Courtesy of the Las Cruces Bulletin, by Richard Coltharp
No matter what business opportunity you have in mind, there’s a way to make it happen in Doña Ana County.
At the Business in the Borderplex luncheon Tuesday, May 1, three speakers gave updates on development and plans at Arrowhead Business and Research Park, the West Mesa Industrial Park and the Santa Teresa Industrial Parks.
Kevin Boberg, CEO of the Arrowhead Center, Christine Logan, economic development administrator for the City of Las Cruces, and Jerry Pacheco, vice president of the Border Industrial Association, illustrated intriguing pictures of possibility. If you have a small, start-up business, particularly one that’s technology related, you could get the ball rolling in one of Arrowhead’s incubator offices, with critical built-in support.
If you have a manufacturing company, there is plenty of room at the West Mesa Industrial Park in Las Cruces. Infrastructure and utilities are already in place. The city also is working on a pre-permitting process to decrease the lag time between a property sale and breaking ground on construction.
If you have a manufacturing or warehousing business, you can take advantage of the exploding Mexican maquiladora (manufacturing facility) industry by locating near the Santa Teresa Port of Entry in the southern part of the county. Foxconn – which, with 1 million employees, may be the biggest company most people have never heard of – has a maquila a mile south of Santa Teresa in Mexico. At that facility, they are cranking out up to 55,000 Dell computers a day.
Since Foxconn moved, Pacheco said, the dollar value of the total goods going through the port has gone from $1 billion a year to $1.2 billion a month. This creates a demand for enterprising businesses to locate near Santa Teresa, selling materials to Foxconn.
Pacheco described a 500-mile long “bucket” south of Santa Teresa along the Pan-American Highway that is straddled by maquiladoras. All are potential customers to businesses that could provide materials, and every inch closer to the maquiladoras shaves shipping costs.
That’s a huge benefit of having your company in Santa Teresa versus Saint Louis. Or even Santa Fe, for that matter. “In cargo,” Pacheco said, “pennies count.”