Boca Chica Village, Texas

Boca Chica Village, formerly Kennedy Shores and later Kopernik Shores, is a small unincorporated community in Cameron County, Texas, United States. It was formed in the late 1960s and is still extant as of 2020, although the village proper has changed greatly since 2018 as industrial business enterprises came to occupy much of the land of the village. It lies 20 miles (32 km) east of the City of Brownsville, Texas on the Boca Chica peninsula and forms part of the Brownsville–Harlingen–Raymondville and the Matamoros–Brownsville metropolitan areas. It is situated on Texas State Highway 4, immediately south of the South Bay lagoon, and is located about two miles (3.2 km) northwest of the mouth of the Rio Grande.

Boca Chica Village
Unincorporated community
Map of Boca Chica Village
Coordinates: 25°59′29″N 97°11′1″W
Country United States
State Texas
County Cameron
Kennedy Shores1967
Kopernik Shores1975
Elevation3 ft (0.9 m)
Population
 (2000)
 • Total26
Time zoneUTC-6 (CST)
 • Summer (DST)UTC-5 (CDT)
BridgesVeterans Bridge, B&M Bridge

In 2014, the village was chosen as the location for the construction of a control facility for the SpaceX South Texas launch site, while the launch site itself was slated to be built just two miles further east, adjacent to Boca Chica State Park on the Gulf coast.[2][3]

History

Early history

The town was founded as Kennedy Shores in 1967 by John Caputa, a Chicagoan property developer, and was initially aimed at working class Polish migrants.[4] Shortly after building a community of about 30 ranch-style houses, the settlement was devastated by Hurricane Beulah later that year, which destroyed the restaurant and public utility systems. Electricity was restored, but many of the homes did not have potable water even decades later.[5]

In 1975, local resident Stanley Piotrowicz was voted in as town mayor, who renamed the village Kopernik Shores after Nicolaus Copernicus, and attempted to have the village recognised as an incorporated community, but this was denied. In 1990 and 2000, the population was 26 people.[4] As of 2008, only six people were permanent residents of the village,[6] and that number was down to four people in two homes by 2017, with an average of approximately 12 seasonal residents.

SpaceX

In 2012, private space exploration company SpaceX named Boca Chica as a possible location for the construction of their future private commercial launch site.

In August 2014, SpaceX announced that they had selected the Boca Chica area as the location for their South Texas spaceport, and that their "control center" would actually be on land in the village property, while the launch complex would be located two miles to the east. Limited construction began that year,[7][8] but more extensive construction activities did not begin until approximately 2018. By May 2018, the site was expected to be used exclusively for launches of the SpaceX second-generation fully-reusable launch vehicle (which was eventually named SpaceX Starship in late 2018), and the launch complex was no longer planned to become a third launch site for Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy.[9]

The launch complex is close enough to the village that—as rocket tests with propellant loads began to be done in 2019—residents were warned to leave their homes during some tests of completed tank structures: "at a minimum, you must exit your home or structure and be outside of any building on your property....to avoid or minimize the risk of injury."[10]

Flight testing of the SpaceX Starship with a newly designed Raptor rocket engine began in 2019 and have continued into 2020. With the village only a couple of miles from the test site, in August 2019, Cameron County officials—following requirements set by the US regulatory authority, the FAA—began to request residents to stand outside their homes during any tests that involve loading of propellant fuel, due to perceived danger from shock-wave induced broken windows in the event of a test anomaly and explosion.[11]

In September 2019, SpaceX extended an offer to buy each of the houses in Boca Chica Village for three times the fair market value along with an offer of VIP invitations to future launch events. The amount of the offer (3x) was said to be "non-negotiable." Homeowners were initially given two weeks for that particular offer to remain valid.[12][13] Some Boca Chica property owners were happy with the offer and made plans to accept, including one South Dakota owner who was happy to receive 3x what she paid for the property in 2012. But other owners were not, noting that they had made substantial improvements to their properties and that the base valuation used by the September process used county tax assessment valuations and did not look at the specifics of each house so could not be a full appraised valuation.[14] The Houston Chronicle reported that the county seems to be taking a broader view of what is best for the "local economy, educational system and quality of living in a region that is one of the poorest in the state."[14] Cameron County Judge Eddie Treviño Jr. specifically mentioned consideration of the "450,000, 500,000 people that make up Cameron County, and the other million that make up the Valley, and also all the residents of Texas ... [even though] it is terrible, personally, for those 10 or 20 remaining residential owners" in Boca Chica Village.[14] The New York Times reported in late September that SpaceX extended the original two-week offer period by three weeks, in order to allow property owners to work with the county appraiser in order to potentially get their assessed valuations adjusted upward based on improvements beyond what the previous appraisal understood.[15] Many residents who accepted purchase offers had moved away by March 2020.[16]

In August 2020, SpaceX indicated it was looking to build a resort in South Texas with the intent to turn "Boca Chica into a '21st century Spaceport'".[17][18]

gollark: Yes, but paying would be harder.
gollark: Politics is just not cool enough. We should make them fight duels or something.
gollark: I don't think nanomachines are that advanced yet.
gollark: * revolutionary activity, not a successful revolution I think
gollark: It's probably just bad dictatorship #12091827817591825. They had some revolutions.

See also

References
  1. "Kopernik Shores Populated Place Profile / Cameron County, Texas Data". TX HomeTownLocator. July 1, 2018. Archived from the original on July 15, 2019. Retrieved July 15, 2019.
  2. Perez-Treviño, Emma (February 19, 2014). "SpaceX continues local land purchases". Valley Morning Star. Retrieved February 19, 2014.
  3. Wasson, Erik (February 9, 2019). "Trump border wall could split SpaceX's Texas launchpad in two". Bloomberg. Archived from the original on March 31, 2019. Retrieved March 31, 2019 – via Los Angeles Times.
  4. Garza, Alicia A. (June 15, 2010). "KOPERNIK SHORES, TX | The Handbook of Texas Online | Texas State Historical Association". TSHA. Retrieved February 6, 2014.
  5. Martinez, Domingo (August 2016). "Countdown to Liftoff". Texas Monthly. Archived from the original on August 22, 2016. Retrieved August 19, 2016.
  6. "Boca Chica Village, formerly Kopernik Shores, Texas". TexasEscapes.com. February 9, 2008. Archived from the original on October 19, 2012. Retrieved February 6, 2014.
  7. Leinfelder, Andrea (January 11, 2018). "Aerospace talent in Texas Lauded". Houston Chronicle. Archived from the original on July 15, 2019. Retrieved July 15, 2019.
  8. Nield, George C. (May 2014). Draft Environmental Impact Statement: SpaceX Texas Launch Site (PDF) (Report). 1. Federal Aviation Administration, Office of Commercial Space Transportation. pp. 3-32–3-34. sources explicitly quoted from the FAA document include reference to Garza 2012b; Garza and Long 2012b; Hildebrand 1950; Garcia 2003
  9. "Block 5 Phone Presser". Gist. May 10, 2018. Archived from the original on August 6, 2018. Retrieved October 14, 2018.
  10. Martinez, Laura B (August 24, 2019). "Residents receive alert on SpaceX testing". The Brownsville Herald. Archived from the original on August 26, 2019. Retrieved August 26, 2019.
  11. Foust, Jeff (August 27, 2019). "SpaceX's Starhopper completes test flight". SpaceNews. Retrieved August 28, 2019. SpaceX’s South Texas site is unusual in that people live within a few kilometers of what the company eventually plans to be an orbital spaceport, in a subdivision called Boca Chica Village that predates the site by decades. Residents of the subdivision reported on social media that they were informed by local law enforcement to stand outside of their homes during the test, in the event an explosion created a shock wave that could break windows.
  12. Masunaga, Samantha (October 1, 2019). "To reach Mars, SpaceX is trying to buy up a tiny Texas community". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on October 6, 2019. Retrieved October 7, 2019.
  13. "SpaceX launch pad transforms tiny Texas neighborhood: "Where the hell do I go now?"". CBS News. September 18, 2019. Archived from the original on September 20, 2019. Retrieved September 19, 2019.
  14. Leinfelder, Andrea (October 9, 2019). "The question in Boca Chica: Do you take Elon Musk's money and run?". Houston Chronicle. Archived from the original on October 9, 2019. Retrieved October 14, 2019.
  15. Chang, Kenneth (September 29, 2019). "SpaceX Unveils Silvery Vision to Mars: 'It's Basically an I.C.B.M. That Lands'". The New York Times. Archived from the original on March 9, 2020. Retrieved March 15, 2020.
  16. "Boca Chica residents take Elon Musk's money, make way for SpaceX launches from Texas". Houston Chronicle. March 18, 2020. Archived from the original on March 20, 2020. Retrieved March 20, 2020.
  17. "SpaceX reveals plans for a Texas spaceport resort in new job ad". TechCrunch. August 10, 2020. Archived from the original on August 11, 2020. Retrieved August 11, 2020.
  18. SpaceX is hiring a Spaceport resort developer for its Texas rocket factory, Teslarati, 11 August 2020.
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