Pepsi plant coming to Hidalgo
HIDALGO - McAllen's Pepsi bottling plant will shut its doors in April and move down the road to Hidalgo, bringing 90 jobs with it.
The move will make Pepsi one of the largest private employers in the city and hopefully will help persuade more companies to locate in Hidalgo, said City Manager Joe Vera.
The 54,000-square-foot facility, located on 23rd Street just south of Dodge Arena, is about halfway complete, said Charlie Franco, general manager of Pepsi Bottling Group-Rio Grande Valley.
Pepsi - No. 59 on the Fortune 500 ranking of the nation's largest corporations - has outgrown its 33,000-square-foot building at Ware Road and Business 83 in McAllen, Franco said. Most of the additional space at the new facility will be for storage.
All employees from the McAllen plant will transfer to the new building, Franco said. The company has no immediate plans to hire more people.
"We continue to be very successful in the Valley and grow as the Valley grows," Franco said.
The Pepsi plant had called McAllen home for 10 years and was located in Harlingen for 10 years before that.
Keith Patridge, president and chief executive officer of the McAllen Economic Development Corp., said the move isn't a major loss for his city, since the facility remains in the metro area and employs McAllen residents.
"We learned a long time ago that companies really don't care where the city limit signs are," Patridge said. "They're looking at where they can get the best deal for the company."
The bottling plant distributes Pepsi products throughout the four-county Valley region, Franco said.
As part of the deal, Pepsi will become the soft drink provider at Dodge Arena, which currently sells Coca-Cola products. Franco said Pepsi selected the Hidalgo site because of the available property that is near Expressway 83.
Pepsi had been considering the move for about a year, Vera said.
Hidalgo provided some infrastructure surrounding the site of the plant but didn't provide any other economic incentives for the relocation, he said.
