PRESIDIO — At a meeting on April 20, H. Cowan, a contractor for Solitaire Homes, approached the Presidio Municipal Development District (PMDD) Board about obtaining revised deeds to the company’s land in Presidio Industrial Park.
A recent survey of Solitaire’s land in the Industrial Park revealed that the land’s original survey had been inaccurate, bolstering the allegations of now-resigned PMDD leaders that deeds attached to the land contained long-festering errors that needed correcting. Now, Cowan was requesting a revised, accurate deed — one which also reflected the park’s current ownership. Paperwork still lists a defunct organization that hasn’t existed since 2013.
Controversy over the state of the Presidio Industrial Park led to the resignation of two former board leaders months prior. Former Executive Director and Board President Jeran Stephens and Terry Bishop wrote a searing letter about corruption within the city of Presidio, including “potentially illegal real estate transactions” and “incorrect titles and deeds” in the Industrial Park dating back to 2012.
Despite the shakeup in board leadership that now leaves PMDD without an executive director, Cowan was instructed by Presidio City Council to make his case before the development district.
At press time, Cowan hadn’t received the revised deeds he requested.
Nancy Arevalo — a longtime PMDD member who was appointed the new board president at April’s meeting — confirmed that it “appears the property was given to Solitaire,” in line with Stephens’ understanding of the matter.
Arevalo said that she had reached out to the original surveyor of the property but hadn’t yet heard back. Despite the widespread confusion about the history of Solitaire’s chunk of the Industrial Park, she was hoping everything would be settled promptly. “I have no problem signing the new warranty deed for Mr. Cowan,” she wrote in an email to The Presidio International. “But the board wants to do their own homework first.”
Presidio Industrial Park: history and current controversies
The Industrial Park is a 140-acre patch of partially-developed land just west of Presidio on FM170. The land was purchased by the PMDD’s predecessor organization, the Development Corporation of Presidio (DCOP), in 1999 with the goal of attracting businesses — the complex is currently home to Solitaire Homes and the Presidio International Dragstrip.
DCOP was folded over into PMDD by the state Legislature in 2013 after the city failed to fund the organization for the second year in a row. By reincorporating as a development district instead of a development organization, PMDD leadership would receive their tax funds directly from the state instead of waiting for the city to apportion their fair share.
The Industrial Park is still legally owned by DCOP, despite having been defunct since 2013.
Former PMDD Executive Director Jeran Stephens had long had concerns about the legal and financial history of the land. “There’s a few clerical errors, if you will, on the surveys,” she told her board at a meeting in February of 2022.
Stephens also worried that — if the issues of Industrial Park ownership and land transfer weren’t settled — the city could lose the land. “These issues are serious and there is a possibility that the entire Industrial Park ownership will soon revert to the state of Texas,” she wrote in her resignation letter.
About a year later, Stephens’ fears over surveys, at least, were proven right. Solitaire Homes was recently purchased by Cavco Industries, which requested a survey of their new slice of the Industrial Park. Their survey revealed a discrepancy of about an acre from the original survey, requiring rewritten deeds detailing the transfer of the land to Solitaire’s parent company, Elliot Manufactured Homes.
Stephens had hoped to one day turn the Industrial Park into a foreign trade zone (FTZ) to bolster Presidio’s growing international trade. An FTZ helps manufacturers selling goods between countries to skirt import taxes. “Within FTZs, company goods can be unloaded, manufactured, reassembled, tested, sampled, processed, repackaged and re-exported without the intervention of U.S. customs authorities,” explains a pamphlet from the Office of the Governor’s Economic Development and Tourism initiative.
Ringing in at 34, Texas has the most FTZs of any state. Along the U.S.-Mexico border, El Paso, Eagle Pass, Laredo, Starr County, McAllen, Weslaco and Brownsville boast their own — Presidio is a rare exception.
County Judge Joe Portillo has recently taken up the FTZ mantle, with an initiative to create a self-governing port authority in Presidio that would help fund its creation. “I want to leave some money for [the port authority] to look at new projects,” he explained at a commissioners court meeting on March 8.
Those goals are still far-off — for now, city officials are only beginning to untangle the land’s past.
Soltaire’s history with the park
Solitaire was the first company to lease the land and served as a test case for how to draw even more companies to set up shop in Presidio. Cowan — who brought Solitaire to Presidio after scouting the border for a favorable place to set up shop — signed a lease with the city in 2009. Their 17-acre chunk of the Industrial Park was — at that time — undeveloped.
Solitaire’s Presidio operation is an example of the maquilador, or twin-plant concept. The company’s main plant is in Ojinaga — on a plot of land acquired before they set up shop in Presidio. The land in the Presidio Industrial Park is a staging area for materials and finished homes that haven’t yet reached their destinations.
DCOP and Solitaire set up an unconventional leasing agreement: for the first two years, Solitaire would pay $1 while the “tenant develop[ed] the premises into a support site serving the tenant’s Ojinaga, Chihuahua factory.” When the clock struck year three of the leasing agreement, DCOP could charge a monthly rent of $5,000 if Solitaire was unable to provide stable employment to area residents.
The lease stipulates that Solitaire would be able to lease the land for free if they were able to provide 10 full-time jobs to employees in their Presidio office and 150 full-time jobs to employees at their Ojinaga factory.
Cowan said that Stephens had long accused him of getting land for free in a series of “potentially illegal real estate transactions that directly benefited previous board members,” as she spelled out in her resignation letter.
He insists that it was simply a mutually-beneficial business transaction. “The bargaining chip was land,” he told The Presidio International.
Between years two and eight of the leasing agreement, Solitaire could purchase the land outright for a price that would depreciate every year until the value reached $25,000. After year eight of fulfilling their agreement, Solitaire could purchase the land for $1.
Cowan said that those stipulations were a bargain struck between his company and PMDD to protect the company’s investment in the land. “We spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on [improving] the land, and a million dollars or so on buildings,” he said. “We said, ‘Well, let’s mitigate our risk for losing everything should that happen along the way.’”
Stephens was also concerned that Cowan’s leadership on the PMDD Board compromised the ethics of the land deal — he joined just after PMDD was formed by the state Legislature, and resigned just after the deeds were formally transferred to Solitaire.
Cowan said that his resignation from the board had nothing to do with the land deal, and instead with another festering issue in Presidio politics: the establishment of a transmigrante route through town.
The deeds were signed at the end of November 2018. Through 2019 and 2020, the city was consumed by controversy over the possible arrival of transmigrantes — merchants towing used cars, appliances and other goods through Mexico to Central America.
As cartel violence raised safety concerns at Los Indios — formerly the only port authorized for transmigrante traffic — rumors swirled that Mexican officials would be rerouting the program through Ojinaga. The Mexican government officially announced the switch in January 2021.
Throughout the discussion, city officials pitched PMDD land in the Industrial Park as a potential staging area for the transmigrantes. Cowan — anticipating the present-day sprawling lots marked by man-camps and food trucks — was concerned about how transmigrante traffic could clog up the highway he needed to run his business.
Cowan routinely attended city meetings to lambast the idea of designating the lots within the Industrial Park — and ultimately resigned his post in protest. “I resigned from the board because I felt a coming conflict of interest,” he said.
Recently, while awaiting the revised deed, Cowan said he felt that ultimately — despite ongoing investigation into his business’ transactions with the City of Presidio — Solitaire was there to stay. “No one else has ever done anything out there to create employment except for us,” he said.