The chief executive officer of a major San Antonio development company referred to Weslaco in late 2021 as a “community that has been underserved.”
Craig Garansuay offered that description during a Weslaco City Hall meeting as local leaders were making their pitch to business interests gathered to learn more about the community. Weslaco at the time was seeing its first signs of new retail and housing construction growth coming out of 2020. Less than two years later, the Weslaco Economic Development Corporation points to five retail developments going up in the city.
Weslaco may not be underserved that much longer.
“Every city has its turn,” said Steve Valdez, the executive director of the Weslaco EDC. “Maybe it’s our turn now.”
Garansuay would likely agree. His company, Garansuay Group Inc., is developing a prime area along Expressway 83. The Shops at N Bridge will include Texas Roadhouse, Freddy’s Frozen Custard & Steakburgers, and Stefano’s Brooklyn Pizza among its many tenants. The Shops is a roughly two-block-long development across the way from well-established retailing on the corridor’s north side.
Now, developers are eyeing remaining stretches of open land on the southern side of the expressway. Even older structures such as the Palm Aire Hotel site have been cleared to make way for new developments.
“The region is growing around us,” Valdez said. “It’s really exciting. We’re feeding off that regional growth.”
Breaking Ground On Growth
On May 12, Valdez and other community leaders gathered for the sort of groundbreaking ceremony often seen in Weslaco these days.
On this day, it was another Garansuay development, Shops at Westgate. This one-acre development is named after the busy thoroughfare where it will be located. The first announced tenant is Dutch Bros Coffee. It showed that Weslaco’s retail growth isn’t all tied to the expressway.
“It’s not off the expressway,” Valdez said of Shops at Westgate. “It doesn’t rely on highway traffic, but it recognizes the value of our neighborhood growing off the mainstream.”
All of these efforts are leading to a big enough community that going elsewhere for dining and entertainment services is becoming less frequent. Valdez said 2020 was something of a turning point in that many local residents stayed closer to home. The volume of local sales caught the attention of developers like Garansuay and others like Domain Development of McAllen, which is also developing new retailing in Weslaco.
“You use to leave town if you wanted a certain level of entertainment,” said Valdez, who is a Weslaco native. “It’s nice now to have enough establishments that we can stay here.”
Location, Location
Domain is developing a second retail plaza along the expressway’s south side and adjacent to the Valley Baptist Micro Hospital. Among its early tenant commitments are Tropical Smoothie Café and Fazoli’s.
On north Texas Boulevard, in close proximity to the expressway, another San Antonio company, CBG, is redeveloping what it’s calling Weslaco Palm Plaza. It’s billed as having 190,000 square feet of shopping space, with a 50,000-square-foot anchor available.
“Halfway between McAllen and Harlingen,” a marketing piece says of the Palm Plaza development.
The old standby of Weslaco being centrally located in the Rio Grande Valley was said for years but usually didn’t lead to measurable growth. Valdez said what has changed is regional growth being so widespread that individual community identities aren’t what they used to be. The emergence of something resembling a real regional community makes being in its center all the more important.
“Being centrally located matters more than it ever has,” Valdez said. “We have all of the necessary amenities and resources and you can live in Weslaco and work anywhere.”
The next big retailing goal for Weslaco is attracting a big box store like a Sam’s Club or a Target, but in that respect, Valdez said they are coming up against large retailers who don’t want to cannibalize sales of their existing stores in the McAllen area and in Harlingen.
“We don’t get to pick them,” he said of large retailers. “They pick us.”
It appears for the most part that plenty of developers are currently choosing Weslaco, with more likely to come.