The bays of a brand new 82,500-square-foot warehouse swing open. Truck trailers stand ready to receive freshly packaged 500-pound bales of Rio Grande Valley cotton. “The gins are working 24/7, so we have to be ready,” said Laura Salazar, the general manager of Commodities Integrated Logistics. Salazar walks through the warehouse in Weslaco. Forklift operators are busy transporting packages of cotton to and from the trailers. It’s the cotton season…
Surveyor maps laid down the first legal representations in Hidalgo County in the late 1930s. L. David Flores, the deputy city manager of Mission, said these basic maps were used as the legal representations for the county and its cities up until the early 1990s. Computer aided designs were already creating early versions of the first digital representations of the old maps. City governments began making use of these digital…
Rebecca Marie De Leon was an aspiring student and high school athlete at Mission Veterans Memorial High School when she enrolled in a dual enrollment program in the early 2000s. The future collegiate golfer was pressed for time in balancing academics and athletics. Dual enrollment, which blends college and high school courses, then grounded her in the need for effective time management. “It set the foundation for me,” said De…
The Rio Grande Valley of the post-World War II era was still new and open for possibilities. The four-county region as it is known today was less than 50 years old in its collective identity. Two young architects – Alan Taniguchi and John York — came to the Valley in that era, the late 1940s to early 1950s. They would then leave their imprint on the region over the next…
J.J. Serrano Jr. can look out his office windows and see his alma mater across the way on Panther Drive. “It’s crazy,” said Serrano, the facilities leader of H-E-B’s Weslaco Retail Support Center on 1100 Panther Drive. “That’s my high school over there.” Weslaco High School is in his front view, but behind Serrano’s office is a cavernous 408,000-square-foot distribution and transportation center. It serves as the nerve center for…
A partnership between the Weslaco Economic Development Corp. and South Texas College is leading to better trained workforces for warehousing, distribution and manufacturing companies in both the Mid-Valley and surrounding areas. A $100,000 STC grant is one component of the EDC’s partnership with the college and its Institution for Advanced Manufacturing. The training provided by the grant is initially focusing on occupational health and safety. The first round of training…
A drive into town for Jose Platon Ortega usually meant a stop at the bank. For Ortega there was only one bank – the First National Bank of Mercedes. He was greeted there by friendly tellers, with one in particular knowing his account number by memory. “Veinticinco, cuarenta dos, diecinueve,’” said Saul Ortega, Jose’s son, who grew up knowing his Dad’s account number of 254219. Jose Platon Ortega was a…
The decades of political sparring among Rio Grande Valley cities in competing for federal and state funds – and recognition – has long been a source of anguish as to why local leaders could not put aside individual wishes for the greater good. “We’re a unique area in that we don’t have one city that overwhelms all the others in the region,” said Ron Garza, the executive director of the…
Lilia Castillo Jones was coming off a 30-plus year career in the newspaper industry where she reached the highest levels of management. It was a work that had subsequently run its course. The Dallas native first came to the Rio Grande Valley in 2012 to become publisher of the Valley Morning Star in Harlingen. She would eventually go from that post to become the president of the El Paso Times. That…
Belinda Knoblach took a three-decade-long break between high school and college. When deciding to return for further education she turned to South Texas College – and discovered a unique scholarship program. As a Mission resident, Knoblach was eligible to receive scholarship funds at STC specifically for students from Mission. Since its inception in 2013, the Mission EDA Scholarship Fund has disbursed more than $700,000 to 400-plus STC students from Mission.…