Gonzalez: COSTEP’s revamped website has all the data a site selector could wish for

HARLINGEN, Texas – The Council for South Texas Economic Progress has revamped its website to improve its functionality, CEO Adam Gonzalez has announced.

Under the “Quick Links” tab, visitors to the site can easily find information on a particular property and data on the Rio South Texas region. Gonzalez said Rio South Texas region extends from Laredo and Nuevo Laredo in the west to Brownsville and Matamoros in the east.

“We have created our new website to be outwards facing. We wanted to provide data to site selectors or companies that are looking at our region, that are looking to expand somewhere,” Gonzalez said.

“So, we have a service where we provide all the commercial properties that are available. So you can look for properties. And you can define what part of the region you want to look at. If you want to look at the full region you can.”

Gonzalez said COSTEP’s website also has data for the whole region.

“So, you can look at the region as a whole You can look at some of the region, or you can look at it by county or municipality. The datasets are infinite. Not only do you have demographics, but you have businesses that are in that region. Industries that are in that region. You can create all kinds of reports, in a PDF format that can be used for presentation or an Excel format to create graphs. And all of that is all being provided free through our website.”

Gonzalez said the website also includes videos to promote the region.

“We’ve done virtual tours in certain cities. We haven’t done them all. We have one regional video that covers seven counties and the Mexico side as well. And then we have six that we’ve done with Laredo, Nuevo Laredo, McAllen, Reynosa, Brownsville and Matamoros.”

Gonzalez reiterated that all the data and videos are free to peruse.

“We have a plethora of data that can be used by any entity. If they want to just deal with their community to provide an RFI (request for proposal) to a company that’s coming in, or they just want to use that data, it’s all available to them for free at COSTEP.”

Rick Carrera, economic development director for COSTEP, says his organization’s data is powered by ESRI. “ESRI is the gold standard for demographic data,” Carrera said.

Esri builds ArcGIS, the world’s most powerful GIS software. ESRI Demographics includes demographic data that is available across ArcGIS, providing a comprehensive set of demographic, lifestyle, spending, and business data for mapping and analysis purposes.

“I highly encourage everybody to go to our website because it’s been revamped and is a lot more user-friendly. You’ve got to keep with the times and we’re trying to stay ahead of that,” Carrera said.

“But the functionality has not been lost because those two buttons are still right in front of you if want to find a property or you want to find data. The data can be broken down the census tract, you can pick a location on the map and do a ring analysis on the data. It’s a powerful tool for economic development organizations to use.”

Carrera said he has directed people who were not aware of the datasets. He said they expressed amazement at the depth of information available.

“These were grant writers for some of the state and local entities here. And within a week they were calling me back to say, man, thank you so much. I found all the data I needed to put in my grant proposal. They said, I hope you don’t mind, I told my friends about the data. I said, absolutely not. We want people to use that data. That’s why it’s there.”

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