Business View Civil and Municipal | January 2021

32 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL JANUARY 2021 AT A GLANCE SAN BENITO, TEXAS WHAT: The ‘Resaca City’; population 25,000 WHERE: Rio Grande Valley, south Texas WEBSITE: www.cityofsanbenito.com O n Interstate 69E, five miles south of Harlingen, Texas, and just over 20 miles north of Matamoros- Brownsville, one of the six transborder agglomerations along the Mexico-U.S. border, sits the beautiful City of San Benito. A one-of-a-kind South Texas town, San Benito is best known for its oxbow lakes (resacas) and for being the birthplace of Tex-Mex (conjunto) music. In the spring of 2019, the San Benito City Commission proposed a 10-acre, three- phase commercial development to be named Resaca Village, named after the 80-foot-wide waterway that winds through the calm, but thriving suburb. With the first phase of that multimillion-dollar project now complete, and San Benito’s first resaca-side commercial development open for business, the City is poised to implement two House bills that would allow San Benito the flexibility of using its municipal occupancy funds to incentivize the development of a hotel and convention center, along with a sports facility. San Benito’s City Manager, Manuel De La Rosa, reports, “We were very lucky to garner support from our local State senator, Eddie Lucio Jr., and his son, State Representative Eddie Lucio III. Each one submitted a