Every town in the Valley has one. A business open for 30 years: a machine shop, a print shop, a hardware store. The founder still unlocks the door at 6 a.m. The kids built careers in Houston or San Antonio. Whole families depend on that payroll, and nobody has a plan for the day the owner stops coming in.
When that day comes, the usual ending is not a sale. It is a closing, and the jobs go with it. That is an economic development problem, and our EDCs and chambers should treat it like one.
Meanwhile, new money is arriving in the Rio Grande Valley. SpaceX now lists its headquarters at Starbase, a city since May 2025. At the Port of Brownsville, NextDecade has all five Rio Grande LNG trains under construction, and its own cost estimates for them add up to more than $30 billion. UT Health RGV opened its Cancer and Surgery Center in McAllen in 2025, and education and health services account for about one in three jobs in the McAllen metro. Mexico remains Texas' largest trading partner, with more than $300 billion in trade in 2025.
The problem is not a lack of money. In my experience, too much wealth made here gets invested elsewhere, while the businesses that built the Valley close for lack of a buyer.
My firm's analysis of Texas Comptroller records found 2,451 businesses in Hidalgo, Cameron, Starr and Willacy counties that have been on state tax rolls for 25 years or more. Census data for 2023 show nearly half of Texas employer-business owners were 55 or older. Nationally, McKinsey estimates that 92 percent of small-business exits in 2022 were closures. Only 5 percent were sales.
The financing exists. From October 2025 through June 2026, the SBA approved 466 loans under its main 7(a) program to buy an existing Texas business. Over roughly the same months, the SBA's Lower Rio Grande Valley district, 14 South Texas counties that include Corpus Christi, saw 10 such loans, for eight businesses. Eight, against 2,451 longtime businesses in just four of its counties.
Valley communities spend heavily to recruit new employers, and they should. But Timothy Bartik of the W.E. Upjohn Institute estimates that business tax incentives cost about $500,000 for each job they actually create, while customized business services, such as job training, cost under $100,000 per job created. In my view, helping a 30-year employer find its next owner belongs in that second category. The jobs, the payroll and the tax base are already here.
The buyers are closer than most people think. Some are Valley families whose capital might otherwise leave the region. Others are across the river. Many families from Monterrey, Reynosa and Matamoros already bank, shop and own homes on this side. Mexico has been an E-2 treaty investor country since 1994, so qualifying investors have a visa path to come here and run what they buy. When a cross-border buyer keeps a Valley employer open, that is foreign direct investment, even if nobody cuts a ribbon.
Succession is economic development. Here are three asks for EDCs and chambers.
First, count the risk. Add one confidential question to your business retention visits: does the owner have a succession plan? You cannot retain what you have not counted.
Second, fund owner readiness. Succession workshops and help getting financials in order, through partners such as the UTRGV Small Business Development Center, cost little next to an incentive package. Owners who plan years ahead have options. Owners who wait for a health scare usually do not.
Third, build the bridge to buyers. Put retiring owners in the same room as local operators, cross-border investors and SBA lenders. Chambers on both sides of the border already know these people. They just do not know each other.
In the Army, we planned the handoff long before the change of command. The Valley should do the same. Recruiting the next big employer matters. So does making sure the businesses that carried us for 30 years get a next owner instead of a closing sign.
Editor’s Note: The above commentary was penned by Spencer Gareiss, founder, managing partner and CEO of Greenridge Group, a private equity firm and business brokerage. A U.S. Army veteran who served ten years, rising to Captain, he co-founded Delta Brokers, a McAllen business brokerage, with fellow Army veteran and Managing Partner, Amy Herrera.
