THE BiNATIONAL ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT PROJECT (BiNED)

Mark Kroll, University of Texas Rio Grande Valleymark.kroll@utrgv.edu(956) 882-5828

How BiNED is collaborative and requires resources and coordination with multiple public and private sectors?

• For BiNED’s potential to be realized, collaborative efforts across several dimensions will be required in order to address the political, educational, financial, regulatory, and technological issues to be confronted.

• United Brownsville, as the originator of the BiNED initiative, is an institution uniquely qualified, perhaps singularly qualified, to unite the diverse interests in the community that must be represented for BiNED to progress.

How does the initiative align with the Imagine Brownsville Plan?

• The original “Imagine Brownsville” effort concluded manufacturing should be a central element of Brownsville’s future development.

• The BiNED initiative builds on that vision by pursuing those courses of action that will make our border area a highly attractive alternative for locating advanced manufacturing operations.

• BiNED in a very obvious way relates to three of the five industrial clusters identified in the Imagine Brownsville report: heavy manufacturing, light manufacturing, and logistics

• Manufacturers today wish to locate where they can be highly responsive to markets, supported by an appropriately-skilled workforce, appropriate infrastructure, and a relatively low-cost operating environment.

• Given our location and available infrastructure, we can offer manufacturers a very attractive alternative in terms of logistics, accessing North American and international markets.

Describe how the initiative aligns with the United Brownsville mission?

The mission states “To provide the organizational framework for the sustainable collaboration of the public and private sector…” The BiNED initiative will call upon all of Brownsville’s collaborative capacities to realize its potential. United Brownsville is uniquely qualified to lead in this effort.