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Construction cranes are seen in the distance at the edge of the Starbase city limits on Wednesday, November 19, 2025.<\/p>\n
Dina Ar\u00e9valo<\/p>\n
It\u2019s been 16 months since residents along the southernmost stretch of the Texas coast \u2014 most of them\u00a0SpaceX employees \u2014 voted to turn their community into a\u00a0city. Since then, the city of Starbase<\/a> has pursued an aggressive expansion of its city limits, which currently stretch across a narrow ribbon of land along Texas 4 in rural Cameron County<\/a>, in the Rio Grande Valley.<\/p>\n MySA looked at where and how Starbase has grown over the last year.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n How big was the city of\u00a0Starbase at first?<\/p>\n When\u00a0Starbase residents voted on May 3, 2025, to incorporate the community into a city, its limits spanned about 1.5 square miles, primarily surrounding the tiny homes and SpaceX facilities cloistered along Texas Highway 4 near Boca Chica Beach<\/a>.<\/p>\n Not long after the election, however,\u00a0Starbase\u2019s inaugural city commission began implementing\u00a0major changes to the community, including closing off public streets with\u00a0electronically controlled access devices<\/a> and changing zoning and land-use regulations, despite protests from longtime local property owners who showed up en masse at\u00a0a June 2025 public meeting.<\/p>\n When did\u00a0Starbase start expanding?<\/p>\n In late 2025,\u00a0Starbase entered into a habitat conservation agreement with SpaceX for more than 1,000 acres of tidal flats, mangroves, wetlands and rare lomas. The conservation area, known as the Rockhands Mitigation Bank, is considered \u201ccritical habitat for the piping plover,\u201d according to the Starbase city website.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n This map shows the current Starbase city limits and extraterritorial jurisdiction boundaries, as of September 2026. City leaders are expected to approve the annexation of approximately 7,133 acres of additional land by the end of September 2026.<\/p>\n Courtesy City of Starbase<\/p>\n How has\u00a0Starbase continued to expand its city limits?<\/p>\n In late February this year, Starbase announced its intent to annex more than 7,100 additional acres of land, adding more than 11 square miles to its footprint. The city commission was slated to vote on the issue during a special meeting on September 16; however, that meeting was canceled.<\/p>\n Starbase interim City Clerk Keila Tuttle did not respond to MySA\u2019s request for more information about the meeting before it was canceled. However, the city\u2019s website shows that the 7,133-acre annexation is again on the agenda for\u00a0the commission\u2019s September 21 regular meeting<\/a>.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Starbase is also poised to expand by 700 acres through a land-swap deal with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which owns and maintains more than 100,000 acres scattered across myriad separate tracts of land in the Laguna Madre region as part of the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge.<\/p>\n Aside from the few private homes and undeveloped lots that existed prior to\u00a0SpaceX\u2019s development along Highway 4, much of the land surrounding today\u2019s Starbase has long been part of federally or state-owned protected habitat.<\/p>\n Federal wildlife officials say the land swap would help conservation efforts by \u201creducing fragmented ownership.\u201d Essentially, the refuge could create larger, consolidated sections of protected habitat by exchanging 712 acres the federal government currently owns for 692 acres privately owned by SpaceX.<\/p>\n In its draft environmental assessment, the\u00a0USFWS said it has been negotiating with SpaceX on the proposal since 2023. However, the deal remains mired in litigation after the Center for Biological Diversity sued.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n This map shows the current Starbase city limits and extraterritorial jurisdiction boundaries, as of September 2026. City leaders are expected to approve the annexation of approximately 7,133 acres of additional land, shown in blue, by the end of September 2026.<\/p>\n Courtesy City of Starbase<\/p>\n SpaceX pressure on other South Texas cities gives Starbase more land control<\/p>\n During Monday\u2019s city commission meeting, city leaders are also set to decide whether to expand Starbase\u2019s so-called \u201cextraterritorial jurisdiction,\u201d or ETJ, by more than 444 acres. While the proposal won\u2019t change the city\u2019s footprint, it will expand Starbase\u2019s ability to control development near its city limits and designate the area for future annexation.<\/p>\n The acreage, which sits near the\u00a0Brownsville Ship Channel<\/a>, recently drew sharp backlash from residents in the nearby city of Brownsville. That\u2019s because,\u00a0at a rare Saturday meeting of the Brownsville City Commission last month, officials unanimously voted to\u00a0forfeit control of<\/a>\u00a0the 444 acres<\/a> by disannexing it from Brownsville\u2019s ETJ. In exchange, SpaceX \u2014 which said it was close to a purchase agreement for the land \u2014 would provide Brownsville up to $220 million in funding for critical water infrastructure projects.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Brownsville Mayor John Cowen described it as a \u201ctake-it-or-leave-it\u201d ultimatum because SpaceX threatened to withdraw its funding offer if Brownsville delayed the vote beyond the August 29 meeting. A day after the vote, local residents reported heavy machinery at the site.<\/p>\n Finally, during Monday\u2019s meeting, Starbase city leaders will also vote on a measure to annex right-of-way along State Highway 4, the primary artery that runs through the heart of the town and terminates at the sand dunes of Boca Chica Beach<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Construction cranes are seen in the distance at the edge of the Starbase city limits on Wednesday, November…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":441134,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[847,2320,820,82,84,83],"class_list":["post-441133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-antonio","tag-mysanews","tag-mysasotx","tag-mysastaff","tag-san-antonio","tag-san-antonio-headlines","tag-san-antonio-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=441133"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441133\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/441134"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=441133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=441133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=441133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/p>\n
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