The Heart of Texas

Deep in the heart of Texas, cities from Austin to San Antonio are fast reshaping their economies along the busy Interstate 35 corridor. While trade traffic slowed at the collapse of Mexico's peso in late 1994, signs of a healing Mexican economy have accelerated efforts to widen highway lanes and surrounding infrastructure down a concrete river of trade that already carries more than half of all U.S-Mexico trade. American City Business Journals this year included both Austin-San Marcos and San Antonio among the top 15 job growth markets between 1993 and 1995.

Austin seems to be popping up on every magazine's Top 10 list for the 1990s. As in: No. 5 among 30 best cities for small business in the midsize range (Entrepreneur magazine), No. 2 among fastest-growing labor markets (American City Business Journals), No. 8 among "best places to live now" (Money magazine) and No. 7 among best cities for business (Fortune magazine).

Tech Spray, an Amarillo-based electronics industry supplier of anti-static solutions and other products, has twice been provided expansion loans by the Amarillo Economic Development Corp.

Samsung Electronics' plan to build a $1.3 billion computer chip plant in Austin is only the latest in dozens of moves, expansions and relocations that have tripled high-technology employment in the city in the last 10 years. More than 825 high-technology firms now operate in the Austin area, including more than 200 semiconductor and semiconductor-related companies. Among the new high-tech companies in town: Chatsworth Products Inc., CompuCom, Crop Growers Software, Digital Anvil, Netspeed and Oak Technology. Homegrown giant Dell Computer this year expanded by 2,000 jobs.

"We've gone from being a college town with a state capitol and a little bit of industry to being one of the premier high-tech smart cities in the nation," said J.J. Baskin, director of national business development for the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce. "Our focus right now is diversifying our high tech base."

"The University of Texas is our not-so-secret weapon," he said. The national research consortia MCC and Sematech decided to locate in Austin largely because of the presence of the giant university, which in fiscal 1994 alone attracted $173.7 million in research and development funds from the federal government and other outside sources.

With a 6 percent-plus growth rate in each of the last three years, Austin is eagerly awaiting completion of a second airport, the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport. Some $74 million in new facilities are now under construction at the site of the now-defunct Bergstrom Air Force Base. The new airport, which will feature two parallel runways, will be ready for cargo aircraft flights in 1997.

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