SpaceX’s IPO to mint millionaires in poor Texas border town

A 45-minute drive down a narrow highway separates one of America’s poorest border cities from the heart of Elon Musk’s SpaceX empire.

A lot has changed in Brownsville, Texas, since the private aerospace giant moved in a decade ago, building a bustling spaceport nearby on the Gulf of Mexico shore. Two French restaurants opened in the city’s dusty downtown, catering to the newcomers. The beach long favored as a hangout for low-income families now draws Cybertrucks and space tourists snapping photos of launch towers.

But the new money flowing into Brownsville has created both winners and losers — a dynamic sure to be turbocharged when SpaceX goes public this summer. Many longtime residents can’t afford the new eateries, which sit alongside old shops serving Mexican customers from Matamoros, just across the Rio Grande. Housing prices — still cheap by national standards — are rising fast, even as construction ramps up.

The SpaceX initial public offering, aiming to raise about $75 billion, will mint millionaires among the company’s more than 3,000 local employees. Brownsville civic and business leaders are trying to make that more of a blessing than a curse for their once-sleepy city.

“There was a little bit of a shock to the system, but I think it’s stabilized,” said Mayor John Cowen, a sixth-generation resident of the area. “I think people are, for the most part, very appreciative of them being here, and we’re excited about the growth that we’re seeing.”

He’s particularly hopeful about other industrial projects coming to the area in SpaceX’s wake — something he attributes to the company’s “aura” of innovation and success. In 2023, construction began on a 984-acre liquefied natural gas export terminal near the Port of Brownsville. President Donald Trump this March announced the development of a $300-billion oil refinery at the port, which could bring 500 full-time jobs. There’s even talk of a possible shipbuilding facility to make autonomous vessels for the US Navy.

Such projects would have seemed pipe dreams twenty years ago. “It’s an amazing time for the city of Brownsville to be known as a place for investment, for innovation, for opportunity,” Cowen said. SpaceX did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

Occupying the state’s southernmost tip, Brownsville has seen its share of booms and busts. During the Civil War, a Union ban on cotton from Confederate states prompted growers to ship their cotton to Brownsville, where it was moved across the border, rebranded as Mexican and then sold to the North as well as international clients. The scheme made fortunes for a small merchant class.

A century later, Brownsville became a shopping destination for wealthy Mexicans as that country’s economy liberalized. Traces of the era still linger in faded downtown storefronts and the El Jardin Hotel — once the city’s swankiest establishment, then for years a vacant relic, now converted to affordable housing.

Brownsville’s fortunes turned again in 2014, when SpaceX broke ground on its launch facility at a beachfront site nearby. Beyond the allure of cheap, open land, it seemed an odd fit. The satellite and rocket company, founded by Musk in 2002, was based near Los Angeles International Airport, in a Southern California job market brimming with young engineers and aerospace veterans. Brownsville, in contrast, ranked as the country’s poorest city at the time, with 36% of its residents living below the poverty level.

But Brownsville’s southern location placed it relatively close to the equator, which would give rockets launching eastward an extra energy boost from Earth’s rotation. And the gulf lay to the east, allowing rockets to take off over unpopulated water.

As the company built out its spaceport, its employees slowly moved in. The process accelerated in 2021 when Musk posted a message to his millions of social media followers, urging people interested in joining SpaceX to move to the area.

“Like a light switch — that tweet goes out, and I’m getting calls from Oregon, from Washington state, from Northern California,” said Bob Torres, a lifetime Brownsville resident and real estate broker. “His tweet had that power.”

Some of the new arrivals even snapped up big homes in the countryside that locals previously associated with the drug trade, Torres said — gigantic houses surrounded by dilapidated properties. “Back in the day, when I would see that, that would mean that’s a cartel guy,” said Torres, 67. “Now, that house is a SpaceX-related guy, or woman.”

The newcomers, however, didn’t mingle much with longtime residents. And as the base took shape, becoming the company’s official headquarters in 2024, more of the SpaceX employees started living by the spaceport itself rather than in town. Last May, they even voted to incorporate the land around the facility as its own city, called Starbase. The company also owns a Boeing 737 that it uses to shuttle employees back and forth between Brownsville and California multiple times a week, according to Laura Sparks, an administrator at Sun Valley Aviation, a service provider at the local airport.

As a result, much of the money SpaceX is investing in South Texas isn’t visible in Brownsville itself. Musk in 2021 donated $20 million to the Cameron County school district and $10 million to Brownsville revitalization efforts. But many downtown storefronts, lining the ground floors of hacienda-style buildings, remain empty.

Those in use include stores selling inexpensive clothing and household goods to Mexican shoppers. A blood plasma donation center across from City Hall attracts a steady flow of people who emerge with blue bandages on their forearms. Small groups of buskers carry guitars and accordions from one restaurant to another, playing a song or two and collecting tips.

And yet, a handful of businesses have sprung up to serve SpaceX employees and tourists who come to watch rocket launches. Michael Limas, a financial planner who works with multiple SpaceX clients, started a craft cocktail lounge called Las Ramblas with his brother in 2019. Since then, he’s opened other restaurants downtown, including the French-inspired Le Rêve.

“You get an influx of transplants coming in who have more fluency, maybe a higher expectation of cuisine, and it’s something that we felt there was an opportunity in the market,” said Limas. “From an economic perspective, there’s a unique opportunity with launches that are viewed like micro Super Bowls.”

But not all of the restaurants are in the locals’ price range. And in a city where 94% of residents are Latino, the ethnic and racial diversity of the diners is a giveaway that they’re new, or just visiting. “To go out to a $300 dinner — that just doesn’t happen,” Torres said. “The normal Brownsvillian could not afford to go there.”

Thousands of visitors now pack local hotels to see SpaceX rocket launches. Hȧkon Bortheim and Martina Lupocchino, tourists from Italy, chose to visit Starbase for Hȧkon’s first ever trip to the US in April — even though their visit wasn’t going to overlap with a launch. They wanted to see the facility anyway, despite the fact that SpaceX doesn’t provide public tours or even restrooms for visitors.

“It’s f***ing awesome,” said Bortheim, as he studied a launch tower from the side of an adjacent highway. “Honestly, I don't know what else to do in Brownsville,”

Businesses is also picking up at the Brownsville South Padre Island International Airport. Each SpaceX launch brings a surge in private aircraft traffic, said Sparks, whose company operates fuel pumps and hangar space and is upgrading both to meet demand. Sun Valley has also seen rising enrollment in its flight school, as SpaceX employees take up flying as a hobby.

“Just in the past two years onsite in Brownsville, we’ve noticed a big increase in traffic, mostly due to SpaceX,” Sparks said.

One of the company’s biggest economic impacts, however, has been on the housing market — in ways both good and bad.

Local developers are scrambling to keep up with demand. Joel Loera, who runs an industrial staffing company, began developing residential real estate several years ago and is finishing construction on a subdivision a short drive from Starbase, with another planned across the street. More than 80% of the buyers for his properties have ties to SpaceX or the other new industrial projects popping up in the area, he estimated.

“It was a no-brainer,” Loera said. “It’s exciting for everybody in the community. You get both sides, right? But I think overall, deep down inside, you know that it’s a good thing for the area.”

The flip side Loera referenced is the price. From 2014 to 2025, the median sale price for Cameron County homes more than doubled, rising 125% to $254,000, according to data from Texas A&M University’s Real Estate Research Center. As of last year, 37% of homes that changed hands sold for more than $300,000, up from 8% in 2014. Those prices are a steal for most newcomers but threaten to squeeze out longtime residents whose salaries haven’t kept up.

“Everyone’s rent has gone up — my rent is up by $200 a month,” said Bekah Hinojosa, a local artist and community organizer, who said SpaceX employees are buying up Brownsville’s nicest neighborhoods. “They’re also flipping houses and turning them into Airbnbs.” She is part of a small but active group of local residents and organizations who have been loudly protesting SpaceX’s expansion.

For all of SpaceX’s effect on the area, it’s still possible to live in Brownsville without feeling much of the company’s impact — at least until another rocket roars into space.

At a recent evening baseball game at Veterans Memorial High School, the scene could have been straight out of any small Texas town, with families cheering in the bleachers as the sun set beyond third base. Sitting in a lawn chair down the right-field line, Polo Palacios, a lifelong resident and former public school teacher, said he doesn’t really feel the effects of the additional tourism or new jobs.

“We want the economy to rise up, because Brownsville is one of the poorer towns in the valley,” said Palacios, 77. For him, the biggest change has been Boca Chica Beach, the public beach right next to Starbase. As a kid, he’d often drive out there with his family. But since SpaceX began cutting off public access near its launches, he’s stopped going. He’s never even bothered to see Starbase in person.

“Never been there, bro,” Palacios said. “Hell no.”