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On Sept. 15, the New Braunfels Economic Development Corp., or NBEDC, considered a five-year extension for performance deadlines outlined in the Co-Op Marketplace development incentive agreement.
What you need to know
The $4.5 million incentive agreement, approved by City Council in 2024, outlines public improvement requirements that need to be completed by Dec. 31, 2026, according to agenda documents.
Improvements outlined in the agreement include:
A public lawn
Splash pad
Stage
Exhibition space
Restrooms
Pedestrian connections
Jeff Jewell, the city’s director of economic and community development, said no incentives have been paid to the project.
Sponsors of the Co-Op Marketplace project requested the five-year extension due to rising capital and construction costs, tenancy and project redesigns, according to agenda documents.
Developers have excluded national and chain tenants from the project and have also had to redesign the market floor, which required a second pass through permitting. In a letter to the NBEDC, Mike Myers, one of the investors on the project, said the original layout gave up a significant amount of the public market’s ground floor to storage and back-of-house.
“We added a mezzanine, moved the storage upstairs and converted that ground-floor area into leasable, publicly accessible market space,” Myers' letter states.
If the extension is approved, improvements would have to be completed by Dec. 31, 2031, according to agenda documents.
Some background
The 2.46-acre property at 210 S. Castell Ave. became the Producer's Co-Op Feed & Supply in 1945. New owners purchased the site in 2021 and announced plans to rehabilitate the historic buildings into a mixed-use development for 20-30 retail and food vendors, according to agenda documents.
One more thing
The item was for discussion only, but it will be brought back for consideration at a future meeting, Jewell said.
