Port San Antonio Economic Impact Study

Project Overview

$9 Billion in Annual Output From a Single Campus

Port San Antonio is a 1,900-acre aerospace, defense, manufacturing, and logistics campus located on the site of the former Kelly Air Force Base. Once a military installation, it has been redeveloped into one of the largest aerospace and technology hubs in the southern United States, hosting hundreds of tenants ranging from defense contractors to commercial aerospace firms to logistics operators.

Zenith Economics conducted a comprehensive economic impact analysis of Port San Antonio's operations, finding that on-campus tenants and operations generate approximately $9 billion in annual economic output and support approximately 18,000 direct jobs on campus, with thousands more supported across the broader San Antonio region through supply-chain and household-spending effects.

The study has been cited by the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts in official reporting on Texas port infrastructure.

Methodology

Because Port San Antonio's tenants span multiple industries, the analysis used a multi-regional input-output approach in IMPLAN. Each major tenant category was modeled separately:

• Aerospace and defense. Aircraft maintenance, modification, and overhaul (MRO); defense contracting; cybersecurity.
• Manufacturing. Aerospace components, advanced manufacturing, fabrication.
• Logistics and distribution. Warehouse operations, freight forwarding, fulfillment.
• Innovation and technology. R&D, software, professional services.

For each category, we modeled direct employment and payroll on-campus, indirect supply-chain spending across the San Antonio metro and beyond, and induced household-spending effects. Results were reported at multiple geographic scales, from on-campus to metro to statewide, allowing different stakeholder audiences to see the impact at the level most relevant to them.

Why Multi-Regional Modeling Matters

A single-region IMPLAN model can dramatically understate the impact of a campus like Port San Antonio because it treats all out-of-region purchases as "leakage." A multi-regional input-output model captures the trade and supply-chain relationships between San Antonio and other parts of Texas — and the rest of the country — producing impact figures that reflect economic reality. For a campus that draws workers from across South Texas and procures inputs nationally, this matters enormously.

The full report is available on the Port San Antonio website.

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