Five years ago, Jerry LoCoco was working out of Yuma, looking for ways to bring more opportunities into a market he’d grown up in. Wanting to expand his reach and depth of experience, Jerry made the decision to move his family to Dallas, where he’d have access to a larger city and volume of deals.
Shortly after moving to Dallas, he was in the middle of three large land assemblages. Coming out of the pandemic, interest rates were sitting near historic lows, and land deals that had felt impossible a few years earlier were suddenly penciling out. One of those assemblages was especially complicated: 13 parcels, a mix of different owners with very different needs, from a car sales lot to a home owner with a small chicken farm. Getting all of those pieces to align on price, timing, and terms took real work.
The deal was very close with strong interest from potential users. It was shaping up to be a significant closing. Then interest rates increased and they increased fast!
Land is the last piece that goes into a development deal, so when interest rates climb, the value of that land is usually the first thing to absorb the hit. The company Jerry worked for had properties tied up when rates were still around 3%. So when rates jumped two to two and a half points almost overnight, it became nearly impossible to convince landowners that their land was suddenly worth less than what they’d agreed to a few months earlier. All three assemblages fell through. Jerry recently relocated his family halfway across the country on the promise of more opportunity, and instead he was starting over, with months of effort seemingly lost.
Not long after, another broker in the market brought Jerry in on a new project. The client was Kimberly-Clark, the consumer products company behind brands like Kleenex, Scott, and Huggies, and they needed a rail-served industrial site of at least 100 acres in Yuma, right where Jerry grew up. The broker asked Jerry if he thought he could put together an assemblage. Jerry said yes, he had just come off three of them, and even though they hadn’t closed, he walked away with a hands-on understanding of how to successfully prepare and present an assemblage package.
What could have been written off as a setback turned into the exact experience Jerry needed. He understood how to build an assemblage plan, how to run a blended rate analysis across a group of separately owned parcels, and how to package all of it into something a landowner and a corporate client could both say yes to. Rather than putting together a simple package, he did the work: pulling water and sewer reports, running surveys, and accounting for the infrastructure details that can derail a deal if they’re missed.
This time, the deal came together, full circle, back in the community where he started. Around 20 parcels and 130 acres, assembled for a Kimberly-Clark pilot facility representing an investment of more than $100 million. The 50,000-square-foot facility will extract fiber from hesperaloe, a low-water-use plant native to the region, for potential use in future hygiene products, and is expected to create around 50 full-time jobs when operations begin in 2027.
Construction on the site is well underway. Yuma Mayor Doug Nicholls has said this is just phase one for Kimberly-Clark in the city, noting the company may consider future investment down the road, which means this deal could open the door to even more opportunity for the community.
It’s a reminder that setbacks don’t always close doors, they’re teaching moments, that if taken with the right attitude, will help you open up doors you’re meant to walk through.
