Cardone breaks ground on mega-facility

HARLINGEN — Just days after announcing the project, Cardone Industries Inc. quickly broke ground today on a $50 million distribution center to be built on FM 509 in the city’s industrial park.

The project will be a massive 920,000 square feet, and will initially bring 550 new jobs and eventually 750 jobs, while seeding the local and regional economy with what is projected to be hundreds of millions of dollars over the next decade.

“Christmas has come a little bit early here in Harlingen,” Mayor Chris Boswell told the crowd at the groundbreaking, his back to the vast farm fields which soon will become the second-largest industrial facility in Cameron County.

“I can tell you no group of children has waited with any greater anticipation than a lot of us here under the tent, those of us who have been working on this project so diligently for the last couple of years to see a really wonderful thing happen for our community and all of South Texas and Cameron County and the City of Harlingen,” Boswell added.

The siting of the distribution facility here is a major coup for the city and the county, which last week approved $1.7 million in tax abatements for the Cardone facility, County Judge Eddie Trevino Jr. said.

Cardone officials cited the company’s current facility nearby in the Harlingen Industrial Park, a second facility in Brownsville and their brake manufacturing operation in Matamoros as key reasons to use Harlingen for their distribution center.

“We’re just ecstatic to be here, it’s been an amazing and long journey,” said Michael Cardone, owner and chief executive chairman of Cardone. “It’s taken a lot of work, some hard work.”

“This is really important to us because our production capability continues to grow in Matamoros, over time, and it’s a strategic base for our entire operation,” Cardone said. “Growth is really important to us as a key strategic initiative that we’re moving on aggressively.”

Just last month, Cardone purchased ADP Distributors and a company called Rotomaster which remanufactures turbo-chargers for automotive engines.

Since it’s founding in 1970, Cardone has grown into the largest privately-held automotive parts remanufacturer in the world. Cardone employs over 5,000 workers at facilities in Pennsylvania, California, Texas, Mexico and Canada.

“We went through an extensive process to try and find the right place to put our distribution center, Cardone said. “Not only was it financial, not only was it logistically strategic, but the people and the city were very important to us.

“As we went through that process we felt very strongly based on our experience in Harlingen just down the street, and the history we’ve had over 10 years, the people the support of the city the support of the council, we were confident that Harlingen was going to be the place for us,” he said.

“And that’s why we’ve chosen to be able to work here and bring this distribution center to the community,” he added.

Construction on the new facility will begin quickly, with Cardone executives saying the massive building, which will cover 20 acres in size on a 60-acre tract, will be finished in late 2018.