Civic leaders on economic development: Can they cooperate long enough to collaborate?

November 9, 2007
By Bill Sontag
Feature Writer

If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem.
– 1960s protest button catch-phrase

I believe government’s responsibility in economic development is infrastructure,” declared Val Verde County Commissioner Beau Nettleton, in a LIVE! interview, Wednesday (Oct. 17). “If you don’t build it before you need it, business is not going to show up and just wait for you to build it.”

Nettleton’s conventional wisdom is a stretch of common sense to others who want proof of demand before building an inventory of supply. Transportation and the movement of goods, services, products and tourists are priorities for both Nettleton and Sid Cauthorn, president and CEO, The Bank & Trust. While the two men don’t agree on all aspects of transportation infrastructure, most business and government leaders concur that dramatic improvements to city streets, highways, and bridges are fundamental to growth.

“We absolutely are going to need a second international bridge,” asserted Nettleton, recalling the fate of a former mayor of Del Rio who dared to build the current bridge connecting Ciudad Acuña and Del Rio. “The protests about building that were so loud that Roger Cerny was recalled from office when he started work on it,” said Nettleton. Nettleton said he rarely uses the international bridge to go to Mexico, citing long lines of returning traffic as one reason he declines.

Cauthorn has no qualms about personal safety or long lines, and says he “crosses” frequently to take family and guests to dinner or shopping in Acuña. But Cauthorn is less sanguine about the need for a second bridge, often suggested as a crossing over the Rio Grande north of the two cities, and south of the Amistad Dam.

“Before we spend a lot of money on a second international bridge, we need to be sure we have the demand for it. But it’s wise to be planning for it, and moving it along, to be ready. There’s a 10-year time lag just to get the necessary presidential permits from both countries,” Cauthorn said, Friday (Oct. 19), referring to treaty mandates that preclude either nation from bridge-building until both sides accept terms and conditions. “Anyway, my understanding now is that the traffic volumes [on the existing international bridge] have actually declined.”

Practically and philosophically, Del Rio Mayor Efrain Valdez agrees with Nettleton’s premise of government priorities on infrastructure. Regarding recent conversations Valdez held with U.S. Rep. Ciro D. Rodriguez (D-Texas 23rd District) during the congressman’s recent trips to Del Rio, Valdez said, Tuesday (Oct. 16), “We want them [congressional representatives] to think about infrastructure needs all over the country. We know there are problems like this everywhere.

“We all need grants that we can apply for. The problem we’re having right now is that a lot of companies come here and see our streets, and we’re just not presentable. How can you sell your showcase if your showcase is terrible?” queried Valdez.

But, in the spirit of the city’s three-year effort to develop a Comprehensive Master Plan, Del Rio’s “showcase” is more than what visitors see during first-time exposure to the city. What business and civic leaders envision in Del Rio’s future – by 2025 – may provide insight that creates a “guide and conscience” for planners, collaborators and investors, addressing short- and long-range solutions to municipal development issues.

Bret Keast, vice president, Kendig-Keast Collaborative, Sugar Land, Texas, calls the plan the city’s “blueprint for the future,” and, according to Assistant City Manager Monique Vernon, the thick document finally comes up for adoption by Del Rio City Council, Tuesday (Nov. 13). The Comprehensive Master Plan includes a “Community Snapshot” chapter describing the city’s demographics, history of military presence, development of Lake Amistad, education and employment, followed by a “Land Use” chapter on protection of Laughlin Air Force Base, future growth management, neighborhood character, downtown enhancement and reinvigoration, and environmental sustainability.

Parks and recreation issues are sufficiently important to warrant a separate chapter, as are transportation issues, growth capacity of the region, and economic development. The final chapter, “Implementation,” Keast has told the citizen volunteers who guided the plan’s development, is arguably the most critical, rendering the plan useless if not aggressively put to use with implementation tools.

Marketing the plan to all constituents is on the mind of City of Del Rio Economic Development Specialist Jackie Robinson. She has already put the Comprehensive Master Plan online at the city’s Web site, www.cityofdelrio.com. In addition, Robinson plans to introduce the plan with copies at the Del Rio Chamber of Commerce and businesses (on request), along with presentations to civic clubs such as Lions and Rotary, and business organizations such as Area Development Foundation and Go Del Rio! Robinson said CD-ROM copies will be available, and copies will soon be available in the reference section of the Val Verde County Library.

“I also want to boil it down into something we might call ‘Vision Del Rio,’ or something like that,” Robinson said Thursday (Oct. 25). “It will give businesses we’re talking to about coming here a glimpse of the city and where we’re going, and serve us as a marketing tool.” Robinson will also offer workshops on the plan, in particular to members of Del Rio City Council and key city staff members.

Keast told attendees at a public hearing and special city council meeting, Jan. 11, that the city should consider new ordinances to more closely guide the city’s growth, consistent with recommendations of the master plan. Keast said the loop or “relief route” soon to be constructed around the city’s north and east quadrant, connecting U.S. Highway 90 East with U.S. Highway 90 West, will bring commerce and residential development along the right-of-way. “Build it, and they will come,” Keast admonished, suggesting annexation and close governance with new ordinances to meet the special needs impinged by such a transportation corridor.

Nearing final adoption of the document, several years in the making, Keast stresses that there’s more to be done for Del Rio, and further planning is critical. Del Rio City Planner Janice Pokrant is already on it, working steadily on an ordinance plan that will not only catch the city up on its outdated ordinances, but identify new ordinances needed to move ahead with orderly growth.

Keast believes the Parks & Recreation chapter of the Comprehensive Master Plan is a good start, calling attention to the city’s needs for leisure time open space for many activity levels and new neighborhoods. But early in the planning process, Keast said the city will need a thorough plan dedicated exclusively to parklands.

“The TP&WD [Texas Parks & Wildlife Department] grants offer up to three quarters of a million dollars to communities that compete favorably for the funding, and the state has just increased the funding available ten-fold. It’s on a point system, and if you have a parks and recreation plan, it’s an automatic 35 points in your favor. And if you don’t, you’re doomed. It’s just so critical, particularly in light of the budget situation, for the city to leverage itself into state funding opportunities like this.” Vernon affirmed, Thursday (Oct. 25), that once the overall plan is adopted, city staff will propose that a complete parks and recreation development plan be approved and launched.

But the city’s Comprehensive Master Plan may be yet another illustration of a nearly historic breakdown in effective communications between city representatives, staff, and Val Verde County officials. Nettleton said, “The county had no part in the [development of the] citywide comprehensive master plan.” He does not disagree that the city should prepare an annexation plan, as suggested by Keast, but warned of significant statutory limitations of implementation. “If they started today, it will take four years before then can even start to annex. They can’t annex one, single acre out there unless it’s voluntary [on the part of each landowner involved].”

Transportation is – and has been – one of Nettleton’s passions and challenges, heavily involved as he is in planning and authorizations for “pass through financing” for the relief route circumventing an increasingly choked inner-city U.S. Highway 90 corridor. The city’s master plan calls it a “much needed connection … without directing traffic through the City, adding to unnecessary congestion.”

In 2005, Nettleton ushered a contract proposal with Pate Transportation Partners, LP, Houston, through Val Verde County Commissioners Court to secure “pass through financing” approval from the Texas Highway Commission, allowing up-front investments here to be paid off by the state as axle counts on the new road accumulate. Pate Transportation Partners are also contracted to oversee the entire project, from preliminary site planning to turn-key completion. The financing was given preliminary nods of approval until toll roads of every kind ran into political buzz saws with the last legislature.

Gerry Pate, managing partner, Pate Transportation Partners, told LIVE! Saturday (Oct. 20), “We’ve been in sort of a hiatus, because TxDOT had to stop negotiations during the legislative session, but we’re back on track, and now we’re within days of signing the final pass through agreement between the state and Val Verde County, probably within a couple of weeks.”

Pate believes construction contracts will be awarded for building the two-lane loop in late summer, 2008. “Once it’s awarded, everything will get underway within 30 days. Dirt will be flying out there in the fall,” Pate said. “We think that’s what we can do now, but we’ll know right after the first of the year to project a realistic schedule.” Pate estimated that the loop would be a drivable route for travelers by spring or early summer, 2011. “It’s a two-and-a-half-year project.”

The funding plan was approved by the highway commissioners, February 28, 2007, for $75 million in pass-through financing. Total costs for the project are expected to reach or exceed $102 million, with TxDOT chipping in $53 million toward that amount. “We all know the loop is going to get built,” said Nettleton. “Do we want development out there with water wells and septic tanks, or do we want to do it right with public utilities? Now is the time to get that infrastructure done.

“And the second question is, how do we get the roads from the city out to the loop? To begin with, the loop will be a rural, two-lane road, but we’ve got to talk about what it will become, and the city should be working hand-in-hand with the county to make sure the infrastructure is in place to do these things,” Nettleton declared.

Nettleton believes transportation investments in Mexico are further substantiation for attentiveness here to roads and bridges. “An important indicator of potential growth in this area is the amount of money Mexico is putting into their infrastructure,” Nettleton said, explaining that transportation of goods is expected to become an even more important segment of that nation’s economy.

“They need to create a million jobs a year to keep their economy going,” Nettleton said. “To produce goods at that level, they’ve got to be exported to the United States and Canada … to Texas, basically.” Nettleton sees this demand as the primary rationale here for the Ports-To-Plains Corridor, a 1,100-mile transportation route under development from Laredo to Denver. “Why shouldn’t we attract those Mexican shipments to come here, instead of taking them to Laredo and sending them up the I-35 corridor?” Nettleton queried.

The Mexican border states have contracted a study of commercial transportation and egress to the United States, according to Nettleton and Cauthorn, recognizing that Chinese imports have largely clogged American ports on the Pacific side of this country. “And the Mexicans also understand that the port-of-entry at Laredo is already overwhelmed, too,” said Cauthorn.

According to Nettleton and Cauthorn, Mexican planners hope to lure shipments from Pacific Rim countries to be eased through their ports at Topolobampo, Sinaloa, on the Gulf of California, Lazaro Cárdenas, Baja California, and Mazatlán, Sinaloa, on the Pacific Coast, followed by shipment via rail and truck to United States ports-of-entry, with Del Rio in particular focus.

Geography presents the biggest tests to the scheme, specifically imposed in crossing the enormous Barranca del Cobre (Copper Canyon) in southwestern Chihuahua and grade challenges on routes over the Sierra Madre Occidental (the Continental Divide). Nettleton, Cauthorn and others interested in the plan are meeting with the Mexican engineers examining the border-crossing possibilities to advance the idea of connecting with the Ports-To-Plains Corridor here.

Potentials for economic development notwithstanding, bankers, business owners, civic leaders and politicians tout the evidence of growth all around us now. “Del Rio is growing. I mean we are really growing,” said Robinson, Wednesday (Oct. 11). “We’ve seen growth in [Department of] Homeland Security jobs, for example, and those have spurred housing and retail sales. Also, the new personnel who have moved to Laughlin for that new [“Introduction to Fighter Fundamentals”] mission, and I feel the maquilas are strengthening, too.”

Linda Henderson, general manager, Del Rio Chamber of Commerce agrees that Homeland Security transfers – specifically U.S. Border Patrol agents – provide a steady stream of infusion into Del Rio’s economy. “We’re seeing 15 to 30 of these guys and girls coming in here with each class, and one or two classes a month. They go off to training [Artesia, N.M.], but they come back to this Border Patrol sector, and that affects Del Rio,” said Henderson, Tuesday (Oct. 16).

According to Vernon, the federal influence includes more agents for the alphabet soup of the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and the U.S. Marshals. “Since 2005, when we had only three federal probation officers, 20 more have been moved here,” said Vernon.

New “starts” in the housing industry here are promising, too, said Henderson. “We hear there are about 300 new homes being built each year now, and in spite of all the new apartments going up, people are still having a hard time finding something to rent.” Henderson has strong feelings about other new business needed here. “I think we’re going to get more industry – clean industry, like technical support call centers. And Del Rio needs an assisted living home very badly. It would be full before it opens!” Henderson also hopes to see a drugstore added to the retail mix here. “Something like a Walgreens,” she said.

Getting a handle on actual growth of population is dicey, but many business people see investments in new business as evidence that corporate “homework” shows potential based on solid business plans. While Dunlap’s department store closed recently, the loss seems to have set the stage for a round robin of expansions and new business. According to Vernon, Falles Paredes is moving from its location on Veterans Boulevard into the Dunlap’s building, and Belle Furniture is moving from Plaza Del Sol Mall into the Falles location.

Plaza Del Sol General Manager Blanca Larson said that rue 21, a specialty teen fashion retailer, opened on Sept. 27, and the Belle Furniture vacancy makes room for Steve’s and Barry’s, a collegiate and family casual wear retailer. Larson also reported, Thursday (Oct. 25), that the mall’s parent company, CBL Properties, recently sold 1.25 acres of land north of the developed property. The new owner will build a Holiday Inn Express on the tract.

Continental Airlines, represented here by Station Manager Marifer Hunt, remains very pleased with the corporation’s decision to begin the Del Rio – Houston connection a few years ago. “Just since last year, our load factor has increased five percent,” said Hunt, Thursday (Oct. 25). She would like to see food service investment near the airport. “People are always asking us where can they go to get something to eat before their flight.”

Vernon believes other factors are indicative of economic growth in the region. “We are doing extremely well in attracting tourism, and I’m sure it’s the lake, but other outdoor activities like hunting and birdwatching seem to be getting more and more popular here,” Vernon said. “We’ve been

Cauthorn’s optimism about the economic growth potential here is palpable. “I don’t know if we’re going to explode or not, but our economy right now is strong and vibrant, and a lot of things are happening that are extraordinarily encouraging. We have a lot of things going for us. The fishing is great, we have fine hunting, all that world-class archeology, golf, and 90 percent of the year our climate is beautiful.

“I have friends in Houston that ask me, ‘Why aren’t you exploding out there, like Scottsdale, Ariz.?’ And, I don’t know, it could explode, but it needs a catalyst, and maybe the lake is it.
But we’ve got to just round out our offerings.”