AT BEDC: FAMILIAR HYPE, SIMILAR RESULTS?

By Juan Montoya
True to form, the sunshine boys over at the Brownsville Economic Development Corporation are now saying the groundbreaking at their publicly-subsidized North Brownsville Industrial Park will be a boon to the local economy and provide hundreds of jobs for local residents.
Shades of Titan Tire, haven't we heard this before?
But local businessmen and economic development observers say the hype and smoke and mirrors being held before the citizens of Brownsville may be too good to be true.
"This is like reverse-maquila," said longtime critic and local businessman Mario Villarreal, owner of PESA, a local dealer in machinery to maquilas in northern Tamaulipas. "Why would a company that can pay workers $10 a day come to Brownsville and open a manufacturing plant when it has to pay them more like $10 an hour. It doesn't make sense. Something fishy is going on here."
The hype associated with the new industrial park has been tarnished somewhat when it was found that land offered to potential firms locating at the site have skyrocketed after they were announced available in 2007. BEDC spokespersons said that the prices had increased after the infrastructure was put in place and that those that had secured lots in the pre-development stage paid less because they committed then.
The checkered past of the BEDC and the park are highlighted because the new industrial site has been paid with public money and is located just behind the old Titan Tire plant.
The hype emanating from the BEC is chronic, For example, in September 28, 2004, spokesperson Gilbert Salinas said that five new businesses have committed to open in Brownsville with the potential to create 1,099 new jobs.
Where are they?
As in the case of Titan Tires, GBIC, BEDC's economic development partner, approved a $30 million package for the tire company, of which Titan cashed in about $4.5 million. The trade off was that Titan would create about 700 jobs in the late 1990s.
The company usually employed about 200 workers and shut down last year.
The BEDC did not know (or care, perhaps) that Titan was in the midst of a lengthy labor dispute with labor unions at its Midwest plant and that it was using the Brownsville plant as a pawn in the dispute with the workers.
Then, on Sept. 20, 2010, BEDC announced in the local daily that "CK Technologies would set up shop in a third of the long vacant, million-square-foot Titan Tire building on Paredes Line Road just south of FM 511. The company will spend $18.2 on renovation and equipment and should be operational by spring," Salinas says.'"
"I’d say by mid-January you’ll start seeing some activity out there,” he says. “By May they already have to be cranking parts out.”
In its website, CK Technologies says that operations won't start until the second quarter of 2011.
It also states that the company "offers instrument panels, consoles, sleeper cab trims, engine covers, cowl trays, fan shrouds, splash shields, battery boxes, airflow management systems, grills, bumpers, decorative trims, chassis fairings, and fenders for medium and heavy duty trucks.
The company also provides side fairings and assembly, fender extensions, bumper systems, and school bus instrument panels for buses. It serves original equipment manufacturers. "
However, so far, neighbors in the area, try as they might, cannot discern the "cranking" Salinas prophesied.

This is not like the area does not need the employment any plant will provide. The Brownsville area has consistently ranked as one of the highest in unemployment in the state and country. This is not only a lure to corporations from elsewhere, but also a selling point to economic developers seeking to attract business here.
The projected 121 jobs will pay between $12 and $15 an hour, Salinas says, noting that the company will start hiring and training and begin advertising soon.
This past May 27, 2008 , the anchor company to the new industrial park PIASA, a Monterrey company that sells spices and other seasonings, announced plans to break ground on a $6 million plant in Brownsville.
It purchased land at ther industrial site at between $12,500 to $15,000 an acre then.
Later, when local businesses tried to buy land there, they found that just six months after the 11.38 acres were conveyed to the buyer, the remaining 73.5 acres were appraised at $60,265 to $80,398 an acre.
The local daily reported that the park took two years and $4.2 million to build, paid for through state sales tax revenues funneled through the Greater Brownsville Incentives Corporation and nearly $200,000 in federal money from the 2009 Omnibus Appropriations Bill. Construction entailed building roads and installing utilities at the site, which is divided into 11 lots and located at Paredes Line Road and the newly constructed SH 550 loop.
PIASA, a food-flavoring and spice-processing company based in Monterrey, Mexico, that signed on after the project was announced in 2007 and bought the first two lots. Gilbert Salinas, the spokesman for the BEDC, said the company will create more than 100 jobs.
The PIASA promises have changed (more grandoise) at every reading. Salinas had said in 2008 that the firm plans to invest more than $1 million in a 52,000-square-foot, top-notch manufacturing facility that will create 81 jobs paying a minimum of $15 per hour.
The firm's website states that that it had , in 2003, "started operations in our new production plant in Apodaca, N. L., Mexico." Later, in "2005, we optimized our spices and chile' operations inaugurating another factory in San Luis Potosi."
Villarreal is not convinced that PIASA intends to establish a manufacturing facility at the site it acquired at land-rush bargain prices.
"We'll probably see them establishing a warehouse with maybe five or six people working out of the distribution center," he said. "They made the same promises to McAllen and now that they got the GBIC to get the land at a bargain, I don't see them hiring 100 workers when they can get 10 times as many workers in Matamoros or San Luis, Potosi for the same price. It doesn't make economic sense."