All communities address economy-shaping activities, and every great community requires resiliency.
In Texas fashion, the Brazos Valley weathered the pandemic throughout 2021. We advanced the relationships between public and private sectors to preserve business confidence and job creation opportunities, hallmarks of a great marketplace. In promoting the region to companies looking to launch, grow and locate operations here, the Brazos Valley Economic Development Corporation (BVEDC) and its community partners point out our hallmarks. They manifest themselves in a variety of ways, including when we need to step up for each other the most as a society.
From an entry submitted by the BVEDC, the Texas Economic Development Council honored the work of Brazos County’s governments, the private sector, and non-profits with a Community Economic Development Award (CEDA). A special honor for Resiliency and Recovery in 2020 was bestowed in the 2021 edition of the annual awards. The Brazos Valley’s CEDA encompassed efforts like the Operation Restart task force, the COVID-19 Community Relief Fund, the At Home in BCS marketing campaign, and more.
We firmly believe by working together, in the best of times and the most challenging like this pandemic, the Brazos Valley can and will achieve great things.
While 2021 brought both continued and new challenges related to the global health crisis, it also brought even more business interest in the region. We were grateful to have had the chance to say the same at the end of 2020 in comparison to 2019. Once again, we can say this is true about 2021, a function of the growing advantages of doing business here.
We at the BVEDC classify a project as when any company — whether it is their
leadership or its representatives — informs our team or our partners that they are actively considering Brazos County to operate their business — be it the very beginning of it, an expansion of it or a relocation of it. We then work with our Category I funding partners – Brazos County, our two cities and Texas A&M University – along with the private sector to create the best deal for the company in the best location, regardless of municipal boundaries. Our organization and its partners deal with primary employers, with the cities and county focusing on the secondary side.
The BVEDC began the 2021 calendar year with nearly 100 projects still open, meaning our region was still being considered by the associated companies. For 2021, approximately another 100 projects were started, a record for a single year in our organization’s history, as best as we can tell.
We also track how each company would contribute to our community if it were to choose to operate here. These projects range from start-ups with a smaller number of jobs to massive multi-national companies looking at billion-dollar investments and hundreds of jobs. The average project’s capital investment, job creation, and space needed has seen remarkable increases year-over-year, three-figure percentage increases in some cases. As our total number of projects continues to grow, so does the size and scope of the companies considering calling the Brazos Valley home.
During both 2020 and 2021 manufacturing was the industry with the most companies in our project pipeline. In 2020, manufacturing companies made up a little less than half of our projects. In 2021, that increased to a little more than half. Being within three hours of a majority of Texas’ total population and having powerful workforce development engines like Texas A&M University, the Blinn College District and our school districts make the Brazos Valley an attractive area for industries to invest resources.
Biotechnology, technology, professional services, and distribution remain the next biggest slices of our project work. Each of these sectors and manufacturing fall squarely into the targets identified by the Brazos Valley’s economic development strategy. Adding companies in these sectors to our community’s portfolio create increased diversification to strengthen us both in the best of times and in future downturns.
Defense has also become a focus with the rapid growth of the Texas A&M University System’s RELLIS Campus and Army Futures Command’s presence there. Plus, the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station (TEES), with help from the BVEDC, earned the State of Texas a Defense Manufacturing Community designation from the Department of Defense. TEES and the BVEDC will be working over the next five years to grow the aerospace manufacturing industry here and throughout Texas.
The Brazos Valley’s victories in 2021 – born of a combined effort by government and private sector partners – were diverse and significant. Two companies that launched locally, international cleanroom creator G-CON Manufacturing and cargo tank manufacturer Exosent Engineering, each announced major expansions with additional job creation. Virtual medical scribe service provider Skywriter MD, which first began operations in the Brazos Valley in 2019, relocated to a larger location and announced its intent to hire another 100 people. Houston-area healthcare powerhouse Kelsey-Seybold Clinic chose the Brazos Valley for its next contact center, which the company says could be home to up to 600 employees in the coming years.
Our momentum in the biotechnology sector continues. Matica Biotechnology, a subsidiary of a South Korean company, announced in 2021 it would locate here, produce cell and gene therapies, and sign a master research agreement with Texas A&M University. And to help round out the year, Japanese giant FUJIFILM Diosynth Biotechnologies (FDB) not only cut the ribbon on its new gene therapy innovation center, it announced a new production facility with a $300 million investment and approximately 150 additional jobs. FDB’s workforce had already more than doubled during the pandemic.
The Texas A&M University System and Texas A&M University have never been more valuable to companies for its talent, training, research, and collaborative opportunities. Our location, both on the national map and in the middle of the Texas Triangle (formed by the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, Houston and San Antonio), has never been more advantageous. Our quality of life has never been more desirable to company leadership looking to provide the best for themselves and their employees. These elements will continue to improve, paving the path for ever-increasing interest.
Our county, cities, and higher education Category I partners provide immeasurable support and resources to BVEDC in a shared mission of stimulating economic prosperity to our fellow residents, but the private sector has significantly boosted our ability to attract new investments and jobs. At the end of Fiscal Year 2017, approximately $100,000 was being committed to economic development efforts through the Invest Brazos Valley program. IBV is the private sector’s voice in our work, providing essential support and increased attractiveness in exchange for access to extensive data and information and access to the higher reaches of the local business ecosystem.
With the encouragement of the BVEDC Board of Directors, our staff has worked since the end of FY2017 to increase the involvement and support of our existing local companies while offering more to them in return. In October 2021, IBV membership surpassed $350,000 in committed annual funding of the BVEDC’s work, surpassing the funding each Category I member makes annually. About half of IBV’s approximately 90 members joined the group in the 2020 and 2021 calendar years — a remarkable show of support for economic development that will benefit each of the businesses as our community meets its inevitable growth with great jobs and strong investments.
Challenges remain clear for our community, and we are not alone in facing them. From continued struggles in the retail and restaurant side of our economy, to supply chain and labor issues, to the virus and all its versions that will continue to remain present in our lives, business leaders and their employees are often having to work in new and more difficult ways for themselves, their families, and their companies. We salute those who have been working to weather these storms.
However, as evidenced in the monthly “Economic Indicators of the College Station-Bryan MSA” report published by Texas A&M University’s Private Enterprise Research Center and sponsored by the BVEDC, our economy continues its path to recovery. Our economic index, charting the pulse of the metro area’s economy, has grown during the vast majority of the months since the worldwide collapse in early 2020. We continue to have among the three lowest unemployment rates in the state. Present and past editions of “Economic Indicators” are available at brazosvalleyedc.org and offer a better perspective of where we have been and where we are going.
Our future remains bright, with our economy’s growth trajectory right back to where it was prior to the pandemic. We are fueled by a spirit of partnership, from our governments to our private sector, each seeking responsible growth and quality jobs for our residents. The Brazos Valley has long made a positive impact on the state, nation, and world on so many fronts. The business world has taken notice of our resilience and our advantages unlike ever before, creating a wider range of opportunities for us to prosper in 2022 and well beyond.
Matt Prochaska is the president/CEO of the Brazos Valley Economic Development Corporation. For more information, visit brazosvalleyedc.org.
