Courtesy of the Las Cruces Sun-News, by Brook Stockberger
The Mesilla Valley Economic Development Alliance is finding a “nice balance” in the current fiscal year, which runs from July 1 to June 30. A public/private organization, MVEDA is an economic development arm for all of Doña Ana County and works to not only attract companies to the area but also help those already here expand.
Davin Lopez, president and CEO of MVEDA, said the two areas complement one another this year. “The last fiscal year we saw mainly new company interest coming to town,” Lopez said. “This year there has been more of a balance between new announcements but companies expanding as well. It illustrates that perhaps market conditions are changing that are allowing local companies to expand their business,” he said.
He pointed to a variety of companies like Convergys and L&M Radiator in Las Cruces and Mallory Metals in Santa Teresa as examples of expansion. “Southwest Steel Coil (in Santa Teresa), they’re on their second expansion in less than 18 months,” Lopez said.
Ed Camden, president of Southwest Steel Coil Inc., recently told the Albuquerque Journal that company sales to Mexican maquiladoras — border area factories — doubled in 2011 and 2012. This year, he expects sales to Mexico to grow another 35 percent to 40 percent. “We expanded our facility in Santa Teresa by 20,000 square feet last year, and we just broke ground on another 35,000-square-foot expansion that will be finished in October,” Camden said. “By fall, we’ll have expanded from 55,000 square feet to 110,000, doubling our production capacity.”
Lopez said that there are a variety of issues at work when it comes to whether or not a business already located in the county chooses to expand. “It has to do with perceived business challenges of operating here as opposed to another area,” he said. “If they think electricity is too high or if they think that an expansion is just going to be too costly, maybe (there are) permitting issues or timing issues, and because of our proximity to El Paso where there is available real estate and available facilities, we always get those potential discussions: ‘Maybe it’s better for me to do my next expansion phase in El Paso.’ Those do come up on a regular basis.”
UAV
The unmanned aerial vehicle industry is an area of potential growth for the Las Cruces area, Lopez said. “While logistics and border are our near-term opportunities, further on down the line is what we’re doing in aerospace,” he said. “It’s not just what we’re doing at Spaceport America, but it’s the unique environment we have between the spaceport and White Sands Missile Range and the flight test center that are providing us with some very unique levels of airspace to do testing and evaluation.
“We have been working very hard to try and attract the UAV industry,” Lopez said. He said that, through marketing, MVEDA is getting a strong response. “(There are) not less than four companies we’re talking to right now,” Lopez said. “They are small UAV companies that are considering potential office location here to further their testing evaluation.”
He said that MVEDA has targeted the UAV industry. “We primarily do it through site selectors that target certain industries,” he said. “We attend a lot of different trade shows.”
In fact, MVEDA has worked hand-in-hand with the state’s economic arm, the New Mexico Partnership. “We’ve done a pretty good job helping the state marketing group understand opportunities down here so when they plan their calendar of conferences and trade shows they’re going to go to, border logistics as well as aerospace are now on the calendars,” Lopez said. “We can leverage some of those state dollars that are out there to get in front of those industries.”
Recently at an UAV trade show in Las Vegas, Nev., the two groups teamed up. “We were able to work with the New Mexico Partnership (for them) to go to the show for the first time and they were even able to put some dollars to a private, off-site event,” Lopez said. “That’s good for us when the state takes an interest in the industry we’re trying to grow down here.”
Social media
Lopez said that MVEDA will work with other entities to make social media an even better tool for economic development. He said that the group is working with the Greater Las Cruces Chamber of Commerce and other organizations to consolidate efforts. “We realize there are a lot of business service groups out there and maybe projects filter through one or all of us and we may not be collaborating effectively on those projects,” he said.
He said they are working on a project called Business Circles. “(It’ll be) a social media and private social media platform that will allow all of us business service groups to work together and collaborate more effectively on any given project that walks through any of our doors,” he said. “We’ll now be able to provide one-stop assistance to a client that crosses all these different agencies.”
Brook Stockberger may be reached at 575-541-5457; follow him on Twitter @Bstockberger
