A 14-acre tract on the north side of Kaplan has sat empty for decades, despite being ready for development.
Ricky LeBlanc and a business partner bought the property several years ago and proposed building 40 mobile homes there, but city officials rejected the plan.
Nothing happened after that until LeBlanc got a call from the previous owner, longtime city engineer Gene Sellers, about six months ago that changed everything.
“He said, ‘Did you hear anything about SpaceX?’” LeBlanc said. “I didn’t know if it was going to happen. He said, ‘It’s going to happen. There’s no doubt. Look, you’re going to have a hell of an opportunity.’”
Now, with Gov. Jeff Landry expected to announce next week that SpaceX plans to build a multibillion-dollar spaceport in Vermilion Parish, LeBlanc said he has been contacted by multiple builders interested in developing 65 homes on the property.
Once details become public — Gov. Jeff Landry has called — a deal could happen, he said.
Even before an official announcement, the prospect of SpaceX coming to Vermilion Parish is beginning to stir the local real estate market. Earlier this week, two real estate agents announced activity involving buyers connected to the anticipated project.
Vermilion is already the hottest market in Acadiana this year outside of Lafayette Parish thanks to the new construction in the Maurice area. But now that will likely increase significantly, sources indicate, with dozens of speculative buyers expected to join the fray.
“We've been getting a lot of activity on some properties that have been sitting for a little while,” said James Noel Jr. with Sunrise Realty in Abbeville. “When the when the news first broke, there was a few properties going on contract with some speculation with long closing dates. There's a buzz around town for sure.”
Current market in Vermilion
So far this year, 55 more homes have sold in Vermilion Parish than during the same period last year, according to data from Bill Bacque of Market Scope Consulting. New-construction sales have reached 123, approaching the 137 homes sold during all of 2024.
A big reason is the activity in Maurice and its proximity to Lafayette. Now that demand could change, said Jim Keaty, owner of Keaty Real Estate, with the land closer to the SpaceX site being more in demand than land closer to Lafayette.
“I don’t know what the demand is going to be because there’s a lot of land between Abbeville and Kaplan,” he said. “People own a lot of acreage that people could do something with instantly for construction purposes. If you can put an RV park and it’s not in a flood zone, you might get $40,000 an acre. In Maurice, it’s worth $35,000 an acre of the stuff that’s selling.”
Keaty expects temporary housing, including RV parks and worker camps, to be among the first developments to emerge as construction begins. He said the region does not have enough hotel rooms to accommodate what could be as many as 1,000 workers operating around the clock.
Some landowners are getting unsolicited offers for property to put RV parks on, he said.
Keaty said his company is already receiving calls from people looking to buy land.
“It’s going to be like an army of ants,” he said. “Anywhere they can put somebody, I assume, is going to be in high demand.”
The potential demand could also revive residential developments that have been approved but stalled because of weak demand. Noel said he has a 118-lot subdivision in Abbeville that has been ready for construction for about two years.
“It’s kind of been on pause waiting on the market to correct itself,” he said. “This could be a huge market correction, you know what I mean?”
What to expect
What happens next in Vermilion Parish is impossible to predict. But Brownsville offers one possible glimpse of how a massive SpaceX operation can reshape a community — bringing jobs, investment and new residents while also driving up the cost of housing.
Just about everything changed when Elon Musk’s Starbase opened just outside the south Texas city over a decade ago, said Craig Grove, a realtor who has been in that market since before Starbase arrived.
Announced in 2012, the site employed more than 2,000 people by 2023. The population of Brownsville increased by nearly 10,000 between 2010 and 2020, Census data shows.
Prices for real estate, too, have increased significantly.
“They’ve literally changed the landscape economically,” Grove said. “(There are) goods and bads. But a lot of locals have been hurt by it. The cost of housing has doubled. I'd be lying to you if I told you I haven't seen a change in the makeup of our community and who can afford to buy a house.”
It wasn’t until 2018 or 2019, he recalled, when people started moving in and buying houses near Starbase. Yet the biggest surge came in 2021 when Musk took to Twitter to ask his millions of followers to move to Brownsville.
That one tweet, Grove said, flipped the real estate market on its ear.
“Houses that had been sitting for four years sold overnight,” he said. “It was insane. We had people coming from Africa, Panama and far-away cities in the U.S. just buying whatever they could. People were buying sight unseen.”
When rockets are launched at Starbase without any issues, residents hardly notice it, he said. That can change when something goes wrong. Grove recalled one launch several years ago when a SpaceX rocket exploded.
The explosion shook his house, which is 25 miles from the launch site. It was major news, but within hours Musk had made donations of $10 million to downtown Brownsville’s revitalization efforts and $2 million to Brownsville schools, he said.
“Elon did a major PR move,” he said. “It was like he had it queued up. It did create a soft landing for the drama.”