Cross-Border Projects
Bring Fresh Approach

At least two projects, which will link development on both sides of the U.S./Mexico border, are under way. One will include a "monumental" pedestrian bridge creating a new port of entry.

A new pedestrian port of entry will be the keynote of the Las Animas project near San Diego. The bridge will be the final phase of this huge cross-border development and is awaiting approval by the U.S. and Mexico governments.

        In southeastern New Mexico, just across the border from Texas, is the beginning of a bi-national city encompassing 77,000 acres (31,200 hectares) straddling the U.S./Mexico line. Developers of the Santa Teresa Project hope to create a city minus infrastructure problems. Eventually, the project will create the sister cities of Santa Teresa, N. M. (now an unincorporated community) and San Jeronimo, Mexico.
        Santa Teresa is the westernmost suburb of El Paso, but has a different business environment along with different location advantages and disadvantages.
        "Our goal is to build a city that avoids some of the missteps others have made, such as sprawl and inter-mix of zoning," says Jerry Pacheco, marketing director for Santa Teresa Development Corp. (STRED) which is developing the U.S. side of the project.
        STRED and its partner, Fairfax Properties, own 22,000 (8,900 hecatres) of the 30,000 U.S. acres (12,150 hectares). The 47,000-acre (19,000-hectare) Mexican piece of the equation is family-owned and awaiting government permits to begin work on an industrial park and housing for workers.
        STRED has built three industrial parks. The first, Santa Teresa Business Center, is complete with 2.1 million sq. ft. (195,000 sq. m.) and 34 tenant companies. In 2001, two more parks were built. Santa Teresa Intermodal Park has 1,100 acres (445 ha.) with about a third of that space built out. A rail spur connects the park to the Union-Pacific transcontinental railway. And the Border Industrial Park abuts the Mexican border and has 1,300 acres (526 ha.) with construction complete on around 18 percent of the space.
        Pacheco says the parks have about a 50-50 split between manufacturing operations and logistics and distribution centers. One of the largest recent locations is ADC Telecommunications, a manufacturer of telephone-routing equipment which occupies 330,000 sq. ft. (30,600 sq. m.).
        "We are maquiladora-driven, and we have a supplier clusters strategy," Pacheco says. "Our major supplier cluster so far is related to metals."
        By the end of this summer, the first housing community will rise at Santa Teresa. Development will be a mix of houses and commercial development. The project will include houses for workers as well as some upper-end houses for senior management.
        Boosting the region's prospects is a new highway connecting the Santa Teresa port of entry with Highway 45 south of Ciudad Juarez, in Mexico. The highway allows traffic from the interior of Mexico to bypass bottlenecks in Ciudad Juarez.
        The Santa Teresa Airport recently went international with a daily flight to Chihuahua City, Mexico, and will receive $11 million in new FAA funding this year.
        In Arizona, state government and the University of Arizona are studying the feasibility of a centralized processing center, commonly referred to as "superport" or cyberport. The current Mariposa Port of Entry in Nogales, Ariz., handles nearly 70 percent of all winter produce consumed in the U.S. from November through March.
        State officials consider the port to be inefficient, since trucks carrying time- and temperature-sensitive produce may be unloaded and reloaded up to three times in a 10-mile (16-km.) stretch during the border crossing process, adding considerable costs related to both time and spoilage.

New Trade Corridors
Connect Border Regions

At least two new trade corridors aim at connecting border regions with the U.S. interior.
        The Central North American Trade Corridor Association (CNATCA) seeks to promote trade and regional growth in an area ranging from central Canada to central Mexico.
        Steven Keim, a commercial/investment affiliate of NAI Quest & Co. in Boise, Idaho, is CNATCA chairman.
        "We work with our counterparts in Canada on border issues and intellectual exchange to stimulate the economy," he says. "The prairie provinces and states of Canada and the U.S. haven't enjoyed some of the economic benefits the rest of the country has."
        The route is the closest to Mexico City for much of the central U.S. Keim says the CNATC Association is involved in a variety of economic and rural development issues and seeks to identify companies that may want to grow or expand in the area.
        "It's a series of small towns, and many of them cannot afford a full-time economic developer," Keim says. "We hope to broaden the effects of NAFTA."
        The Ports-To-Plains Trade Corridor is a four-state effort to spur highway development from Mexico to Denver, linking deep-water ports in Mexico to Laredo, Texas, before heading north through West Texas, the Oklahoma panhandle and eastern Colorado. Fiscal year 2002 funds of $1.7 million from the National Corridor Planning and Development Program of the U.S. Dept. of Transportation have been devoted to the development of a management plan for the Texas portion of the project.

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