Valdez tells Indian investors about the strategic advantage of locating in Weslaco

WESLACO, Texas – The Council for South Texas Economic Progress is working on an agreement with Startup Runway, a Frisco-based company that brings manufacturing and tech companies across from India.

COSTEP CEO Adam Gonzalez said his organization will make sure any potential companies are well-vetted. Then, he or his colleague Rick Carrera, the group’s director of economic development, will connect with economic development groups in the region to see if the companies are a good fit for their community.

Recently, COSTEP brought three Indian investors to the Rio Grande Valley, including Jyothsna Kondapuli, executive director of Startup Runway. The investors heard from the larger economic development corporations in Hidalgo and Cameron counties.

One of the Valley groups hoping to land an Indian tech or manufacturing firm is Weslaco Economic Development Corporation. In his pitch to the investors, Weslaco EDC’s executive director, Steve Valdez, stressed the strategic central location of his city in the Valley.

“So, the first thing that we talk about (to prospective clients) is that we’re centrally located in the region. If South Texas is one of your regions, then we like the fact that we’re right in the middle,” Valdez said. He said Weslaco is popular with warehousing, distribution and food processing companies.

“I think our numbers are increasing in the Mid Valley because we’re getting sandwiched in and now being centrally located means a little more because we’re growing as a region all together,” he said.

With a population getting close to 50,000, Weslaco is one of the bigger of the small cities and one of the smaller of the big cities in the Valley, Valdez said. “We consider ourselves a small community but with large community amenities,” he said.

Most of the growth in Weslaco is happening in the north of the city, Valdez told the consultants from India. “Every five miles (in radio) we basically double our population,” he said. He also said Mid Valley International Airport, which is located in Weslaco, just received a $5 million grant to continue expanding.

Valdez said Weslaco EDC has no qualms about openly discussing the incentives it can offer companies looking to locate in the city.

“They (the incentives) are always ROI (return on investment) driven. In other words, how is the city going to get that money back? And the way we determine how we’re going to get that money back is by the increase in property values and the increase in taxes and sales taxes and the creation of jobs,” Valdez said.

“So, when you present a package to our community, we’ll put a value to that. You’ll say that I’m building a 100,000 square foot warehouse and it’s going to cost you $20 million. That number we apply as a percentage of your capital investment. And we’ve been passing, our board has been passing anywhere from at the low end five percent of your total investment, all the way to a high end of up to ten percent.

“So, depending on how aggressive our community wants to attract you will depend on whether we go low or high within that five to seven to ten percent. So, we’re very open about that and how we try to recruit.”

On the residential front, Valdez said that within the last three years, when Weslaco started to track permit numbers, there has been an average of roughly 2,000 permits for single family and multifamily homes. Valdez said that is impressive for a city with a population of less than 50,000.

“To see when you add these numbers up, that there’s a total of 6,770 permits in three years, (that’s impressive),” Valdez said.

Valdez said one of the favorite slides in his power-point presentation is the one featuring new businesses.

“We’ve been able to attract 42 different companies to our community in the last three years. He said five or six of the industrial ones employ 600 people.”

Weslaco EDC has just opened a second industrial park because the first one was full.

“We have 85 companies in the existing park,” Valdez said. “With our second industrial park, we just broke ground, and even on the day that we broke ground we were so fortunate because of our location that we had about 30 percent of it sold.”

He added: “We’re real proud of this industrial park and how it’s seen success just since we’ve opened. We were starting to acquire companies into our industrial park even before we started construction. And so, wewere excited to see construction of buildings at the same time as the construction of the roads and the drainage system.”

Editor’s Note: Here is an audio recording of Steve Valdez’s presentation to the investors from India:

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