By Davin Lopez, President of the Mesilla Valley Economic Development Alliance (MVEDA)
Over the past few years, the topic of creating regional approaches to economic development has garnered renewed interest and attention across the country. The theory in and of itself is not new. Whereby a network of communities come together, becoming more diverse and dense, with shared risks, assets, and resources, they are then able to compete at a higher level to grow business, jobs, and economic prosperity. In most cases, that regional approach simply meant cooperation and collaboration between municipalities and those suburbs which grew around them. In essence they shared a proximity with non-competing jurisdictions.
However, more recently we have begun to see this model mature and expand. In response to increased globalization, new models have emerged which take on an entirely new size and scale, expanding into what are now being referred to as megaregions. In essence, multiple, individual regional strategies, saw the need to come together to formulate joint strategies and coordinate policies. America2050.org lists several of these megaregions, ranging from the Texas Triangle to Southern California to the Great Lakes. There are many more but the common denominator was the need to compete at a higher level for jobs due to the increasing threat of manufacturing leaving the United States. Although mega-sizing is the new trend, very few of these efforts have been able to cross state lines and jurisdictions.
A few years back, a number of private sector leaders from Las Cruces to El Paso to Juarez came together to form one of the first megaregional economic development approaches of its kind, one which has attempted to not only cross state jurisdictions, but international ones as well. This effort became what is now known as the Borderplex Alliance.
I like to think MVEDA was at the forefront of recognizing the need for regional economic development efforts and in influencing the need for such an effort in this area. Many of those individuals involved in forming the Borderplex Alliance were also past board members of MVEDA and were the ones who recognized the need for MVEDA to become a regional organization for Dona Ana County and its communities back in 2001. These same individuals were also at the forefront of helping form the NM Partnership, the private sector regional economic development arm of the state of New Mexico, back in 2003. In addition, from a regional branding perspective, it was MVEDA, with the help of its marketing agency, Wilson Binkley, back in 2002 who coined the term Borderplex as part of a marketing strategy to enhance geographic visibility.
In 2009, when I joined the organization, I too felt we needed greater geographical awareness and we further defined our regional branding by calling ourselves the “NM Borderplex”. By identifying ourselves as the New Mexico side of the Borderplex we simply raised a flag that we were part of something bigger, a Borderplex that incorporated multiple regions. Since this time, “NM Borderplex” has graced MVEDA’s webpages, business cards, and all its marketing collateral. We did this because we strategically had to overcome the disadvantages of being a small community, in comparison to the million plus population communities we were competing against. MVEDA needed to attach ourselves to a larger region in order to attract business and garner attention at a national level.
Promoting regionalism has been at the heart of MVEDA’s marketing efforts ever since. We do not talk about having a 200,000 population base from which to draw workforce. Instead we talk about a million population that includes El Paso. When we talk about higher education and student population, we don’t talk about one university. Instead we talk about multiple universities in our region and close to 150,000 students. When we discuss supply chain and service support with clients, we include in our conversations the support that comes from El Paso and Juarez to as far as Cd. Chihuahua.
Regionalism has been a part of MVEDA’s operating philosophy. We likely adopted this practice well before El Paso and Juarez began doing so simply because we had to. We needed to illustrate to industry that we were larger than what our county lines and census numbers indicated. In this process we also realized the value of strong partnerships and identifying common goals with our colleagues at the New Mexico Economic Development Department, the NM Partnership, the Border Industrial Association, the City of Las Cruces, Dona Ana County, NMSU, DACC, LCPS and many others. This regional approach to economic development has been a critical factor that has defined MVEDA’s success, even during difficult economic times.
