RioPlex is an economic development initiative created by the Hidalgo County Prosperity Task Force to strategically promote the Rio Grande Valley and northern Tamaulipas as a region, rather than individual cities, counties, and communities. It is a collaboration between local governments, the private business sector, and the area’s economic development corporations to compete better to attract industries and investors to the area.
“We are a community of communities in two nations,” said County Judge Richard F. Cortez. “Our region is really northern Mexico and south Texas. The beautiful thing about that is when you combine northern Mexico and south Texas, you’re going to find a unique area with a lot of assets to offer.”
Cortez explains RioPlex as a branding tool for the region, creating instant recognition for potential industries and investors. He describes RioPlex as a mall with each individual community being a different store. Each store brings its own unique assets to the mall. One store, Edinburg, has a medical school and a university. Another, the Brownsville area, has SpaceX. Each store benefits from the combined assets of the mall to bring investors. RioPlex combines the assets of all of the regions to better compete with other metro areas.
“Combining all these assets together makes it the most competitive. I hope the cities will understand that,” said Cortez. “In RioPlex, we want to create the mall. Then our job is to advertise and promote the mall, their job is to promote themselves. We need them to be successful for us to be successful.”
RioPlex’s primary goal of promoting the region will only be successful by breaking it down into smaller, more specific goals: knowing what industries to target when promoting the area and determining how many companies the region can serve. Long-term goals take into consideration how the industries being brought in today help to make the region more appealing to other industries in the future. Each goal requires looking at what may be hindering the attraction of investors and addressing those issues.
“We have a lot of regional needs, but we didn’t have a structure to implement a regional strategy,” said Cortez. “RioPlex has done that. It takes a combined effort of all of us because the wisdom of several of us is better than the wisdom of one.”
Proactively preparing a trained workforce for jobs in industries being recruited, and those that do not yet exist, is necessary to create the sustainability for economic growth. RioPlex partners with UTRGV, South Texas College, and Texas A&M towards this goal. Students graduating with skills intended for industries that chose not to invest in the region are left with their only job options located elsewhere. By focusing on the economic development of the region, rather than individual communities, RioPlex aims to keep college graduates in the area.
“We’ve had a brain-drain for many years where we educate some of our young people only to lose them to some other area because the jobs are not here,” said Cortez. “If the employer is not here, we’re creating human capital for somebody else, and two bad things happen. We can’t benefit from that human capital because it’s not here, and we will have to compete with it because it’s no longer here.”
The only way to keep human capital in the region is by successfully bringing in new companies. Through collaboration of political leaders and the private business sector, RioPlex is working to market a region with a population exceeding that of the Austin metro area, in order to better compete with larger cities in Texas, the nation, and worldwide.
“RioPlex is critical to the future of the area,” Cortez said. “The goal is to help everyone. We will move everyone up. We will still have the low-income earner and people with low education, but we will help everyone better themselves. That’s what I see in the future for this region that we now call the RioPlex.”
