The demographics of Winter Texans are changing and professionals in the tourism and hospitality industries are calling for more frequent studies and research into this vital group of visitors with deep connections to the Rio Grande Valley. Leah Woolridge, the vice president of Visit McAllen, sees an age shift among Winter Texans. Retirees are younger, more active and looking for things to do, she said. “You use to be able…
McAllen native Will Collins has built a formidable retail and commercial real estate company whose developments span much of South Texas. From its headquarters in San Antonio, Merit Commercial Real Estate shows on its webpage dark blue diamonds pinned on a Texas map. Each pin represents a Merit development project with clusters of them in the Rio Grande Valley and the San Antonio-area market. Collins comes from a banking family.…
The Delta Area communities of Edcouch, Elsa and La Villa are a cluster of cities along state Highway 107 and located away from the main strip of regional business activity along Expressway 83. These communities are steadily getting a foothold in raising their collective profile in the Rio Grande Valley. Elsa is seeing retail growth and the rooftops of new homes along FM 88 that are located near a Wal-Mart…
The footprint of the Rio Grande Valley’s citrus industry has largely retreated to the northern reaches of Hidalgo County from what once was a regional reach of over 100,000 acres. The RGV citrus industry of today counts about 25,000 acres of grapefruits and oranges. The turning points for an industry that historically defined the region’s early agricultural history were the freezes of 1983 and 1989. The damage from those weather…
Israel Vega is a nurse practitioner who dabbles in renovating classic Chevys and is a founding member of a Rio Grande Valley-based semi-pro soccer team. Since January, you can add co-owner of a Los Fresnos coffee shop to his portfolio. PJ’s Coffee is a shop he co-owns with his business partner and fellow Los Fresnos native, Adam Abrego. They wanted to create a sense-of-community kind of place where people could gather…
The torrential March 2025 rains that soaked the Rio Grande Valley provided local residents with a perspective of what could await them as this year’s hurricane season began on June 1. “Those heavy March rains were a wakeup call,” Edinburg Mayor Ramiro Garza said. “It was a powerful reminder that we can’t afford to be complacent.” Garza made those remarks during a recent Hurricane Preparedness Joint Regional Conference that was…
Seth Naranjo quips that Harlingen has two types of businesses all over town – car washes and gyms. He made that observation even as he and his wife, Nikki Solis Naranjo, sat inside of a gym they recently opened in the city. The Goon House on South Sunshine 77 Strip in Harlingen is located within a sprawling plaza with a call center as a next-door neighbor. The gym sits back…
Joe Vega’s family connections to Port Isabel and South Padre Island go back to the early 1900s when his great-grandfather, Jesus Vega, ran and owned a restaurant and hotel on what was then called Tarpon Beach. An old photo the parks director shares shows his forefather amongst a group of men in front of the “Restaurante, Jesus Vega,” with a balcony overhang providing shade from a summer sun. Tarpon Beach…
Mid-Valley cities for years touted their heart-of-the-region location as a selling point for economic development and an ideal place to live for commuters with jobs in every part of the Rio Grande Valley. For years there were no real numbers or data to back up the middle-of-the-Valley rationale as a winning strategy. New numbers from the U.S. Census Bureau are changing that narrative. Cities like Mercedes and Weslaco show some…
Playing the long game in scaling up a business is a cumbersome process and often met with disinterest from would-be partners. Karina Saldivar’s Amor Y Pan in Brownsville was established as a successful health lifestyle market and bakery by 2024. Her business ambitions always extended outward beyond one location to getting her products on grocery store shelves. Getting to that goal via phone calls and introductory e-mails and receiving no…