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SAN BENITO — Amid a legal battle, the city’s Economic Development Corporation and the company behind San Benito’s first resaca-side development are at the table, negotiating terms aimed at completing the Resaca Village project more than five years after construction broke ground.
Last week, officials met in closed session to discuss ongoing negotiations with VARCO, a Brownsville-based real estate developer, stemming from an August mediation hearing in Austin.
“I’m committed to address this,” City Manager Fred Sandoval, the EDC’s executive director, said Tuesday. “We’re trying to communicate with each other all the needs of each other. This (project) should have been completed a long time ago. We’re trying to move forward and get this thing finished because the citizens of San Benito deserve it. That’s the best piece of property in all of San Benito, in my opinion.”
After the city’s order halting work at the project site following San Benito’s charge of water theft, the two parties agreed to enter into mediation with attorney Eric Galton in Austin.
“We asked them if we could talk and they wanted to have formal mediation,” Paul Serafy, an attorney representing VARCO, said in an interview. “We’ve communicated more about possible resolutions through legal and non-legal avenues to come to a solution. We want to come to a resolution. We want to go ahead with the project, to lift the stop-work order, get to work and get the project completed.”
City Commissioner Tom Goodman described negotiations as “substantive.”
“The conversation is ongoing,” he said. “Nothing is off the table as far as how to work this out. As far as the city is concerned, we want to see a completed project and spaces leased out, but we don’t have a clear path on how to get there yet.”
In August, VARCO described the Resaca Village project as “substantially complete,” a news release stated, adding the $10 million development featured six tenants with a seventh on the way after creating more than 100 jobs, aside from construction work.
But city officials refuted the claim.
At about the same time, officials accused VARCO’s OrigoWorks of stealing water at the Resaca Village project site.
In court, OrigoWorks’ superintendent pleaded no contest to the charge, Serafy said.
In April, VARCO filed a lawsuit against the city, claiming the EDC breached the parties’ contracts surrounding the development of Resaca Village, failing to “honor its obligations” under an agreement extending its construction timeline while claiming its amendments “void” because city commissioners had not approved them.
In response, the city filed a counter suit, claiming VARCO breached its contract when the company failed to comply with the city’s agreements granting extensions on the project’s completion, originally set for 2022.
