Nope Buna, Probably Not Getting Any Bigger

 And I know a lot of you are happy the Buna area is not going to have a huge growth spurt, but this entire area is losing people. 

Yesterday, the media announced that 68% of all Texans lived in 4 urban areas. 

Houston, Dallas-Ft. Worth, Austin, San Antonio. And of course the suburbs in those regions. 

Now Houston by tradition has grown west and north, but there is some growth to the east into Chambers County. Trouble is, I do not know if it will really grow past the Trinity River. 

Then, it was reported that 2 of the areas that were losing people were Corpus Christi, and the Beaumont-Pt. Arthur-Orange areas. 

And to be honest, other than the petrochemical and to a less extent the industry surrounding the wood/paper manufacturing. And with the closing of the International Paper Mill in Orange County, it is bleak.  

I know the " City Fathers" in Orange County were all jumping up and down with excitement about the new Chevron plant opening here in a couple of years, and the 5000 construction jobs, and 500 jobs to be at Chevron itself, well, with the lay-offs at International Paper and Invista, the area is still behind on jobs. And many of the people coming in to work on construction are only temporary to this area. 

And as I have said, so many of the youth from this area leave and go to Dallas or Austin in search of a better life. This is especially true if they have a 4 year degree from university. ( And don't be telling me you have a degree and stayed, well, so did I. But many go away.)

The economy is not well folks, it just isn't. And whoever is hiding it from us. I know Stellantis ( Dodge, Ram, Jeep, etc.) has laid-off 1/2 of their salaried workers. People are just not buying vehicles right now. ( Will talk about this later.)

No, this area will always be a satellite to Houston, but people moving here? Look, there is a reason why it is called " Bore-Mont." The city fathers tried with Ford Park, but there is rarely anything there, and the re-vitalization of downtown has been tried several times, and it has been a failure. And Beaumont-Pt. Arthur-Orange are becoming less and less safe.

No, unless you are from here, why would you and Gen Z doesn't want refinery jobs, and in a few years, robots and AI is going to take over a lot of the work that people perform now. 

Say what you want, if you are not a long time resident, or your family has been in this area for generations, why would you move here?