"We're like Star Trek because we're on the last frontier for development," says Steven Givens, economic development planner for the Mesilla Valley Economic Development Alliance (MVEDA). "All the cities around us-Tucson, El Paso and Albuquerque-have undergone serious economic development, so it's our time."

It is way past time according to development advocates. They point to an economy that lags seriously behind the nation and a state with unemployment rates 4 percentage points above the national average and per capita income that places the metropolitan area 306th among metro areas nationally.

"We're just big enough to be harmful to ourselves," Givens says, citing a lack of communication that stymies development. That is why the centerpiece of MVEDA strategy is communication in the community, which prompted the first economic development summit in October 1998. Of 400 community leaders who were invited, 225 showed and gave their opinion about what should be done to rev the economic engines of the valley.

Jerry Schickedanz, interim dean of NMSU's College of Agriculture and Home Economics, reminded summit participants that agriculture was the economic base of the valley.

"Agriculture has the advantage of being geographically tied to the state's resources, being renewable and being diversified enough to be stable," Schickedanz says.

Summiteers quickly focused on how to prevent farmland from becoming development land in one of the most rapidly populating regions in the nation.

Water was identified as the valley's "ceiling to growth" and was probably the top concern at the summit. But the issue is so complex and contentious and draws so much attention that the summit had little to add.

Summiteers were excited about the prospect for a billion-dollar industry that revolves around landing a spaceport to launch commercial satellites. The fate of a commercial spaceport that would most likely be located near Hatch-where the state land commissioner, Ray Powell Jr., would consolidate land for the project-is largely in the hands of decision-makers at Lockheed Martin Corporation. They will choose from potential sites in 13 states. If New Mexico's bid makes the top three, additional state funding will kick in to help compete against the hottest rivals-most likely sites in California and Florida.

At 4,000-plus feet above sea level, payloads from the county would get a head start into space, have access to existing rail and interstate highways and have plenty of room.

While waiting for a decision in 2000 or 2001, economic developers are putting their energies into attracting manufacturing to the county and having a local work force ready to supply labor. Manufacturing makes up an abnormally low proportion of the local economy, says Steven Colantuoni, former MVEDA director. Businesses that bring in outside money by exporting products are the key to economic growth, he adds.

Focal points for industrial development include a 2,000-acre industrial park on Las Cruces' west mesa along Interstate 10 on land held by the city and some state trust land. Another 2,600 acres of privately held industrial parks in Santa Teresa, at the county's south end near the U.S.-Mexico border, are under intensive development.

Rea Magnet Wire and Parkview Metal Fabricating plants are to the Las Cruces industrial park what Sears and J. C. Penney are to a local shopping mall, Givens says. They are the anchors around which other businesses gather.

Both anchor plants supply maquiladoras south of the border. These twin plants are largely American-run. They assemble imported American components into products using inexpensive Mexican labor, then export the products back to the United States without tariffs and duties.

Such arrangements were confined to a narrow swath along the border until the North American Free Trade Agreement made all of Mexico a twin-plant zone. This gives southern New Mexico a great opportunity, says Mark Lautman, director of Santa Teresa Real Estate Development, which is developing industrial parks.

"As the maquilas go into the interior, American companies need to get the manufacturing of their components as close as possible to the assembly plants and still be in the United States," Lautman says.  For the foreseeable future, component manufacturing will stay in the United States where infrastructure, financing, stability and skilled labor are available. By locating close to the border, companies reduce inventory and shipping costs for components.

The border is attracting the logistics industry as well. Distribution warehouses allow products heading south and north to be sectioned into loads for their destinations.

Lautman says his real estate firm is prepared to build up to 800,000 square feet of industrial space per year for clients-a pace of industrialization that he says Santa Teresa will easily accommodate for the next 10 years and beyond. Lautman expects other developers will soon be building space in his parks. Traffic at the New Mexico port of entry, now 100 trucks per day, is expected to quadruple with the June 1999 opening of a four-lane highway from the Santa Teresa Port of Entry-past Lautman's industrial parks-to I-10.

The first industrial park already has 11 buildings comprising 1.3 million square feet. Railroad sidings adjoin the park and the county's largest airport is a spit away. A second park is poised next to the port of entry, ready for the warehouse and trucking industry.

Lautman's predictions are worth considering. Before coming to southern New Mexico in 1997, he was an industrial developer for Amrep Construction Corp., master developer of Rio Rancho. Since 1986, he and his colleagues attracted 50 exporting companies, including Intel, transforming a near bankrupt town into a thriving, working community.

"New Mexico's public revenue is based on gross receipts tax, which has terrible implications for bedroom communities," Lautman says.

The next challenge is to prepare the local work force to provide skills new companies in the area will need, he adds. Lautman has visited principals of elementary and secondary schools in Santa Teresa and Sunland Park as well as El Paso Community College and NMSU's Doña Ana Branch Community College to prompt them to get students ready for manufacturing jobs coming to the region.

"I've told people in Sunland Park, where household income is about $12,000 per year, that they could double household income by getting young people into apprentice programs as tool and die makers or other trade jobs," Lautman says.

Meanwhile, the region's high unemployment can be turned into a positive, Lautman says, as companies faced with tight labor markets elsewhere in the country are attracted by availability of workers. This is one of the biggest attractions to the telemarketing centers that are relocating to the region, he says.

Still, almost 40 percent of Doña Ana County employers don't believe there is a qualified work force for their needs in the Mesilla Valley, according to a 1998 survey. Lack of basic skills, technical skills and proper work habits were the most-cited problems.

Ron Gurley thinks the good work attitude in the local work force was ignored by many respondents to the survey. Gurley heads the New Mexico Works Program for NMSU's Cooperative Extension Service in three southern New Mexico counties, including Doña Ana.

The welfare-to-work program, under contract with the New Mexico Human Services Department, is enrolling 300 to 400 new participants each month into preparation for full-time employment.

"I'm impressed most of all that these are not work-avoidance people," Gurley says. "Most are within a generation of their rural roots. They know how to work; they don't mind work; and they will give you 100 percent if you treat them right."

By the end of February, the program had served 2,019 people, 457 of whom achieved full-time employment. Nearly all the rest were enrolled in approved training or work-readiness programs. The branch college provides participants three weeks of work-life skills training to orient them to employers' expectations and to assess their personal aptitudes. After that, participants need to spend no less than 29 hours per week in training, volunteering or paid employment.

If they refuse, benefits are reduced and eventually cut off. While in the program, however, they can earn money and still receive benefits, including transportation help and free child care. Employers, too, get tax incentives to hire people from the New Mexico Works program.

Gurley has a corps of job developers hitting every business sector in the region, convincing them of the advantages to hiring the program's workers. They cite studies from other states that show a good record of long-term loyalty of such employees.

"We're overcoming the reticence of many businesses," Gurley says. In March, he kicked off an employer recruitment campaign with a Hispano Chamber of Commerce seminar on the program.

Extension's involvement in work force development started with a successful summer youth employment training program conducted the past two summers in 21 counties across the state. The success prompted state labor and health and human services agencies to approach Extension to get involved in welfare-to-work programming.

"More than anything, I think we have a reputation as a can-do agency," says Billy Dictson, interim associate dean and associate Extension director.

One of the biggest challenges may be keeping up with an influx of low-skilled residents along the frontier with Mexico. The town of Chaparral alone grew by 1,300 people in the last six months of 1998, helping swell the Gadsden School District by another 500 students, Gurley says. Much of the growth is in colonias, informal trailer settlements without proper utilities.

The State Land Office has broken with tradition to put state trust land between Sunland Park and Santa Teresa into a low-cost housing effort called the Tierra Madre Project.

"The land was unleased and generating no revenue, so we saw this project as a win-win situation for everyone," says Harry Relkin, the office's commercial project director.

The project began this spring with the straw bale construction of a recreation center for the area. Volunteer groups brought in construction experts and volunteers to help. Plans are to offer home sites on a long-term lease to families willing to invest sweat and enter mortgages.

On the border in Santa Teresa, the land office is working with Destec Corp. to lease land for a power generation plant using New Mexico natural gas. "This would give us jobs on the U.S. side, with the product-power-going to Mexico," Relkin says. The clean power will help Mexico comply with environmental provisions of NAFTA, while creating power for the American side of the border as well.

The Mexican border with New Mexico is arguably one of the last frontiers for economic development in America. This frontier may, at last, hold promise.