Job Creation: A Crash Course from Brownsville, Texas

"We basically posed this question: what do we want to be when we grow up?" Gilberto Salinas, vice president of the Brownsville Economic Development Council, said. "Houston is an international city, and we've got just about everything that Houston has, except for NASA, of course. That's when we said, 'We're truly an international city, so why don't we start acting like one?'"

Its location along the U.S.-Mexico border and its extensive infrastructure -- including an international airport, a deep-sea port and a major research university -- gave Brownsville a unique advantage in convincing companies to invest in jobs. The economic crisis reduced the number of companies that could afford to expand, but many of the companies that could afford to do so saw Brownsville as the ideal spot.

But while the prime location was a matter of chance, capitalizing on that location meant a lot of hard work, smart strategizing, and a reconception of Brownsville's geography.

"A lot of entities look at us as being that last city in the U.S., at the very bottom, which we are," Salinas said. "But we look at it more as being in the middle of North America and Latin America."

A Passage to Mexico

"Once we framed it that way," Salinas said, "we started knocking on doors in Latin America."

Matamoros (population 489,193) was an obvious target, since it is directly across the border from Brownsville and boasts one of the country's fastest-growing economies. But even more important was Monterrey, one of the largest (population 4,080,329) and most developed cities in Mexico. It lies about 200 miles west of Brownsville and is home to numerous corporations, from BMW of Mexico to international giants like Boeing, Samsung and Sony.

"We've taken advantage of our truly geographic location," said Jason Hilts, president and CEO of the Brownsville Economic Development Council. He gave an example: "We were able to reach out to PIASA and provide them with something that they couldn't really do out of Monterrey -- to supply their U.S. customers overnight if need be."

PIASA is a Mexican company that sells spices and seasonings, and Brownsville gave it an opening into the U.S. market. It did the same for the airline AeroMexico, which wanted to provide more flights in and out of Brownsville because of its port access and its proximity to South Padre Island, a popular resort destination.