RIO GRANDE CITY, Texas - Alfonso Ramirez, assistant city manager of Roma, Texas, has explained the importance of his city’s port of entry and a new industrial park currently being built.
“Our port of entry is the biggest asset that we have and we need to take care of it. We know our community was stagnant for some years because some people failed to acknowledge the importance of the port of entry,” Ramirez said.
“Now, not only do our city leaders and county leaders see the importance but also our citizens are starting to see how important it is to take care of the port of entry because international trade is a high value industry.”
Ramirez said there has been a “dramatic” increase in commercial operations at Roma's port of entry, otherwise known as the Roma-Ciudad Miguel Alemán International Bridge.
"You can see there (on the power-point presentation) that we started in 2018 with 891 commercial process, including pickup trucks. Now we have this year, 2023, almost 36,000 commercial crossings with a value of $643 million. This, since 2018, has been two digit growth at our port of entry and we anticipate that we will be growing these operations even further.”
Ramirez said Roma’s economic activity has always been related to trade.
“And now we see the surge in trade from Mexico to the United States. Roma is picking up some of that momentum as well,” he said.
Ramirez made his comments at a recent spoke at a recent Commercialization & Investment Tour” event hosted by the Rio Grande Valley Partnership and held at the South Texas College Starr County Campus in Rio Grande City.
“So, today's presentation is called Realize Roma. We chose that name because that's the name of our comprehensive plan. We already have a comprehensive plan for the future. So we know more or less what the development of our city is going to look like,” Ramirez said, at the start of his presentation.
The audience comprised bankers, realtors and potential investors.
'The City of Roma wants to share with you information about our community profile, a brief history, our location. We want to share with you our economic profile. We want to share with you investment opportunities related to the commercial operations at our port of entry. We want to talk about the industrial park and the secondary examination station at the industrial park that's going to be the anchor of the project. We want to talk about the demand for apartments, hotels, subdivisions, housing units in general. We want to talk about the availability of long term leases of our historical buildings through the Roma Preservation Board.”
As far as transportation is concerned, Ramirez said Roma has good connections to I-2, I-35 and I-69 Central. As well as US Highway 83, which runs through the city. “And we also want to start promoting highway 16 which is an increasing option for people that are traveling up north,” he said.
Ramirez acknowledged that economic activity is growing fast in the state of Texas and the Rio Grande Valley. He said Roma wants a piece of that pie.
“Roma, Texas, refuses to fall behind,” Ramirez said. “The city's mayor, the council administration, and the economic development corporation are identifying investment opportunities within our sphere of influence for two main reasons. One, to become an ally with firms that intend to invest in our community and two, to promote economic and social mobility within our community.”
He then explained his city’s top priorities.
“The focus of our city's leadership is to exploit the competitive advantages offered by our privileged geographic location, the significant role our port of entry plays, and the direct access to abundant natural resources. Also, the green energy projects that fall within our extraterritorial jurisdiction and the high demand for residential development. Those are the areas that we have identified. There is already a need and we anticipate that there will be a growing need in the near future.”
On the topic of energy, Ramirez said there have been some green energy developments around the city of Roma, but not yet inside the city limits.
“But, we are we are preparing ourselves to receive this trend as well. We're looking at clean energy developments popping up in Texas, in South Texas primarily. So we'll be waiting to welcome those as well.”
Ramirez said Roma has the human capital new businesses are looking for.
“It is very similar to what we have in Rio (Grande City) and what we have in Starr County. We have young people, bicultural, bilingual, highly educated and if not educated in college then highly skilled,” Ramirez said.
“We have very highly skilled workers in our community. Roma ISD has been a a great contributor to this and STC as well. It has been providing this economic and social mobility to our community.”
Ramirez made Roma’s new industrial park the highlight of his power-point presentation.
“The Las Americas Roma Logistics & Industrial Park is a multi-million dollar development. It has, in its first phase, 22 lots ranging from 2.5 to 12 acres. The anchor of the industrial park is going to be a secondary examination station. That is an additional $5 million investment. This is already fully funded and under construction.”
Ramirez said the new industrial park is a necessity.
“The city leadership, the EDC and the trade community started to recognize that there was no warehouses in our area. That our port of entry was falling short in terms of capacity. Another thing that was getting in the way of increasing the numbers at the port of entry was the lack of cold inspection facilities,” Ramirez said.
“Those issues are solved by the industrial park. We're going to provide heavy industrial sold lots for industrial developments. We're going to have the secondary examination station offering cold inspections in 12 refrigerated bays. We're going to continue with a unified cargo processing there at the secondary examination station. And we're going to offer in addition to that USDA AMS (agricultural marketing services) inspection for products. That's something very important. There's no other port of entry, no secondary examination station and no centralized examination station that offers USDA AMS inspections. We will be able to offer that in our facility.”
Ramirez continued: “So I said 22 lots ranging in size from 2.5 to 12 acres. The first stage (of the development) is scheduled to receive $1.5 million in federal grants from the USDA Rural Development Fund and from the Economic Development Administration. The second phase, Congressmen (Henry) Cuellar earmarked about a million dollars from the federal budget.”
Ramirez said the secondary examination station should be ready by summer of 2024.
Referencing the industrial park, Ramirez added: “So this is what we want people to talk about. This is what we talk about 24/7 in the City of Roma. And this is the message that we want you guys to take home and explore further. This development is going to skyrocket, the operations, the commercial operations at our port of entry.”
