Trio of Cities Form Ideal Distribution Hub
Published Apr 14, 2008
Even as the Alamo region gears up to increase its transportation capacity, it is already poised to become a distribution center hub.
Guadalupe County seat Seguin, nearby Comal County seat New Braunfels and Hays County seat San Marcos are partnering to sell their stretch of the Alamo Area as ideal for distribution centers.
The three cities are within easy highway travel of one another – and just a few miles from San Antonio.
And, increasingly, distribution centers and warehouses are finding the municipal triangle they form an ideal location.
“Technically, the signs say we are 32 miles from San Antonio, but we have clocked the mileage and it’s really 11 miles from the outer city limits,” says Seguin’s Kate Silvas, assistant director of economic development. What’s more important to economic growth is that Seguin is 14 miles east of New Braunfels, which is 14 miles south of San Marcos, which is 13 miles northwest of Seguin.
And local officials are finding ways to get the word out.
Together, the Economic Development Partnership of Central Texas represents all three cities and emphasizes “strategic location” to lure distribution centers, according to Rusty Brockman, director of economic development for the New Braunfels Chamber of Commerce.
Interstate 10 also runs through the region en route from Houston to El Paso and I-35 as it connects Austin and San Antonio.
State Highway 130, a toll road that eventually will go from Georgetown (north of Austin) and all the way to I-10, roughly parallels I-35 and passes within honking distance of all three cities.
New Braunfels’ Brockman says the two interstates already make the triangle attractive. The toll road, to be completed by 2012, will boost the distribution hub’s value even further, he says.
“We are in an ideal place to be able to garner distribution facilities,” Brockman says, adding that the regional airport in New Braunfels and 42 daily freight trains along the Union Pacific routes out of San Antonio enhance the options for this development.
Distribution centers are taking notice.
In Comal County, Wal-Mart operates a 1.5 million-square-foot distribution center. Ashley Furniture’s distribution center in Comal County has a quarter-million square-foot distribution center. And the county is also home to the 300,000-square-foot Lack’s Furniture distribution center.
A California development group has built a 224,300-square-foot warehouse facility in Seguin “that is first-class in terms of properties that are on the market right now,” Silvas says.
Some 164,000 square feet of space is available right now. The rest is occupied by a contractor that makes plastic storage bags for Wal-Mart, she adds.
Silvas says real estate developers have closed a deal for 500 acres in western Seguin that will be turned into “a multi-use retail, residential and industrial development.”
New Braunfels’ Brockman notes that more than 400 acres are being developed near the regional airport as land ideal for use in this distribution hub.
As Silvas says: “I believe we are primed for the future.”
Story by Tim Ghianni
Photo by Jeff Adkins
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