Abraham Feliz travels all over the world monthly as a UPS cargo pilot flying 747 jets. McAllen is Feliz’s home base where he lives with his wife, Valerie, and their two young children. Feliz flies out the midpoint of every month from his home city on a UPS plane or a commercial jet to Louisville. From that Kentucky city, Feliz will help pilot UPS jets to Hawaii, then to Australia…
The roughly 100,000 Winter Texans in the Rio Grande Valley do more than enjoy each other’s company at social events and spend their dollars at local restaurants and stores. They also give back to Valley communities. Winter Texans do so through their volunteerism benefitting hospitals, schools and nonprofit organizations. Many provide financial donations as well in supporting a wide variety of worthwhile efforts and projects in the RGV. Kristi Collier…
The 150,000 visitors who streamed into the Holiday Village Brownsville to celebrate the Christmas season meant more than enjoying the merriment of December. It reaffirmed again just how far the renovation of Dean Porter Park has come over the last two decades and the rise of the Mitte Cultural District in Brownsville. The park and district are intertwined in being located next to each other. The whole area where Ringgold…
The roughly 300 irrigation pipes found by roadsides and canals throughout McAllen predate the city’s rapid growth and industrialization of recent decades. McAllen’s founding (like the rest of the Rio Grande Valley) has its roots in agriculture. The network of pipes played a key role in controlling and directing the flow of river water to area farmland. Much of the latter are no longer there but the pipes remain. They…
The City of Mission comes into a new year with expectations of having commercial trucks crossing a nearby international bridge by the end of 2024. The Anzalduas International Bridge is located just south of Mission. It is going through a revamping as the necessary facilities are constructed that will allow for the inspection and processing of commercial truck traffic. When completed in the fourth quarter of 2024, the city’s economic…
Andrew Garza spent over a decade in the fast-food industry, rising to management positions at Chick-fil-A and Pizza Hut. He enjoys working in teams and helping to lead them. Garza figured there was another industry where his experience would prove valuable. “The green energy field is growing, here in the Valley and around the world,” Garza said. “I see really good opportunities in wind energy technology. Hopefully, at some point,…
Blake Henry had his fingers crossed last summer when the NBA held its annual player draft. Henry, as the chief executive officer of the South Padre Island Convention & Visitors Bureau, was seeing the draft more as a marketing professional than a sports fan. In his just over a year on the job, Henry has been active in seeking partnerships to build greater state and national awareness of the Island.…
The 36,000-square-foot eBridge Center in downtown Brownsville was envisioned as a space where aspiring entrepreneurs and existing business owners could experiment and test new ideas. After a year of operations on East Adams Street, eBridge is proving to be just that and more. Its StartUp Texas innovation competitions feature enterprising businesses from a variety of industries representing food, research and emerging technologies. Just in recent months, presenters offered judges in…
The Mid-Valley has a new healthcare option with Knapp Medical Center extending urgent care at a Mercedes clinic it jointly operates with the UTRGV School of Medicine. Knapp Medical of Weslaco recently added urgent care to the services offered at the UT Health RGV/Knapp Family Health Center at Expressway 83 and North Mile 2 W Road. A wide range of essential medical services are offered by UTRGV staff during daytime…
SpaceX has more than gained a foothold in southern Cameron County with its imposing rockets looming over Boca Chica Beach. More than 2,000 employees work at Starbase, a production and launch site just across the Laguna Madre from South Padre Island. Keeping such a large operation going as it pursues audacious goals related to space travel requires vast amounts of skill and know-how from its teams of employees. South Texas…