Weslaco’s city leadership in recent years has honed in on a consistent message amid the community’s growth across several key economic sectors.

The days of local residents having to go to McAllen to shop and dine are over, they say.

“We don’t have to leave Weslaco anymore,” said Steven Valdez, the executive director of the Weslaco Economic Development Corporation. “We can stay home.”

A business and commerce identity independent of McAllen were among the factors that convinced Matt Swilling of Glazer’s Beer & Beverages to make the move to Weslaco as the location for the company’s new 255,000-square-foot distribution facility.

“It made too much sense not to be here,” Swilling said of moving Glazer’s Rio Grande Valley operations from McAllen to Weslaco. “The Mid-Valley is the next big retail area of the Rio Grande Valley.”

A middle-of-the-Valley location coupled with access to Expressway 83 and a prime location at Weslaco’s new Mid Valley International Industrial Park were among the key selling points Valdez and the city made to Swilling. Initially, Swilling, a vice president of operations and sales for Glazer, admits looking elsewhere before turning his attention to Weslaco.

“We had to make sure we were in the right place to best serve our customers and suppliers,” Swilling said during a commercial and investment tour organized by the Rio Grande Valley Partnership, which was held in late March at Glazer’s new facility. “We looked at multiple cities and Weslaco turned out to be the perfect match.”

Need For Expansion

Glazer’s is one of the nation’s leading beverage distributors with most of its regional operations being located in Texas, Louisiana and Arkansas.

The closest Glazer’s distribution facilities to the Valley are in San Antonio and Victoria. For many years, the company’s RGV facility was in McAllen after Glazer’s purchased Valley Beverage in 2005. The McAllen Redbud Avenue location near Bicentennial Boulevard and Nolana Avenue became, in Swilling’s description, a landlocked site with no room for expansion as Glazer’s business grew across its South Texas footprint. 

“We ran out of space,” he said of the McAllen location. “We kept adding on and adding on and we were in a position that we couldn’t continue to grow our business from where we were.”

The search for a new location began about five years ago. Weslaco got in the running as did several other Valley cities. Cities courting new businesses the size of Glazer’s will typically offer incentives such as tax credits, rebates and grants to gain the prize of landing a large manufacturing or distribution facility. Weslaco offered its share of such incentives to Glazer’s. Company executives like the ones running Glazer’s also take into account the quality of reception they get from local community leaders along with the necessity of access to major highways.

On both of the latter points, Weslaco scored high with Swilling and Glazer’s as did a new industrial park that offers lots of land and space for expansion as the company’s regional business grows. The EDC’s Valdez called it a game changer when Weslaco announced last year that it had landed Glazer’s relocation from McAllen. City leaders see the new Glazer facility as the spark that will lead to other companies coming to Weslaco’s second industrial park. 

Win For Mid-Valley

“This is a huge capital investment for us,” Swilling said of Glazer’s spending over $30 million to build its new Weslaco facility. 

It’s located on 25 acres of land in the northeastern portion of Weslaco’s international industrial park. Full operations in the new facility began in early April. Glazer’s Weslaco location now serves as its staging point to distribute a wide variety of alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages across the four Valley counties and northward to Brooks and Kenedy counties. 

For Weslaco it means a gain of 200 jobs in its market and a further injection of growth that has seen a surge of residential and retail development in the community over the last five years. The city’s mayor, Adrian Gonzalez, describes Glazer’s relocation to Weslaco as a win for the area beyond his community.

“In the Mid-Valley, if we continue to help each other, we will all grow,” Gonzalez said. “By working together, we will be able to sustain our growth.”