Demand evidence

Corridor, comps, and a documented gap at the node

The case rests on three reads: corridor volume, established down-corridor pricing, and the absence of truck-service activity at the exit itself. The comps support the use type; they do not by themselves validate 563-specific demand.

The gap at the FM 563 interchange

Unlike an interchange with existing truck-stop activity at the exit, iVerify's plaza-gap model finds zero truck stops within a 7.7-mile capture radius of the FM 563 interchange, against a modeled demand of ~20,880 (vehicle-trips/day at six corridor cross-section points) and zero measured supply. This is the node’s own evidence, confirmed against the live model, not an inference from down-corridor comps: it is what makes the pricing-gap thesis below a genuine supply gap rather than a crowded market. Broader non-truck-stop industrial or warehouse activity at the exit is not itemized in this screen - not yet inventoried.

Corridor volume (TxDOT, 2025)

I-10 volume is ample for a parking and services use. Combined junction flow (I-10 + FM 563 + SH 61) is shown separately from the I-10 mainline figure - label it as combined flow, never as one road's AADT. The count does not give the truck share or whether the frontage carries permitted access, both validation items.

The product trades in the Beaumont-Port Arthur core

Industrial space leases actively across the Beaumont-Port Arthur market: roughly $0.55-$9 per square foot a year in Beaumont (about $5 on average) and $7-$10 in Port Arthur. The sharpest signal is on SH-73 itself, where a developer recently built two 7,500-square-foot warehouses and is marketing them to petrochemical-support vendors at $10/sqft, triple-net, top of the band, on the same corridor this site feeds. Secured-yard product trades too: a Beaumont industrial-outdoor-storage property is listed at an 8.41% cap, and a Port Arthur outdoor-storage site carries a 15-year net lease.

Parking at and near the node

With zero existing truck stops inside the 7.7-mile capture radius, the paid, secured, reservable product modeled here has no free first-come alternative sitting at the exit to compete with - a different starting position from an interchange where an existing lot already absorbs overflow. The nearest existing supply of any kind sits on the Houston/Baytown side, west of the node; the two largest branded stops sit well east, toward Beaumont. The node reads as sitting between two clusters, not next door to either.

Distances are straight-line from the 563 AOI center (29.8388445, -94.6959965), computed from iVerify's live truck-stop layer, not driving distance or field-measured; confirm before citing precisely. A TxDOT rest area near Hankamer does not appear in this layer within a 50-mile radius of the node, so it is not listed here rather than estimated.

Willingness-to-pay for secured parking is established at both metro ends (reserved spaces at the Beaumont Petro, $10-$20/24-hr and a gated monthly yard in the Houston metro), and there is no paid or free competing product at the node itself to test against. Whether overnight peak demand reaches this node at all, which is what a paid, secured yard here would need to capture, is the load-bearing validation item, alongside the truck share of the I-10 count and the achievable rate. The corridor establishes the rate band; the rate at this node is still to be confirmed.

Carrier demand near the node

The iVerify screen finds about 484 active carriers within ~30 miles, roughly 2,193 power units and 1,812 trailers. Trailers that have to sit somewhere are parking demand. It is a representative sample, not a full demand verification.

Comparable pricing

The priced inventory clusters in the Beaumont-Port Arthur core, ~31-35 miles east of this interchange - the pricing gap the thesis rests on. Comps support the use type, not 563-specific demand. iVerify Report 69.

Down-corridor occupancy

Occupancy down-corridor is strong. The two largest stops toward Beaumont, ~31-35 mi ENE of this node, both read Usually Full on Trucker Path: Love’s Travel Stop #696 (I-10 Exit 843 / Smith Rd, Beaumont, 115 truck spaces) and Petro Beaumont #304 (I-10 Exit 848 / Walden Rd, 275 spaces). Love’s #696 logs Lot is full across weekday evenings (consecutive 8:25-9:43 PM checks) and again overnight (3:25-3:55 AM), easing to Many spots midday. The corridor’s established stops fill, on both ends - the nearest supply of any kind, a Baytown-area cluster, sits ~14-20 mi west. What that does not settle is the FM 563 node itself: whether a new secured, paid yard here captures enough of that demand to fill at the modeled rate remains the validation item - though the zero-stops finding at the node is a stronger starting signal than an already-served interchange would give.

Corridor stop network

103 truck stops within 100 miles in the iVerify database; zero within the 7.7-mile capture radius used by the plaza-gap model above. Distances straight-line from the iVerify truck-stop layer. A TxDOT rest area near Hankamer does not appear in this layer and is not listed rather than estimated. Listing-level (Allstays, TruckMap, Love’s locator), not field-verified: whether they allow long-term trailer storage, their exact counts, and how full they run are open. iVerify Report 69.

An existing freight node

The corridor feeds a heavy industrial region. Within the wider Beaumont-Port Arthur area sit Motiva’s Port Arthur refinery (~720,000 bbl/day), ExxonMobil’s Beaumont refinery (~2,700 ac, ~2,000 staff plus ~3,000 contractors), and two LNG megaprojects under construction, Port Arthur LNG (~6,000 construction jobs at peak; Phase 2 added 2025; work into 2030-31) and Golden Pass LNG (6,000+ at peak; Train 1 shipped first cargo April 2026, Trains 2-3 ramping into 2027). That buildout drives sustained heavy-truck movement, contractor fleets, and laydown/staging demand along this corridor. A separate TxDOT need assessment (iVerify Report 69) flags the nearest documented truck-parking need segment as FM 1405 / SH 73 in Chambers County, 6.1 miles away, tier "blue" (secondary need) - I-10 east approach, petrochemical (Cedar Bayou/Mont Belvieu) traffic, near existing public SRAs.

On supply, TxDOT’s 2024 Southeast Texas Truck Parking Action Plan covers this district, where only ~80 of roughly 7,200 regional truck spaces are public, and the department is deploying an I-10 truck-parking availability system. That is a documented corridor constraint, not a measured shortage at this node specifically beyond the zero-stops plaza-gap finding above; the backdrop is real and large, and points the use toward secured staging more than a generic fuel stop.

Refinery figures: Motiva, ExxonMobil disclosures. LNG schedules: Sempra Port Arthur LNG, Golden Pass LNG. Parking supply: TxDOT 2024 SE Texas Truck Parking Action Plan, FHWA Jason’s Law survey. TxDOT need assessment, plaza-gap model, carrier layer: iVerify Report 69.

Development thesis

A freight corridor with a documented gap

The FM 563 interchange sits on I-10 in Chambers County, Texas, on the route into the Port Arthur and Beaumont refinery and LNG corridor. Unlike an interchange with existing truck-stop activity at the exit, the plaza-gap model finds zero truck stops within 7.7 miles of FM 563 - a documented absence of supply, not an inference. It has a six-parcel, multi-owner land position available near the interchange.

The thesis is a pricing gap. Industrial demand and pricing are established in the Beaumont-Port Arthur core, roughly 31-35 miles east of this node (the distance to the two largest branded truck stops there, Love's #696 and Petro #304, now confirmed against the live truck-stop layer), where the priced inventory clusters (see Demand Evidence); land at the FM 563 node carries a lower cost by comparison. The FM 563 site is the lower-cost staging, parking, and laydown point feeding that market, with a second, closer cluster of existing truck-stop supply on the Houston/Baytown side, ~14-20 miles west - the node sits between the two, not adjacent to either. That is why the node itself still has to be confirmed, even with the corridor comps in hand.

See the parcel map under The Winnie 563 Tracts.

The Winnie 563 tracts

I-10 & FM 563: the parcel position

The FM 563 interchange sits on I-10 in Chambers County, Texas. The plaza-gap model finds zero truck stops within 7.7 miles of the interchange - a genuine gap, not an already-served node: the corridor thesis here rests on absence of supply, not on an established interchange the way the corridor's other candidate nodes read. Broader non-truck-stop industrial or warehouse tenancy at the exit is not itemized in this screen - not yet inventoried.

A six-parcel, multi-owner assembly totaling about 106.6 acres straddles I-10 at the FM 563 interchange, all six tracts within 0.1-0.4 miles of the interchange itself. These are candidate land-control targets from the parcel screen, not a selected or listed site; owner willingness, price, access, and per-parcel diligence are open.

Assessed values are appraisal-district ROM, not market or list prices. All six parcels read clean on the mapped flood screen (no floodway, no AE/AH); two of six (58270, 58272) carry material hydric soil - a screening signal, not a clearance. Site the yard on the three clean-soil parcels (58271, 3090, 428) and treat the hydric two as the acreage to hold back. Per-parcel flood line and soil borings remain diligence items.

Two development areas, not one tract

The assembly holds room for both the base case and its expansion. The base-case footprint (the ~10-acre secured yard plus ~5 acres of out parcels) is best placed on the clean-soil parcels (58271, 3090, 428), holding the two hydric tracts (58270, 58272) back from the yard floor. The balance of the ~106.6 acres is big enough to test a higher-value logistics use (a transfer or cross-dock facility, a fleet terminal, or a build-to-suit), but only if access, drainage, utilities, soils, and tenant demand validate. That is a conditional development path; it sits outside the base case, the fuel-and-entrance-fee operation priced under Deal economics.

Beyond the base-case yard, the scale of the assembly is what makes the added uses worth naming: with room around the yard, complementary development (a restaurant, a motel, or a fuel-and-service travel-plaza format) builds the kind of mass that turns a parking node into a destination rather than an overflow lot, which lifts the traffic capture the base case rests on - and with zero existing truck stops within 7.7 miles, the node reads as a near-fit for a full truck-plaza use in its own right. These are expansion options, each conditional on demand, access, utilities, and diligence, and each sits outside the base case in Deal economics; the point is that the land can carry them, not that the screen has chosen one.

On I-10 the corridor sits between the Houston-area industrial cluster to the west and the Beaumont-Port Arthur refinery-and-LNG core to the east. Whether that intercept position (cheaper land, off the congestion) can hold trailers, equipment, and contractors staging into either market is a thesis the screen raises, not one it settles.

Utilities

Service reaches this stretch of the corridor - there is existing development at and around the interchange - so the utility question is which providers serve it and at what capacity, not whether service exists. Water, wastewater, and storm drainage for East Chambers County, which includes this node, are handled by the Trinity Bay Conservation District, a public district operating surface-water treatment plants at Winnie and Anahuac. Electric service in this part of Southeast Texas falls in Entergy Texas territory (the former Gulf States Utilities service area); the exact service-territory line and available capacity at this parcel are a diligence item, not yet pulled from the PUCT map. Natural-gas availability at the site is not yet confirmed. None of this substitutes for a utility-capacity and service-commitment check on the chosen parcel, which remains an open validation item - what is settled is that this is a served corridor, not a greenfield with no infrastructure nearby.

Parcel and corridor data: iVerify Report 69 (Winnie 563 / FM 563 interchange study area). Candidate land-control, not a listing.

Land & tracts

The parcels behind the node

The candidate land position is the six-parcel, multi-owner assembly at the FM 563 interchange, detailed under The Winnie 563 Tracts (106.62 acres total). The base case wants ~5-20 acres with a clean truck route inside that assembly; the balance is far upside behind access and flood gating.

See the parcel map under The Winnie 563 Tracts.

For illustration

Example parcel

The example is a ~15-acre position at I-10 & FM 563: a ~10-acre secured yard (150-stall layout, priced as the fuel-and-entrance-fee operation in modular scenario 49) plus ~5 acres of out parcels held unimproved, carved from the six-parcel, multi-owner assembly detailed under The Winnie 563 Tracts. Land is carried at $30,000/acre, the proposed asking price (purchase price to be negotiated). Appraisal-district figures are lower and are not the basis. The carve is a planning illustration used to drive a layout and the numbers, not a parcel NSG controls, has optioned, or has surveyed; owner willingness, price, access, and the exact carve are open. The right footprint is the one whose truck route, perimeter, and per-parcel flood line survive diligence.

Phase 2 · site control + diligence

Control, then diligence

After the market screen survives and a preferred parcel and ownership path are identified, validation spending follows an acceptable option / PSA path. Once the site can be tied up, this budget buys the evidence needed before construction equity is exposed.

Appendix

Where the operating assumptions come from

Every figure in the calculator and proforma traces to one of the rows below - a source where one exists, and a plainly labeled planning choice where one does not.

Fixed basis behind all of it: $2,473,000 total development cost and $1,608,000 debt, from idevelop scenario 49 - see Deal Economics on the pitch page.

Backup Documents

Backup, on request

iVerify Report

Open the full iVerify Report 69

The live screening report behind this page, parcel, flood, soils, elevation, traffic, and corridor-demand layers with interactive maps.

Contact

Michael Hoffman

North Star Group, Inc.
Fairhope, Alabama
701-770-9118
michaelh@nsgia.com
www.nsgia.com

Send a message →

This is a pre-validation screening package.