Texas City's long-stalled Margaritaville resort community is back on the table, with the city commission signaling it could vote as soon as September on the 1,318-acre active-adult development that a previous mayor once declared dead. Minto Communities, the developer behind the Latitude Margaritaville brand, presented the project to the public at a city commission workshop on August 11, marking the first real public airing of the plan in years.
The project's revival comes after years of gridlock, according to KHOU 11, which reported that Minto first approached Texas City about the development back in 2023. Dutch Neuweiler, Minto's division president of acquisition and development, told the outlet that the company could not get past the city engineer and the former mayor for years, and that Minto only finally met with Texas City department heads two weeks before this month's public workshop.
A Deal That Collapsed Over Branding and Fencing
Negotiations broke down in 2024 under then-Mayor Dedrick Johnson over disagreements that had little to do with money. According to The Real Deal, the sticking points included zoning, perimeter fencing, and what to call the community — Minto wanted to brand it Latitude Margaritaville Galveston Bay, while the city insisted Texas City appear in the official name. Those disputes led Johnson to declare the project dead, per the outlet's reporting at the time.
The fallout didn't end there. In April 2025, legal counsel for Minto Communities sent a cease-and-desist letter to Johnson, demanding he stop making what the developer called misleading statements about the company and the stalled project. Three months later, a recall petition filed against Johnson cited his unilateral decision to halt the Margaritaville project, alongside police department staffing issues, as grounds for removing him from office.
New Mayor, New Access to City Hall
The political landscape shifted in May 2026, when Abel Garza, Jr. was elected the 19th Mayor of Texas City, defeating Johnson with roughly 65% of the vote. Garza had previously served on the city commission and favored open public discussion of the project, and his election appears to have created the clean break Minto needed — the company says it was able to engage directly with municipal department heads for the first time in three years, according to the same KHOU 11 report. Neuweiler noted that before those recent meetings, Minto had not interacted with Texas City's parks and recreation, public works, and utilities officials at all.
What's at Stake for Texas City's Tax Base
The numbers behind the project are substantial. The 1,318-acre site sits on what's known as the Kohfeldt tract, an undeveloped parcel historically tied to oil drilling and bounded by State Highway 3, State Highway 146, Emmett F. Lowry Expressway, and Moses Bayou, according to The Real Deal. Official municipal land records assessed the tract at under $1 million before the development proposal emerged, while full build-out is projected to create over $1 billion in taxable real estate value, per reporting from The Daily News.
Economic projections shared with local officials estimate the project could generate $102.5 million in taxable retail spending at build-out and $1.5 million in annual sales tax revenue for Texas City, according to KGTX 7. For a city whose economy has long leaned on industrial and refinery operations, that kind of tax-base diversification would mark a significant shift.
Part of a Bigger National Push
Texas City isn't the only local government courting the Margaritaville brand. In March 2026, Sutter County, California, approved land-use changes for a 1,100-plus home Latitude Margaritaville neighborhood within its Lakeside at Sutter Pointe development. The active-adult brand now encompasses nearly 20,000 built homes and future lots across Florida and South Carolina, and it received Future Place's Master Plan of the Year award for 2026.
Minto has also been expanding aggressively elsewhere in Texas. The company closed on a 3,170-acre site in Waxahachie in February 2026 to build a 13,270-home master-planned community, one of the largest residential projects planned for the Dallas–Fort Worth region. For Texas City, the open questions now center on finalizing branding, infrastructure cost-sharing, and zoning variances before the commission's expected vote next month.
