Could Central Mexico
Drain Border Investment?
Drain Border Investment?
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| On the U.S. side of the border, investment in new facilities remains brisk, particularly in the customer-contact center industry, where new facilities are opening all along the Rio Grande. In Laredo, Texas, contact center outsourcing provider Convergys Corp. is in the process of hiring 300 workers to staff its new contact center, shown here. The facility will operate 24/7. And in El Paso, Texas, teleservices provider GC Services LP opened in March a 500-seat center. The location was chosen over other Texas cities and two other states for its favorable time zone and supply of bilingual workers. |
Throughout the U.S.-Mexico border region, industrial and commercial space inventory has largely disappeared, reports Gary Swedback, president of NAI Mexico, in Tijuana, Baja California.
"It's switched from being a buyer's market, where they can call all the shots, to where there is strong activity again," he says. "The site-selection process is even more important now for corporate users, because they have to know how to structure the most efficient operational and occupancy cost scenario for their project."
Swedback says the region to watch in the near future for even more robust industrial development is the "bajio" region of central Mexico. Cities such as San Luis Potosi and Aguascalientes northwest of Mexico City and the state of Guanajuato represent a region in which 70 percent of Mexico's GDP is transacted, he relates.
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"We're used to seeing all this activity on the border, but there is an unbelievable amount of industry locating and expanding in this region. Central Mexico is getting this activity, and it's poised to boom in the next three years," but not to the detriment of the border region, he asserts. It all depends on which is more important to the site seeker — logistics and access to the U.S. or lower-cost labor.
