News Provided by YTexas
November 17, 2024
Brownsville Mayor John Cowen discusses why SpaceX chose his city and why it is paying major dividends for Texas.
BROWNSVILLE– The YTexas Summit, an annual business symposium convening Texas leading businesses from all regions, took place on October 1 at AT&T Stadium, home of the Dallas Cowboys.
The Summit was a showcase, where industry and academia convened to strengthen working relationships and accelerate economic development in Texas. The event featured executive networking, exhibit showcases, roundtable discussions, and live product demonstrations showing why Texas is the center of innovation spanning across 10 high-growth industry sectors.
On center stage was John Cowen, Mayor – City of Brownsville. He shared the story. of why SpaceX chose Brownsville. Here’s what he had to say.
About 15 years ago, Brownsville was approached by a small but innovative company called SpaceX who was looking to build its own private launch site. So we got together with our regional government and our state leaders to pitch Why Texas, and we were successful in attracting SpaceX to build their launch site on the beach by the Rio Grande River.
They wanted to be as close to the equator as possible for fuel efficiency purposes, but if they originally wanted to build a Falcon Launch site, a Falcon Nine launch site, and it’s morphed into now their star base production and testing facility. They’ve invested over 3 billion in that facility, which has generated an economic impact of over 6.5 billion for our region. Just to put that in perspective, the city of Brownsville has an 11 billion tax base and currently they have over 3,100 direct and indirect employees that have created more than 20,000 jobs for our county. We only have 400,000 people in our county.
“Currently, Brownsville’s the number one city in the state of Texas for job growth. We’re higher than Austin, we’re higher than Dallas and Arlington”
– John Cowen, Mayor of Brownsville, Texas.
It’s an amazing story for our community. We’ve historically been an under-resourced underprivileged community, and now we’re the number one city in the United States for income mobility. We are breaking the cycles of poverty because of companies like SpaceX. It’s creating an enormous amount of momentum. Recently they announced they’re moving their headquarters from Hawthorne, California to starbase.
SpaceX is the most valuable aerospace company in the world at 210 billion in our backyard. It’s an amazing thing. We’re so blessed to have ’em as partners. It’s a very much a symbiotic relationship, but it really provides an opportunity for our residents. Currently, 80% of their employees are local residents, which is an amazing thing to showcase what our people can do for technology companies. So I look forward to the future. They’re about to launch their fifth test flight in November. Every launch brings about 10,000 tourists to come see the launch, and they’re projecting over a hundred million dollars in impact just for tourism next year. It’s super exciting.
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In 2025, YTexas will host regional events in North Texas and Central Texas in Q1 and Q2, followed by the Summit to be held in Houston, TX.
- Dallas/Ft. Worth – Date/location TBD
- Austin/Round Rock – June 18, 2025. 89th Legislative Executive89th Legislative Session – Executive Review Review at Kalahari Resorts in Round Rock, TX
- Houston – Sept 24, 2025. 2025 YTexas Summit
On November 1, 2024, all events will be open for sponsorships, exhibitors and VIP packages. Space is limited, sponsorship packages available for all 3 events.
For more Texas news, visit YTexas.com/join.
