The Ebony Hills Golf Course and the adjoining Echo Hotel were signature pieces for decades on Edinburg’s landscape as the city established itself during its earliest years.

The golf course was opened in 1927 as a municipal property before being privately owned and today is again a public golf course. The Echo opened about three decades later as a showpiece two-story hotel. Community leaders developed the Echo as a city project with investors after repeated attempts failed to attract a corporate chain that would build a marquee facility in the city.

Taken together, they ran continuously along Freddy Gonzalez Drive to where the major thoroughfare intersects with Edinburg’s main street – Closner Boulevard. Both the golf course and the hotel faded in prominence over the years as a city that is now growing faster than any other Rio Grande Valley community developed in all directions with the exception of its core.

The city is now going back to its roots in refurbishing the old course and constructing a new clubhouse and cart barn. Using bond funds, the Edinburg Economic Development Corporation will build its administrative offices and workforce resource center on open space between the new clubhouse and the old hotel. The Echo, meanwhile, has been purchased by Zoho. The multinational technology company will redevelop the main tower of the historic hotel into a state-of-the-art office campus. 

“The City Commission thought it would be a good idea to put everything together,” said Raudel Garza, the EDC’s executive director, of the Echo’s redevelopment and golf course/EDC offices projects. “That’s what we’re doing.”

‘We’re That Busy’

The city’s collaboration with Zoho and its revamping of the golf course space is among the many projects Garza has undertaken in his three years as the EDC’s director.

Garza came to the Edinburg job in 2022 after a lengthy tenure in Harlingen, where he held a similar leadership post with the EDC in that city. In Edinburg, Garza has built a staff from scratch, stabilizing its operations after years of flux. He has further led efforts to build an EDC that can facilitate the city’s rate of growth. Edinburg’s population has grown roughly by about 10,000 residents since the 2020 Census and is estimated to be at about 110,724.

“We get so many calls coming in and asking about our market and wanting to understand what it’s about,” he said. 

Garza lists these projects among the EDC’s top priorities:

• Development of an industrial park in north Edinburg that has an ideal location close to U.S. Highway 281 for logistical and distribution operations.
• Revitalization of downtown Edinburg with the opening of a new county courthouse and the construction of a much-needed parking garage. Further support will come with the issuance of $10,000 grants to small businesses to improve facades and exterior appearances.
• Attracting additional retailing and residential development along the Expressway 281 corridor in the Trenton Road area near Vackar Stadium. The latter is the home of the UTRGV football team. Edinburg is working to capitalize on the excitement of finally having college football in the Valley.
• Using bond money for upgrades to city parks and baseball and softball fields that are of sufficient quality to attract state and national tournaments in increasing sports-linked tourism. 

“We’re working with developers and investors and helping them get through the process,” Garza said. “We’re hiring more people … we’re that busy.”

Mixing Old & New

Mixing in the new with the vintage of the Echo and Ebony Hills brings a classic touch to Edinburg’s growth.

There were years of back-and-forth discussions about what to do with the historic nine-hole golf course. There was some community sentiment to make the Ebony Hills property available for commercial development, but ultimately, that talk didn’t progress to anything definitive. The decision to build a new clubhouse at Ebony Hills along with some recent infrastructure course improvement has settled the matter.

At the next-door Echo, the grand hotel struggled for years despite good-faith efforts to keep it alive by its latest owners. Concerns over its fate – and possible demolition – were alleviated with news of the Zoho purchase. There was some negative pushback as to what the tech company would do with the hotel site, but Garza says Zoho is mindful of what the hotel building means to Edinburg.

“Zoho does understand that there’s a lot of history with the Echo,” he said. “They are preserving the main tower and any new buildings they add will resemble the tower architecture.”