Lubbock West Texas is the New Manhattan| Wind Farming

January 10, 2008

Lubbock West Texas is the New Manhattan. Wind Farming is the New Economy.

My wife is from Muleshoe, Texas which is a small, small town outside of Lubbock, Texas. Driving back to Austin during Thanksgiving we happened to drive past the new economy. Usually, West Texas doesn’t offer a lot in terms of scenery but this trip was different.

Let me set this up with a story from my college days. In 1994 I went to college at ACU (Always Cash University, http://www.acu.edu). Back then to have an email address was sorta like having a Porsche. I had neither.

Within 5 years, the e-commerce market grew to the point that students went from not having personal computers or email addresss to–in 1999–taking exams online and email addresses were mandatory for class notes. 5 years. I still remember my buddy Spike telling me he was going work for “Amazon.com” after graduation. I thought, “How could a book company make any money in South America?”

Speaking of Amazon. Can you guess where Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.com, owns a huge ranch? West Texas. Maybe Spike is helping him run some cotton too.

How is West Texas the new economy? Look back at the picture. You see a cotton field (old economy) but what are they building on the cotton fields? Wind Turbines. Wind Farms. In one year, the farmers have gone from only growing one product to growing two “ crops”–on the same land–at the same time. They are literally growing two commodities at the same time. Wind and Cotton.

Hopefully, this won’t lead to the Megawatt Bowl to go with the Cotton Bowl, but anything is possible at this point.

Think about it. All they have in West Texas are pretty girls and wind. That’s it. Oh yeah, they also have some pretty good high-school football, but outside of these things there’s nothing. Trust me. I did a 7 year tour there. Just wind and cotton. For those who want to have a true “back to the future” experience visit places like Muleshoe, Bovina, Friona and you’ll see entire towns and counties revolving around a single industry.

It might be easy to dismiss these small towns as hick-towns, if you look closer they’re actually more progressive than us city-folk in a lot of ways. West Texas has a long history of resilance so when one old economy becomes unprofitable–they invent another one! For example, in Muleshoe, Texas Dairy Farms are quickly replacing farming as the main industry.

In Muleshoe, you once didn’t have to ask what someone does for a living. You simply asked: Do you…grow it, spray it, gin it, insure it, lend on it or just wear it? Now things are getting more complicated.

And now there’s wind.

Check out today’s article in the Austin American Stateman. It looks like the Big Money is chasing some wind too.

During our same T-day trip, my wife’s uncle (who does West Texas commercial lending) mentioned he’s now seeing a new bit of verbage written the land/ranch sales contracts.

“Owner shall maintain wind rights….”

Think mineral rights (oil–old economy) and add wind. Now owners who sell land are asking to maintain the wind-rights just like they once maintained mineral/water rights.

Welcome to the New Windy Texas economy.

Oh yeah, if anyone is relocating to Lubbock or Amarillo, we do home loans there too. In fact, if you have a Texas Zip code we can help with your Lubbock Texas mortgage home loan. We also do lubbock home equity loans.