GREGORY, Texas – You can see Gulf Coast Growth Venture’s petrochemical facility just beyond a fence near their administration building. The construction of this one was just finished last week.

Brandon Maxwell, the company’s public affairs manager, said they make two main products, primarily monoethylene glycol and a product called polyethylene. He explained that monoethylene glycol goes into products like latex paint and that polyethylene is a plastic.

He said San Patricio County was the perfect location for the facility because of its infrastructure and transportation options like the Port of Corpus Christi.

“But the Permian Basin is a key driver for us here, this low-cost source of natural gas is what gets us here in San Pat County,” Maxwell said.

Maxwell said he has spent more than $33 million in San Patricio County with local suppliers, vendors and contractors. He said that during construction they bought over 6,000 construction jobs.

“Now that we are fully operational, we are currently peaking at around 1,100 jobs. This will start to subside over the next two months and we will settle into our normal stay which will be around 600 full-time manufacturing employees,” he said.

Those employees will include 400 full-time Exxon Mobile workers and 200 full-time contractors, and he said half of those employees come from Coastal Bend.

County Judge David Krebs said to keep pace with other workers entering San Patricio County, developers are already planning to build homes in the area.

“They want to build in Sinton, they want to build in Aransas Pass, they want to build in Ingleside, they want to build in Odem and everything and I think they are committing, every five years, to building at least 1,000 houses here in San Patricio County,” Judge Krebs said.