Wednesday, June 9, 2004

New economic development executive director eager to employ business-recruiting skills here

Haley Wachdorf News-Bulletin Staff Writer; hwachdorf@news-bulletin.com

Belen If you ask Claudette Baca, the new executive director for the Greater Belen Economic Development Corporation, what Belen needs is a Starbucks — and soon.

The 28-year-old Belen native joked that her only qualm about moving from her job with the Small Business Development Center at the Technical-Vocational Institute in Albuquerque to a position in her hometown was the prospect of losing her afternoon coffee break.

"I need a Starbucks or a coffee shop or something," she said. "At my old job, we were a mile from two Starbucks, and, every day at two, we'd have our Starbucks. So now around two o'clock, I'm like, 'I could go for a Frapuccino right now.'"

Baca, a 1994 graduate of Belen High School, replaced former executive director, Mary Lou Chavez, who resigned in February. Baca said she did not originally plan to get into the business of growing businesses. In fact, when she started college at the University of New Mexico's Valencia County campus, she was planning to go into medicine.

"Actually, I was a pharmacy major," she said. "The first semester, I didn't have a job, but the second semester, I was like 'I need some money, I need to work,' so I got a work-study position with the Small Business Development Center there, and, after a few months, I was like, 'You know what? This business stuff is pretty cool.' I really liked the marketing aspect of it, so I went from being a pharmacy major to majoring in business and marketing."

After completing her degree, Baca was hired by the Albuquerque Hispano Chamber of Commerce, where she worked with small businesses, and she later moved on to the Small Business Development Center at T-VI, where, Baca said, she loved the interaction with small-business owners her job brought to her.

"Dealing with small businesses, they're so fun, because you don't have the whole corporate mindset," she said. "It's very laid back. I've assisted over 50 businesses to get started. ... Just to see the ambition and the skills they have and, most importantly, their ideas, because you're sitting there and they come in with this idea and you're like 'Oh my gosh, you could really make money doing that.'"

But although Baca found her work in Albuquerque rewarding, she said living in Belen made her wish she could use her skills in her hometown.

"I'm born and raised from Belen," she said. "So that was the biggest challenge I had was that I was helping the economy in Albuquerque, and when I could come shopping to Wal-Mart, seeing the Furr's building empty and all these different vacancies popping up, I was like 'You know what? With what I'm doing in Albuquerque, I can somehow bring my skills and my knowledge down here.'"

Although her new position calls for Baca to do more work towards bringing outside companies into Belen, she said she believes her understanding of the perspective of small businesses will help her be sensitive to the needs of the community.

"My biggest thing is to bring in retail to where everyone who works here can shop here and keep the gross receipts here to make our schools better and our roads better," she said. "I wouldn't want to hurt our little mom-and-pop stores down here, so I want to bring businesses that would complement the city. To me, the small mom-and-pops, those guys are good, they have customer service and personality that a lot of your big companies lack."

Although she has only been in her new office for a couple of weeks, Baca said she is already optimistic about the opportunities she sees in Belen's future.

"Belen has a lot of potential," she said. "It's a beautiful city, and we have a lot of history here and a friendly governing body that is business-friendly. We have a lot to sell and a great community. It's like that whole Cheers environment. Everybody knows your name."

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