SAN BENITO — About 172 acres of real estate is primed for sale.
City commissioners have rezoned 170 acres at the old city airport site and another 1.98 acres at the site of the old Henry Thomae Funeral Home.
The rezoning makes the areas more attractive to prospective buyers, City Manager Manuel De La Rosa said after a meeting Tuesday.
The sprawling airport site along Business 77 was rezoned from agriculture and industrial zones to a general retail commercial zone.
For decades, city leaders have held onto the airport site to help lure a major business prospect.
Now, the city is working to sell property there, De La Rosa said.
“We’re dealing with a business prospect we cannot divulge at this time,” he said.
Commissioners also rezoned the site of the old funeral home at 701 North Bowie Street to a general commercial zone.
In 2013, the San Benito Economic Development Corporation paid $385,000 for the 6,293-square-foot building standing on 1.98 acres near the banks of the resaca.
Former EDC Director Salomon Torres bought the building as a possible site for a museum in which to house the Freddy Fender Museum, the South Texas Conjunto Hall of Fame and Museum and the San Benito History Museum.
But museum leaders opposed the plan.
Torres also proposed turning the building into a business incubator program offering entrepreneurs office space where they could develop their products and services to help start-up businesses.
The project did not develop.
This year, the city launched a $1.7 million project to the 6,932-square-foot museum off Heywood Street on 2.18 acres at San Benito Plaza.
To fund the project, the city is using a $1 million U.S. Economic Development Administration grant and about $700,000 set aside from its general fund, De La Rosa said.
Since 2008, the three museums have shared a 1,000-square-foot area in the city’s Community Building.
