In Boca Chica, Residents Worry About Rocket Noise and Tourists. Would they be forced to sell their homes? Other Residents moved there to keep tabs on SpaceX, to be part of History.

Neighbors Concerned SpaceX Could Transform South Texas

On a rainy day in February, the Boca Chica area is fogged in. Terry Heaton stands on a raised porch in his backyard. He squints into the light rain. "You can't see it now but we have a beautiful view of Port Isabell. We see deer up here a lot of coyotes.

From article, (“The idea, of some people, that this whole thing should be canceled so they can come down from Minnesota every winter and wreck the opportunity for Brownsville to be on the world map … seems ridiculous to me,” he said.

Goetsch moved from California two years ago to be near the project. He mounted a security camera to a 40 foot pole in his backyard to watch the development of the control site.

Goetsch isn’t worried about an explosion, he said he’s seen estimates that put them outside any serious explosion debris. He doesn’t worry about the company buying up properties — he wished they were doing more of it. But he agrees SpaceX doesn’t talk to people here.

“The general public gets frustrated by that,” said Nick Serafy, the volunteer head of the Cameron County Spaceport Development Corporation. He is one of the few locals that does talk to the company regularly, so he said he gets a lot of calls from people who want to know.

“They are very guarded about the information they release” he said, explaining the company is private and has competition. “I own some private companies and I don’t like to release it , especially if it’s proprietary.”

Serafy said the development corporation doled out more than $2 million of a $13 million dollars in incentives budgeted for SpaceX’s efforts.

He says it’s a good investment because of the 200 jobs that could come from it, and the public-private partnership with the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley that has produced a $1.8 million facility near the command center.

But its tourism that Serafy believes will see the biggest boon.

 More than 100,000 people poured into Brevard County in Florida for the Falcon Heavy launch, according to The Space Coast Office of Tourism. Serafy doesn’t think it will be that big, and even if it were, Brownsville doesn’t have that many hotel rooms.

“No, but they’ll overflow into Harlingen, McAllen. They’ll be a positive tourism impact for the entire Rio Grande valley,” he said.

Harlingen Economic Development Council head Raudel Garza says he sees the impact right now, and that Harlingen is expanding its hotel room stock by a third.

“Two of those hotel developers told me a year ago, when they were talking about bringing their hotels in at this time is they were trying to time it so they could be open by the time SpaceX was launching their vehicles,” he said.

Predicting SpaceX timelines hasn’t proved easy for even the company, who initially said they would be launching Falcon 9 rockets from South Texas two years ago. But Garza said the company will likely transform the area.

Boca Chica Village resident Andrew Goetsche agrees.

"Border patrol might be checking for red cards when Martian immigrants come to visit town," he said.)

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