When I was brought on the board, the board basically told me, look, step up the game. And that is what we are going to do.
We have had a great run of attracting businesses here and now we are looking at what is the next generation of businesses for our city.
So, we are not going to sit on our heels and just look for manufacturing or logistics operations. We are now dealing with exactly what the commissioner said. Road, rail, runway, river and rocket. Five modes of transportation for our city to use to our advantage. And that is exactly what we are going to do.
As we go out recruiting, starting next year, our goal is to be recruiting on the advanced manufacturing side, on the Space side. We have had conversations with our partners at SpaceX already about how we can benefit them. For example, if Elon Musk truly wants to shoot off a rocket every month in about four to five years, which is his goal, he needs to have all his suppliers here, he needs to have all of his pieces and parts in a row so that he can build that rocket a month or two rockets a month so that he can make sure he can shoot one off.
What is important to me about this is, he (Musk) is not going anywhere. He has spent $500 million-plus and continues to spend out there (Boca Chica) to build his Starbase. It is not being built for five or ten years. The man is building something for 50 to 70 years, just like Cape Canaveral with NASA. So, this is here in our back yard. We need to work as closely as we can with him, and not just our organization but all of us as partners with him. Whoever can approach him. And when I say him I mean approach his company and work with them. We need to support them because they will be great partners and they will support us.
So, that is our need, advanced manufacturing, the next generation of jobs for our community. We are really trying to step up our game and get created what we need to get created. Part of that is also to start looking at our educational systems. As a city of 200,000 people we need to have four-year degree slots here. Thankfully we have a business park that we are going to be breaking ground on in the first quarter of next year and in that business park, the front 20 acres are going to be a commerce park. We are going to include professional, Class A, office space. And out of that office space we have already approached university systems to come and teach here, in a four-year degree. What specifically? We are looking for engineering.
The liquefied natural gas operations that are coming here are putting about $30 billion on the ground in the next ten years need engineers. They need them at a four-year level and a six-year level and eventually they will need to have PhD level engineers working on site. We don’t have them here but we can build them, we can educate them and that is going to be the first step in our goal of how we are going to create a four-year opportunity in our city.
I’m not good at looking at slides so I really don’t even know what is up here and what they say. I’m just riffing. But I’m telling you guys what we are going to do. And that is the important part. That you know that we are dedicated to doing this. The board supports us on our actions in creating a business park and a commerce park. More importantly, the city commission also supports us because it is in the best interests of our city. We are not looking for average jobs anymore. We are going to elevate what we do in this city with workforce.
Editor's Note: The above guest column is based on commentary given from the stage by Bret Gardella, executive director and CEO of Greater Brownsville Incentives Corporation, during a recent Rio Grande Valley Partnership investment and commercialization tour. The city commissioner Gardella referred to in his commentary was Tino Villarreal.
