Tom Whitehurst

McAllen can teach us a lot

Apparently a lot is being done right at the McAllen Economic Development Corp.
   This month, Southern Business & Development magazine named it the best mid-market economic development corporation in the South and Business Development Outlook magazine named the McAllen EDC Web site (www.medc.org) as the best EDC Web site in Texas.
   The McAllen Monitor quoted the Southern Business & Development publisher calling the McAllen EDC a "job-generating machine."
   How many jobs? For the fiscal year ending today, 3,740, at a minimum of $7.50 an hour, according to the McAllen EDC. Most of those $7.50-and-up jobs were at new call centers, which in Corpus Christi have been welcomed and pooh-poohed in the same breath.
   Good jobs
   McAllen likes those jobs because they offer full benefits, including retirement plans, upward mobility and - perhaps most important to that population - flexible scheduling, said Nancy Boultinghouse, the McAllen EDC marketing director. There are about 14,000 college students in the area, at South Texas Community College and at the University of Texas-Pan American in Edinburg, and many of them need jobs like those with flexible hours, she said.
   McAllen's success in recent years hasn't been all about call centers. The EDC takes credit for helping to locate 168 companies on the U.S. side of the border and 208 in Reynosa since 1988. The job total, on both sides of the border, is nearly 65,000, she said. Many of the company names are recognizable: Black & Decker, Panasonic, Whirlpool, Delphi Automotive.
   The McAllen EDC actively works both sides of the border. McAllen is a city of about 120,000 but its metropolitan statistical area encompasses 570,000 and the Reynosa area in Mexico is about 1 million.
   Low cost of doing business
   The McAllen MSA is the fastest-growing in Texas and fourth in the United States. It has been in the top five for four years. Forbes magazine ranked it the No. 1 lowest-cost city to do business, and Entrepreneur magazine ranked it the fourth-best place to start a business.
   "Figures just don't lie," said Boultinghouse, a Corpus Christi native.
   Another figure to consider is the EDC's staff of 37. It's that large mainly because the EDC manages the city's foreign trade zone for profit. But 14 of those 37 are working full-time on economic development, Boultinghouse said.
   The McAllen EDC receives $1.1 million from the city. The city has a half-cent economic development sales tax but Boultinghouse said that revenue goes to quality-of-life projects, not to the EDC for incentive packages to entice companies.
   And now, for comparison's sake, the Corpus Christi Regional Economic Development Corp. has a staff of five. It receives $755,000 from City Hall, the Port of Corpus Christi and Nueces County. There is no economic development sales tax in Corpus Christi, though a proposal for an eighth-cent tax failed in November by 202 votes out of 79,878.
   'Expensive, competitive world'
   "It's a very expensive, competitive world out there," said Ron Kitchens, president and CEO of the local EDC. "We're one of the Big Eight in the state for population but there are smaller towns with significantly larger EDC staffs and budgets."
   Other numbers that might be considered relevant: The Corpus Christi EDC claims credit for 2,881 new jobs for the fiscal year ended July 31. That number is heavy in oilfield-related metal fabrication on the north side of the bay. It does not include the estimated 400 Singapore Technologies aircraft maintenance jobs announced earlier this month. Nor does it take into account the recently announced loss of 250 high-paying Celanese Chemicals jobs, 100 Hygeia dairy processing jobs and 58 Albertson's jobs.
  
  

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