CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — The city of Gregory has found itself in the middle of fast growing economic growth in San Patricio County.
Gregory City Manager Tony Cano said that progress can be a double edge sword.
"We would like to see growth in certain directions. Who doesn’t want more retail than commercial or industrial I should say," he said.
Adam Gawareski is the President and CEO of the San Patricio County Economic Development Corporation. He and his staff are working on billions of dollars in possible future projects.
"I’d say one of the smaller ones that we have the highest probability of closing sooner, rather than later is a $1.1 billion project with 65 jobs.”
Gawareski also has a couple of projects that he and his staff are working on that are worth $3 billion. There are also others valued at up to $5 billion that could eventually land in San Patricio County. However, some of the sticking points for these companies are the lack of water we can offer them along with electricity.
"We are having to tell them we only have three and-a-half million gallons of excess water capacity per day that we can offer right now," he said. "Some of these guys are needing 6,000,000 gallons a day. Some are needing only 3,000,000 gallons a day. But, if we have one user come in that water is gone.”
Gawarecki is hoping that the port and the City of Corpus Christi can get their desal plants online sooner than later.
"We really need a desal product on the ground as quick as possible and we probably need more than one. One will satisfy us for a short time, but it’s not going to be a good 10 year fix for us," he said.
Over the past 10 years San Patricio County has seen $37 billion in capital investment. That number is expected to continue to rise. Just last year the EDC had some 120 investment leads coming into its office.