Odessa Mayor Javier Joven and Odessa Chamber of Commerce Economic Development Director Tom Manskey are dreaming big after a recent trip to Louisiana.
Last month Joven and Manskey spent a couple of days south of New Orleans visiting with people at the Plaquemines Port Harbor and Terminal District and businessmen who hope to one day create a direct transportation line between the port and Odessa.
The port, which is located 20 miles south of the Port of New Orleans and adjacent to the Gulf of Mexico, is raising the hopes of businesses who have been struggling with ports that became clogged during the pandemic.
The port, which was created in 1954, offers businesses a chance to send their products to other parts of the country using barges, railroads and interstate highways.
Thanks to the pandemic, there are business groups working to expand the port and hoping to connect with future inland ports.
Two of the principals involved in the project have ties to Odessa and want Odessa to be one of those inland ports, Joven and Manskey said.
“There are two companies that are in talks about putting this whole thing together. They just have to work out their little deal. They’re already here. They’ve already been given the designation to be an inland port and they want to locate in Odessa, Texas,” Joven said.
The businessmen hope to build a rail facility and connect up with existing Union Pacific railways, Joven said.
“They’ll come on the UP line and they’ll come into Dallas. Houston, Dallas. Houston, San Antonio. Corpus, Austin, Dallas. All of them within 400 miles. What does that mean for Odessa? How are far are we from Dallas? Less than 400 miles. How far are we from Austin? Less than 400 miles. San Antonio? Less than 400 miles. Strategically, we’re in the right spot,” Joven said. “We have a UP line and we have a highway system. We’ll be the last stop coming from the Mississippi Coast…We’ll be the furthest west stop on this supply chain. But here’s the even better news, we’ll be the first stop from the west coast to the east.”
The idea is simple, Joven said.
“Get the containers off the rail, put them on a truck, get them in and get them out. That’s it,” Joven said. “It would lower the costs and it would relieve the congestion in the supply line.”
The principals like that Odessa is already familiar with oil, gas and chemicals, Joven said.
“It would be like ‘Oh my God, we can bring in all these costs, get chemicals. They’re already here.’ There’s not a lot of re-education. There’s not a lot of danger to the community. There’s no more than we already are dealing with on a daily basis,” Joven said.
Early days
While the potential size of the port remains unknown, Joven believes a “significant” number of jobs would be created.
Manskey said the project is just in its infancy stage, but he’s interested in the possibilities.
“You know, as far as the development of an inland port, this is new ground for me. But, I’ve seen what they can do for an area. Dallas is very successful,” Manskey said. “I think one of the driving forces behind Dallas was the BNSF railroad. Out here obviously we have UP. One of the first questions I asked was what UP’s temperature is on this thing and one of the railroad consultants said that they have talked to UP and UP sees promise.”
He spoke with Chamber President Renee Earls while on the trip, Manskey said.
“A lot of times we have a project we chase after and a lot of times there’s nothing there. Then there’s times you’re like ‘We’ve got to get on here,’” Manskey said. “When I called Renee from down there, my boss, she said ‘Does this look like a project?’ and I said, ‘Right now it looks like a project to continue following.’”
Manskey noted one of the chamber’s target industries is logistics and distribution.
“It could lead to some companies coming here to tie in with an inland port,”Manskey said.
According to city records, Joven’s trip to Louisiana cost the city roughly $565.
Mexico trip
Joven, Odessa City Secretary Norma Grimaldo and Joven’s wife also recently returned from a trip to Monterrey, Mexico where they met with a consortium of Mexican businessmen.
The trip was arranged with the help of Jose Miguel Lopez, who owns Buyers 2B, an e-connect business, and has ties to the World Boxing Council, Joven said. He met Lopez through friends who are involved in Joven’s church and share a love of boxing.
For the past year, Lopez has been inviting him to visit Monterrey to speak with business owners who he thought could share ideas that might benefit Odessa, Joven said.
While in Monterrey, Joven visited Construcciones Industriales Orbe, WP Construction and toured several police facilities.
Construcciones Industriales Orbe has figured out a way to create electricity using waste products, Joven said.
“You bring in household waste, trash, industrial waste, and medical waste and they burn it and it turns into small particles and then they take it into a separator and separated it and then they push that into generators to create electricity,” Joven said.
Joven told those he met with that because the U.S. government is focusing on alternative energy sources, such as solar and wind, he thought they might have difficulty finding someone willing to build new power generation plants.
The technology intrigues him, however, with the skyrocketing costs of landfills.
“I’m looking for how we can find a way to get rid of our recyclables that we’re collecting. I’ve always said this, I’m not interested in a container that every household has, that people on a fixed income have to pay, whether they’re recycling or not. I’ve never been interested in that since the 90s when I was first on the council and I was first approached by them. And today I’m still not interested,” Joven said.
WP Construction builds government buildings and leases them, Joven said.
If governments spent less money building facilities, they could spend those funds elsewhere, Joven said.
“We need to divest ourselves of trying to be everything to everybody and get back to what we need to be doing,” Joven said. “We have to find a way. What is our future going to be as the needs continue and the wants continue. We’re not going to find that answer here. And so that’s why I met with them.”
Joven said he also met with an attorney who helps find the right job candidates for various positions.
“He is interested in us because he saw what we deal with as far as medical profession and also with our teachers,” Joven said.
According to city records, Joven and Grimaldo’s trip to Mexico cost the city about $2,785.
Upcoming visit
As a result of his visit, Joven said more than a dozen Mexican business people will be visiting Odessa Aug. 26 to visit and share ideas.
Since becoming mayor, Joven said he regularly fields calls from businesses trying to sell things they say will help the city. Many of them are from Mexico.
“They’ve always wanted to do business here due to demographics and this is the first time that they have a mayor that actually speaks the language and so it was floodgates,” Joven said.
Every time he sits down with a group, Joven said he immediately tells them the city has no money, but is willing to listen.
“Ninety-nine percent of the time that somebody proposes something, it’s not within our purview,” Joven said.
He pushed off the trip to Monterrey for a year, Joven said.
“I didn’t want to go because I know the perception is going to be is ‘It’s a junket.’ I’m taking a personal trip,” Joven said.
Ultimately he decided to go when he received an agenda.
“The intent was to learn more about them, to verify they had business interests, to verify who they are was fact. In this environment everybody has something to sell and so you have to trust, but you also have to verify,” Joven said.
He took Grimaldo because she could take notes and keep track of expenses and he paid for his wife to go because “she’s my chaperone and that way there was no hint of inappropriateness.”
Hopefully the Aug. 26 visit will go well, Joven said.
“In these situations, everybody can throw out a lot of plans and dreams. These things are tricky. They’re complicated, a lot of moving parts. A former economic development director once told me, ‘We shoot at everything that flies and we claim anything that falls’ and so it’s just a conversation. They take time to be able to work out, map out and I would say 90% of the time they don’t work out.”
