Bexar County Commissioners Court began negotiations with H-E-B this week for a $15 million tax incentive at its proposed facility expansion on the East Side.
The San Antonio-based grocery store shared plans to invest $700 million and create 720 new jobs at an existing supply and logistics campus on Foster Road at San Antonio’s eastern edge.
H-E-B built a 1.6-million-square-foot regional warehouse at the site in 2018 and added another plant in 2024.
The proposed new facilities would include a new bakery, refrigerated warehouse, trailer return center and manufacturing expansion. H-E-B officials said they plan to scale up operations at the site to create a total of 1,232 new full time jobs by 2038.
H-E-B is asking for a tax incentive from Bexar County to help pay for development, including sewer system improvements, and county commissioners moved their incentive process forward unanimously at a meeting Tuesday morning.
Some of the wages H-E-B plans on paying don’t meet county guidelines. The base wage for sanitation workers at the new facility will start at $18.23 an hour, said H-E-B director of public and government affairs, Dya Campos, in an email.
That’s below county guidelines for tax abatements, which call for all employees at a facility to make $20.18 an hour or for 70% of employees to make $21.34 an hour.
On average, Campos said, H-E-B’s wages will meet the county requirements and workers at the facility can make up to $30 an hour. According to H-E-B’s presentation to county commissioners, the average annual salary would be almost $53,000.
Benjamin Scott, an H-E-B vice president, also said the base wage did not include the company’s benefits package.
“We’re extremely proud of our benefits package here, which includes medical, dental, vision, paid time off, incentive pay, 401(k), partner stock plan and employee assistance program, so very robust benefit plans,” Scott told commissioners.
Campos said H-E-B decided not to outsource sanitation worker jobs to give them access to those benefits.
It’s not the first incentive package to be considered for such an exception. Industrial Electric Manufacturing is considering a 500,000-square-foot facility at Brooks. Starting hourly wages there would be $18.27.
Staff at Bexar County’s Economic and Community Development Department, which presented the incentive package to county commissioners, said they couldn’t comment on the decision-making process for those exceptions because negotiations are ongoing.
County commissioners have allowed negotiations for both incentive packages to move forward. They cited H-E-B’s local roots and continued economic and philanthropic investment in San Antonio.
“When we think about economic development and growing business locally, we look, sometimes, past and beyond those that are already doing it right in our backyard,” said Pct. 2 County Commissioner Justin Rodriguez. “We can make investments in companies that are invested in us, and I think this is a prime example of the fact that H-E-B is homegrown and provides plenty of stability and jobs and community enrichment in San Antonio and Bexar County.”
Bexar County Judge Peter Sakai pointed to H-E-B’s response to natural disasters across Texas, including floods around Kerrville last year, and praised the company for investing locally.
Pct. 3 Commissioner Grant Moody brushed off the wage guidelines and said that the benefits offered by H-E-B added value.
“I’m glad that we are also not thinking about these arbitrary guidelines when benefits can far exceed like what base base pay is, and so I think that it definitely deserves the exception,” Moody said. “I’m not even sure there’s a need for these guidelines. We can make independent decisions based on the proposals that are presented to us.”
Bexar County’s Economic Development Department is currently negotiating a 10-year, 85% tax abatement on real and personal property investments H-E-B makes at the site. Staff from that department will return to commissioners to approve that deal, which has an estimated value of just over $15 million.
While approval for the negotiations was unanimous, Pct. 1 Commissioner Rebeca Clay-Flores called for more grocery stores and products for her Southside constituents.
“We just want to continue to advocate for the need for an H-E-B further out in the southern sector of Bexar County,” Clay-Flores said. “There’s so many items that are not in H-E-B stores on the South Side … I’d like to understand that better, and, if we can, meet to talk about the availability of vegan foods and other foods for all of our constituents, regardless of our ZIP codes.”
