The Truck Farm - Local Economic Development (and southwestern condiments) at its best

I was in Las Cruces, New Mexico this week for work with the downtown organization. If you wish you can read about that assignment and Las Cruces in the previous blog.

But among the coolest part of the work I do is the absolutely serendipity nature of the people I meet and the lessons I learn. And Jim and Cleda Hawman and their company The Truck Farm are great examples.

Jim's a farmer (at least that's how he bills himself) although for over twenty years he also worked for Sara Lee. Both Jim and Cleda are Las Cruces natives. In 1996 they began The Truck Farm in the fertile Mesilla Valley west of Las Cruces. Jim experimented with specialty crops finally deciding to specialize in berries. As production increased by 1998 it made sense to buy a local fruit and gift shop.

Well, as happens when entrepreneurs establish a differentiated market and meet customer demand, the business grew. By the end of 1999 The Truck Farm acquired two other small firms. The first was Tia Rita Products which produced chile-based products and gourmet spices and flavorings as well as packaged, easily prepared southwest dishes. Before the end of the year the Truck Farm bought the Desert Farms line of chile-based jellies, honey and other condiments.


But even though now their product range was substantial Jim continued to experiment. Here's what Cleda told me. "In 2000 we had a bumper crop of blackberries, there were tons of them. So I said to Jim, 'you've got to figure out something to do with all those berries!'" So Jim did. He experimented with mixing berries and chiles until he finally came up with Besito Caliente which means "A Hot Little Kiss". It's a syrup-like product that you can use for everything - flavoring margaritas, pouring on ice cream, spreading on pancakes, adding to cake batter, using as fruit dip, mixing with cream cheese...literally a hundred uses. They once entered Besito Caliente in a salsa contest as a joke but ended up as the winner. Another time they came in second - but there were 900 entrants. By last year Besito Caliente constituted over 40% of the sales of the Truck Farm. Well I brought half a suitcase of Truck Farm products home with me and have already dipped into the Jalapeno mustard and Cierra's Gourmet Mustard.

But I'm not in the food review business (although I found at least one source - the Hot Sauce Blog blog which raved about Tia Rita's products) and I'm not a shill for some small company in New Mexico. Rather what excited me about meeting Jim and Cleda and seeing their business was what a great economic development story it is.

Here is this small enterprise in relatively rural New Mexico that has built up a national, specialized market for their products. The majority of sales are wholesale to restaurants and gourmet food shops who use and/or resell their products. They do have a limited internet presence through the online market New Mexico's Own but Jim promises to have their own website in the not too distant future. And there is a small retail store attached to their production facility in Las Cruces.

They are selling their products nationally, thus bringing dollars into the local economy. But their purchases of both labor and materials are almost exclusively local - recirculating those dollars into the region's economy. That is effective economic development.

But here's what else impressed me. Every Wednesday and Saturday morning there is a farmers' market in downtown Las Cruces. Jim is always there with a range of his products. But he also uses that as an opportunity for first hand market research -- having people taste new products, compare different iterations, make recommendations and state preferences. Talking about getting input from your customers! And Jim takes it one step further. He says "I know how to grow things, and how to mix things as a product, but I don't know about naming the product after I've developed it." So what does he do? He asks his customers what he should call the product. The name Besito Caliente came from customer suggestions.

The small production facility (which Jim describes as very low tech) is viewable through windows from the retail section - you can literally see your product being prepared. If you ask nicely, Cleda will give you a couple of recipes for use of some of the products and suggestions on how to use others.

This is one great business...and even a better business model. The good news is that their son has now joined them at the Truck Farm.

So buy their products if you like spicy southwestern cuisine (and I definitely do). But more importantly learn from Jim and Cleda Hawman. They are what great small business and great economic development are all about.

The Museum of Expensive Mistakes in Downtown Revitalization

I spent the first half of this week in Las Cruces, New Mexico (population ~90,000). Las Cruces is New Mexico's second largest city and is located in the south of the state 40 miles west of El Paso, Texas. I was there for a technical assistance visit paid for by the Las Cruces Downtown organization and the City of Las Cruces.

My assignment was two-fold - to keynote the kickoff of a three day charette to design La Placita, a small plaza in downtown Las Cruces, and to have one-on-one meetings with 12 or 14 owners of downtown properties. I was there at the invitation of Cindi Fargo, executive director of Downtown Las Cruces which is a New Mexico Main Street affiliated organization. I've known Cindi for some years and worked with her when she had similar assignments in Escondido, California and Livingston, Montana.

Well, in Las Cruces, Cindi has her biggest challenge yet.


I'll start with the bad news first. Twenty five or thirty years ago the city fathers (I can't believe that any city mothers would have been so foolish) decided they would "revitalize" downtown Las Cruces. And in doing so the opted for not one or two but all five of the biggest, most expensive mistakes in downtown revitalization:

1. Build a pedestrian mall. Well, here it is, rarely a human being in sight, except for the great farmers' market Wednesday and Saturday mornings and when the historic Rio Grande Theater has productions.


In fairness a hundred or so communities built these pedestrian malls - invariably with Federal Urban Renewal dollars. Pedestrian malls are as close to a 100% urban design failure as there is. The rare exception success stories nearly all have the same variable - a million students next door who use the mall as their front yard. But unlike Las Cruces, most cities realized their error within five or ten years and tore the damn things out. I'm not a believer in "instant solutions" in downtown revitalization, but taking out pedestrian malls is as close to one as I've ever seen.

2. Tear down historic buildings.


It was decided that the historic buildings were useless, so around two-thirds of all structures were demolished. There are less than a handful of historic buildings left in downtown Las Cruces, but in a business district that has to be 80% vacant, it was notable that all of the historic buildings that remain are occupied.

3. Create lots of surface parking.

There are still fools who say, "If we just have enough parking, downtown will be successful". Well if that were the case downtown Las Cruces would be the most vibrant downtown in America. There's no shortage of surface parking spaces...on the sites of demolished historic buildings.

4. Listen to the traffic engineers and build one-way couplets to move cars fast.

Surrounding the downtown are three lane, one way streets. I thought of them as a moat of automobiles but locals referred to them as the "race track". Either way they encourage drivers not only to go right past the island that downtown has become, but do so apace.


5. Physically disconnect downtown with the nearby residential neighborhoods.

On both sides of the Isle of Downtown are great residential neighborhoods, with a variety of housing stock and wonderful historic resources. One of them would probably be called middle class and the other working class, but they are great places to live. But between the one-way streets noted above, and vehicular oriented developments between downtown and the neighborhoods, there isn't any sense of connectivity. And that's a shame, because those neighborhoods should constitute the major customer base (the other being the 4400 workers whose jobs are downtown) that could support a vibrant downtown economically and culturally.

But now the good news

The biggest part of the challenge in Las Cruces is that to get back up to zero, downtown advocates have to undo (at no little cost) the very expensive mistakes their predecessors made. But there are lots of reasons to hope that the Las Cruces downtown of tomorrow will be substantially better than the downtown of today. Here are some of those reasons:

1. There is almost universal recognition of the errors that were made, and a firm commitment particularly on the part of city government to undo them.

2. The middle section of the pedestrian mall has already been removed and plans on the board to remove the rest.

3. The one-way couplets will be returned to two-way streets.

4. The City adopted a Tax Increment District that includes both property and gross receipts taxes to help fund improvements.

5. The city council seems to "get it" in regards to downtown. Notably the Mayor Ken Miyagishima and Council Members Miguel Silva (whose district includes the downtown) and Sharon Thomas spent their Saturday attending the Main Street conference in Raton at the other end of the state. The city staff also understand the particular importance of downtown.

6. City government is committed to staying in the downtown and is building a new city hall there.

7. Unlike many other places with declining downtowns, the financial institutions remained at the core, providing an important institutional presence upon which to build future economic activity.

8. The Federal Government is building a new Court House downtown (although I may quibble about its scale, siting, design, massing, and orientation another time.)

9. There is a solid customer base of downtown workers and nearby residents whose needs could be met downtown.

10. Cultural institutions do exist in the otherwise nearly vacant downtown including the earlier mentioned Rio Grande Theater, a couple of other theaters, and the Branigan Cultural Center from whom I lifted the historic photo above and the aerial photograph of downtown.

11. While there aren't many businesses in downtown (only 2% of the retail volume in Las Cruces comes from downtown) those that are there certainly add character and differentiation, including a book store, a music store, several galleries and a couple of restaurants.

11. Business and professional firms that have been the core of what business there has been in downtown are part of the revitalization effort and for the most part well maintaining the buildings they are in.

13. Pending the awarding of New Markets Tax Credits a phased series of mixed use developments, including housing, are scheduled to be built on the surface parking lots.

14. There are several relatively young property owners who seem willing to incrementally risk their capital in both rehabilitating existing buildings and infill new construction. Most of them aren't burdened with the mis-impression that a successful downtown strategy is the same as a successful strip center development strategy.

15. There is an excellent, committed board of directors of the downtown organization.

16. By in large there is a realistic expectation of the time frame required for the turn around, with most understanding that while some reinvestment is taking place already, downtown revitalization is an incremental, long term process.

So those of you who are students of downtown revitalization, take a look at Las Cruces today for the mistakes of the past (and to make sure your city isn't still planning to make them). But also keep your eye on Las Cruces to see how well and how quickly a committed city can move past those mistakes and build a prosperous downtown for the future.