Earth movers rumbled in the background as officials with the AMFCO Group, Greater Brownsville Incentives Corporation and the city of Brownsville plunged shovels into a mound of dirt to celebrate the ceremonial groundbreaking of AMFCO’s new 64,000-square-foot headquarters and warehouse facility at the North Brownsville Industrial Park off Paredes Line Road.
AMFCO, a customs brokerage and freight forwarding company started in 1990, currently leases 135,000 square feet of warehouse space in Brownsville. The new facility will allow the firm to consolidate its operations into one location, noted Brownsville Interim City Manager Helen Ramirez.
“We are so proud that it’s a family business that’s been in the city for such a long time,” she told the crowd gathered for the ceremony. “Seeing you consolidate and make this your headquarters, to us, is an honor. We want to ensure your success. We know you’ll continue to be successful here in the city of Brownsville.”
Ramirez said industrial development is important for the city.
“Less than 5 percent of our land use is industrial,” she said. “To really have a sustainable, balanced economy in the city, these types of industrial parks are instrumental in bringing companies to Brownsville and to balancing our land-use patterns, so that we’re most sustainable long term and we create more jobs. While it’s good to have residential, it’s really commercial/industrial that pays for roads and infrastructure.
“It’s the type of property tax that really can pay for much of the services that the city needs. With more commercial and industrial you can reduce the property tax burden on residential, and that’s ultimately I think what every city wants to do.”
Ramirez said the 73-acre industrial park, which sat empty for a number of years before landing its first tenant last year, had “really taken off” in the past year and predicted that within a few years businesses there will employ hundreds of workers.
Ramiro Aleman, who spent four years working trying to get AMFCO to the industrial park as GBIC’s director of business recruitment, retention and expansion, said construction is expected to be complete in April. He now serves as executive director of the San Benito Economic Development Corporation.
“I’m ecstatic,” he said. “We put a lot of work into it. Sometimes it looked like it wasn’t going to happen, but we were able to overcome any challenges that arose and we were able to get it done. That’s why I’m here. I personally did a lot of work on this project.”
City Commission Roy De los Santos was also on hand for the ceremony and said this kind of economic activity is “not just about Brownsville, it’s about the region.”
“The South Texas region and the northern Mexico region, when the region wins we all win,” he said. “Every city, every citizen, from jobs to economic development, to infrastructure, it cannot be us versus them. … It has to be all of us working together to better the lives of every citizen out there, and this is the perfect example.
“This is a sign of things to come for Brownsville, where there is greater revenue coming in from sales taxes (and) the industrial sector, so that we can reduce our dependence on (residential) property taxes, and that is a testament to the work of GBIC board members and staff and families like the Rodriguez family.”
AMFCO owner Luis Rodriguez expressed gratitude.
“We just want to thank GBIC and it’s hard work and giving us the opportunity to invest in Brownsville, give back a little bit,” he said.
