during construction and for their current employees on our property.
We’ve got a lot of great ideas.
We’re planning an educational component in this development. We want to work with UTRGV. They’re interested in doing a partnership with the air base because they’re going to need engineers.
They have the fruit fly operation going right now, and that hasn’t gone away. Then you add the screwworm, and they’re going to need students.
So we can set up some kind of training program and a pipeline to the air base, whether it’s through UTRGV, South Texas College or whoever that may be.
We’ve never removed our economic development hat as a trade zone. We’re looking at everything.
The city, fortunately, has allowed us to take the lead on the development out there. We have an agreement to develop that property for the city of McAllen, and we intend to do so.
We’re working with consultants and getting all the infrastructure plans done for the site. We still have to work with the city to get everything to the site, but I think it’s going to be great.
It’s going to be a high-tech type development. We’re really excited about where this is going.
KRISTEN MOSBRUCKER-GARZA:
Interesting.
Is there going to be fiber internet? That’s the one piece of infrastructure I didn’t ask about. We’re always talking about internet and whether we have the capability there.
I’m sure you have high speeds inside the south side foreign trade zone, right?
MARK GARCIA:
That’s a must.
In fact, as part of our committee, we have AEP. We already talked to them, and they’re close by. They’re saying, just give us the green light and we’re ready to start servicing you.
That’s one of the first things we looked at.
But like everything, power is going to be something we need to consider, especially with the new half-million-square-foot facility for the screwworm. Daniel Lucio from AEP is fully aware of what that’s going to take.
We’re just waiting for final construction plans and demand requirements for the screwworm facility to pass on to AEP and figure out how they’re going to get them what they need.
It’s going to be a big consumer of power.
KRISTEN MOSBRUCKER-GARZA:
At some point, I’m told there will be essentially the largest high-power transmission line from West Texas down through San Antonio to the Valley — the 765-kilovolt line.
My general understanding is that will really make a difference in terms of reliability. They’re building out a lot of the substations right now and the transmission line network, so we’ll see where that goes.
To wrap everything up, it sounds like there are a lot of plans ahead, particularly on the north side — potentially mixed-use industrial and commercial, really planning for the future.
Was there anything else you wanted to highlight? Anything important people should know, or anything I might be missing?
MARK GARCIA:
I just want to reiterate before we wrap up: Reach out to us.
We want to be a resource. We’re here to help everybody, whether it’s in McAllen, Mission, Pharr or anywhere in the Valley.
Don’t be too proud to call us. We’re just a phone call away.
If we don’t have the answer or can’t help people directly, we can definitely send you in the right direction.
Don’t be afraid of the program. We’ll get you through it and make it work.
KRISTEN MOSBRUCKER-GARZA:
Awesome.
Thank you so much for your time and expertise. We really appreciate it.
For folks who want to follow along, check out some stories we’ll have at the Rio Grande Valley Business Journal. Stay tuned for the next episode and subscribe.
MARK GARCIA:
Thank you.
