BY STEVE CLARK
STAFF WRITER
The Brownsville Community Improvement Corporation, a “Type B” economic development corporation created by the city in 2002 and supported by a half-cent sales tax, has just released the first annual report in its history.
The BCIC 2020 Economic Development Annual Report provides a detailed look at the organization’s finances, such as total operating revenues of more than $7 million for fiscal year 2020, which includes more than $4.6 million in sales tax collected; $6.9 million in expenditures and an unrestricted fund balance of more than $1.6 million.
But it also highlights BCIC initiatives such as the Downtown Brownsville Business Improvement and Growth (BIG) Program, which it offers with the city of Brownsville and Main Street Brownsville to bring about interior and exterior improvements to downtown commercial buildings in order to help attract private investment. Twenty-four BIG grant applications have been approved and more than $450,000 in funding approved since 2019, according to the report, which also highlights the StartUp Texas seed fund program sponsored by BCIC.
The seed fund invests in early-stage companies with the goal of fostering regional businesses that can be scaled up and giving the entrepreneurs behind them a chance to access capital and commercialize their products or services, according to BCIC. The annual report showcases the winners of the 2020 StartUp Texas Pitch Summit, whose competitors vied for a portion of $100,000 in seed funding through the program. The 2020 Pitch Summit winners were Jen Zeano Designs, Kactas, Lunar Station Corporation, Permittivity and Smartest Energy.
The report also provides details of a spin-off from StartUp Texas dedicated to providing relief to business suffering as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. That program, also called StartUp Texas, “evolved almost overnight into an expansion of COVID-19 relief aid in the form of grants and forgivable loans,” according to BCIC.
The relief portion of StartUp Texas consists of the Brownsville CARES grant, an emergency/bridge loan program, and the (Re)Open for Business forgivable loan program, all funded and administered through BCIC. The funds were from BCIC and the U.S. Small Business Administration, with BCIC contributing a total of $443,425 and the SBA $9.6 million for fiscal year 2020, according to the report.
Nathan Burkhart, BCIC’s director of marketing and small business development, said the organization is particularly happy with its business relief efforts during the pandemic.
“ We were able to actually assist in keeping over 1,500 employees here in Brownsville and assisting in getting over $9.6 million in funds from SBA into Brownsville,” he said.
Burkhart said another aspect of the annual report BCIC wishes to underscore is the eBridge Center, which will be the largest entrepreneurial incubator in the Rio Grande Valley when it opens in the former La Casa de Nylon building at 1304 E. Adams St. Plans for the center are being finalized and include some changes forced by the pandemic, which delayed the project some, he said.
“ It’ll be open this time next year,” Burkhart said. “COVID slowed us down, but we were able to future-proof it in that we were able to see what the demands are going to be … in the future with both health-related issues and having to work remotely. We were able to incorporate those concepts into modifying this building.”
Overall, BCIC’s first annual report reflects an entity in transition, he said. Originally formed with an emphasis on quality-of-life investments, the organization’s role is broadening to include economic development in the form of job creation while also retaining its traditional identity as a quality-of-life EDC, Burkhart said.
“ While that will remain, our focus is very much shifting toward entrepreneurship and (business) ecosystem building here in the Valley,” he said. “This is sort of like a coming out, if you will, of us moving in that direction.”
