HARLINGEN, Texas - The Council for South Texas Economic Progress is exploring the possibility of commissioning a strategic economic plan for the Rio South Texas region.
Whether it goes ahead with the plan depends on buy-in from economic development corporations, governmental bodies, and academia.
Adam Gonzalez, CEO of CoSTEP, announced the idea at a "Friends of COSTEP" event at Texas State Technical College in Harlingen. The event was titled Navigating the Growing Semiconductor Industry, and the keynote speaker was Eugenio Marín, CEO of Fundación México-Estados Unidos para la Ciencia (FUMEC). The event drew economic development leaders from Matamoros, Harlingen, and McAllen.
Gonzalez spoke at the end of the meeting. He said: “COSTEP and its foundation are exploring the possibility of commissioning regional economic… a holistic regional economic plan in the near future. But there's still some work to be done to see if it's something that the region wants. And so, we'll be visiting with EDCs and other government officials as well to see if there's an appetite to create this plan.”
Gonzalez said the economic plan would be data driven. “The plan will let us know, as a region, what we want to be 20, 30, 50 years from now. And, again, we're in the exploratory stages of that.”
Such an economic plan would be expensive and time consuming to produce, Gonzalez acknowledged.
“If the region doesn't want it, well, why do it?”
Gonzalez said he would report back at a later date.
The Rio Grande Guardian interviewed Gonzalez on two topics after the program had ended. One was the possibility of the Rio South Texas region landing a semiconductor manufacturing plant and the other was on the possibility of COSTEP commissioning an economic plan. On the latter, Gonzalez said:
“As I've mentioned to you before in various other interviews, I think we're still lacking a regional strategic plan, a holistic plan, inclusive of government, inclusive of infrastructure, inclusive academia. So that's why I mentioned at the end of the presentation that COSTEP and the COSTEP Foundation is exploring the possibility of commissioning a strategic plan. It will not be a study. We don't need another study. What we need is an actual strategic plan as to where we want to be 20, 30, 50, years from now, and how we can come together as a region and make that happen in the near future.”
The Guardian pointed out, just as Gonzalez had said, that COSTEP would need buy-in from economic development groups in the region.
“Yes, we need EDCs. We need academia. As I mentioned, we need the actual communities to buy into it. And it starts with academia. Academia has to make that shift to say, okay, we're going to start training people for X industries that we're going to pursue. Currently, I think we're pursuing, really, whatever comes our way, and we may be selling ourselves short by being that way. We need to create a handful of industries that we're going to focus at and try to bring them down but create the infrastructure first and the business case to help attract those industries.”
In his closing remarks from the stage, Gonzalez also spoke about COSTEP’s next “Friends of COSTEP” meeting.
“Our next principal COSTEP meeting is going to be in January. We've been in conversations with the Office of the Governor. It (the next meeting) is going to be geared primarily towards RFI (Request for Information) completion. What best practices are for RFI, bringing down some training for our EDOs, providing training for RFI completion. What we're seeing is that we get a lot of RFIs from the state, but we don't see a lot of completion. We don't see a lot of our local EDCs competing for those projects. And sometimes it's because it doesn't fit in one community. But I think that if we fill those RFIs as a region, I think we’ve got a better chance of attracting that. business.”
Gonzalez added: “The efforts of COSTEP is to try to make you know the region a better destination. Not a place to cross (products) but a destination for industry and for business in the near future.”
Editor’s Note: Here is a video recording of the Rio Grande Guardian’s interview with Adam Gonzalez. He speaks in depth about the chances of the Rio South Texas region attracting companies in the semiconductor industry. He also speaks about the need for a strategic economic plan.
