Tijuana- San Diego major infrastructure projects updates
By Adina Moloman
Sources: San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce, SD Metro
During the latest meeting of the San Diego Chamber of Commerce a presentations with updates regarding Otay 2 Border Crossing and regarding the Cross Border Terminal.
The Smart Border Coalition is taking a position reactivating these two topics. This group with started in 2008, is made up of business leaders from Tijuana and San Diego who are pushing for more efficient border crossings.
Business leaders from both sides of the border have been vocal critics of the checkpoints delays seeing them as an impediment to commerce. Transferring manufactured goods at the border takes more time that is necessary affecting economic activity. Baja California and the Tijuana Manufacturing Industry activity are closely related with the transnational corporations manufacturing in Mexico and located in Otay Mesa San Diego, California.
Hitachi, Mattel, Bose Corp., are just a few corporations with business interaction developed at both sides of the border.
A wide range of initiatives aimed at speeding up the passage of goods and people across the California-Mexico border where proposed and evaluated in the last couple of years.
The latest discussions include the proposed cross-border terminal, approval and construction is expected this year. Ticketed passengers will have their own pedestrian border crossing leading from Otay Mesa to Tijuana’s A.L. Rodriguez International Airport, where business manufacturing leaders can board flights for China, Japan or other Mexico destination.
Reactivating and speeding those plans and other major infrastructure projects are on the agenda.
Recently a big infrastructure project was approved for Otay Mesa to develop a corporate industrial and office park ready to host several Fortune 500 transnational companies with manufacturing activity in Mexico and logistic and administrative operations in US.
The advantage of the location of the new industrial and office park within a U.S. Department of Commerce Foreign Trade Zone and within an Enterprise Zone is basically the important tax incentives that are being offered to those transnational corporations ready to install or to transfer there. The park will be situated adjacent to Brown Field Airport and less than a mile from the cross-border terminal with easy access to the entire Southwest and Mexico, through the newly constructed SR-905 freeway.
