SPECIAL CITY REPORT PEREIRA, COLOMBIA
Observations on commerce and lifestyle by architect Jaime Velez, who designed WTC Pereira and many iconic structures around the world.
ADDING A THIRD SHIFT
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A modern transit system is emblematic of the rise of Pereira, a metro area that surveys call Colombia’s most livable, with low unemployment and growing foreign investment, some from Miami.
To understand Pereira’s ascent, a key word to know is civismo, or civic action. Civismo explains how residents banded together to build the city’s airport.
Pereira may not be where you’d expect to find a company supplying renewable energy equipment to the world, but that’s exactly what Magnetron does.
COFFEE TOURISM
Visit the coffee region to meet Alejandro Bedoya, a third-generation coffee producer of the small “specialty” brand called Combia Mountain Coffee.
Paul Griebel, World Strategic Forum
Jerry Haar, Florida International University
James Kohnstamm, Beacon Council
John Price, Americas Market Intelligence
TJ Villamil, Enterprise Florida
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PEREIRA RISING
HOSPITALITY, AN UPGRADED AIRPORT, AND A WORLD TRADE CENTER HELP BOOST THIS COLOMBIAN CITY
BY DOREEN HEMLOCK / PHOTOS BY RODOLFO BENITEZ
PEREIRA, Colombia. It’s a weekday morning in this small, welcoming city in Colombia’s coffee-growing heartland, and residents of mountainside neighborhoods are commuting comfortably through the air on Alpine-style cable cars, riding high above the streets, looking down on lush, green parks.
The modern transit system is one sign of the rise of Pereira, a metro area that surveys call Colombia’s most livable, with low unemployment and growing foreign investment, some from Miami.
Pereira shines as the hub of the region that inspired Disney’s film "Encanto," with its charming towns, open-hearted people, and the world’s tallest palm trees. Deemed a UNESCO World Heritage Site for its “coffee cultural landscape,” it made Forbes’ list of the best places to visit this year and the Bloomberg Pursuits list last year. It’s already a top tourism destination for Colombians.
Long a center for apparel and local commerce, Pereira is now diversifying
Business has jumped at Pereira’s Matecaña International Airport since the 2020 renovation. Last year, nearly 3 million passengers flew in and out, about double the 2016 tally.
in manufacturing and becoming a distribution center for the coffee zone and beyond. With pro-business leaders, an upgraded airport, and improving highway links, it’s attracting foreign investors too. A Cuban-American entrepreneur is launching a Pereira-based airline, Aerolineas del Café, which will fly to Miami and such Caribbean tourism spots as Punta Cana. And a group from South Florida is setting up the new World Trade Center-Pereira, complete with a tower to feature corporate offices, apartments, and medical tourism facilities. Pereira leaders now promote the area for business in Miami-Dade County, officially their “sister” metro.
The city’s rise began at least a decade ago, but COVID-19 sped growth. Lots of tech-savvy entrepreneurs began moving to the area from bigger Colombian cities for better quality of life and lower costs, much like New Yorkers have flocked to Miami. Even some Americans are retiring in the region to enjoy year-round weather in the 70s Fahrenheit, friendly folks, and prices a fraction of those in Florida.
One newcomer from Bogota, business consultant Juan Jose Lopez, says the region’s collaborative culture has transformed him. “In Pereira,” says Lopez, speaking Spanish, “I’ve learned to change one letter: from yo (meaning “I”) to co-,” as in community and co-create. His work is more group-focused.
Here are five aspects of the rise of Pereira, a metro area of some 700,000 residents that some compare to a Boca Raton or Kansas City in the U.S, or a mini-Medellin in Colombia, especially now that the city hosts the same aerial cable car system that helped usher in the “Medellin Miracle.”
A MODERN AIRPORT: A 3.5-HOUR FLIGHT FROM MIAMI
Fly direct from Miami to Pereira on a flight that takes about 3.5 hours, and the first thing you notice is the bright, new airport terminal. Colombia's Avianca Airlines has long served the destination from Miami, and American Airlines began direct Miami-Pereira service five years ago, even before the $60 million airport upgrade that added the terminal and extended the runway for larger jets.
Business has jumped at Pereira’s Matecaña International Airport since that 2020 renovation. Last year, nearly 3 million passengers flew in and out, about double the 2016 tally, says airport manager Francisco Valencia, a 43-year-old lawyer long active in Pereira affairs. Plans call for growth to 5 million passengers yearly in the 2040s, but, says Valencia, “we’ll reach that number earlier, for sure.”
Built in the 1940s by Pereira residents, picks and shovels in hand, Matecaña is city-owned. Yet the airport is privately run in one of the public-private partnerships now popular in Colombia. The operator, part of CSS Construction, also runs Bogota’s new El Dorado airport and some dozen others in Latin America, says Jorge Diaz, the Chile-born airport operations manager. Diaz also expects strong growth at Matecaña, partly because outmigration from the coffee zone in the 1990s and 2000s – after a major earthquake and the Great Recession – keeps fueling demand for flights back to visit family.
“That painful emigration gives us a more global and cosmopol-
FRANCISCO VALENCIA, AIRPORT MANAGER (RIGHT) WITH JORGE DIAZ, OPERATIONS MANAGER
MOST POPULOUS COUNTRIES
IN
SOUTH AMERICA (2020 DATA)
BRAZIL: 212.5 MILLION
COLOMBIA: 50.8 MILLION
ARGENTINA: 45.1 MILLION
PERU: 32.9 MILLION
VENEZUELA: 28.4 MILLION
SOURCE: WORLDOMETER
MOST POPULOUS METRO AREAS IN COLOMBIA (2020 DATA)
BOGOTA: 10.9 MILLION
MEDELLIN: 4.0 MILLION
CALI: 2.8 MILLION
BARRANQUILLA: 2.3 MILLION
BUCARAMANGA: 1.3 MILLION
PEREIRA: 0.6 MILLION
Source: U.N. World Population Prospects. Data 2020.
itan view here,” says Diaz, predicting direct flights year-round from Matecaña to New York and Madrid some day.
Miami entrepreneur Tony Guerra sees so much potential that he’s starting a new airline in Pereira, Aerolineas del Café. He expects to launch three-times-a-week charters to Miami soon and then begin scheduled services to Miami and such Caribbean tourist havens as Punta Cana and Cancun. He has long operated charters between Miami and Cuba, popular among travelers who carry lots of luggage.
Guerra says he’s amazed that experienced aviation staff in the city were able to obtain approvals for his new carrier within months, faster and at a lower cost than in Miami. “When people share my passions and dreams,” says Guerra, “I know I’ve found the right team.”
From Matecaña, varied airlines now offer year-round flights direct to such Colombian cities as Bogota, Medellin, and Cartagena, and overseas to Panama and Miami. Colombia’s Avianca began seasonal service in December to New York and Miami. The airport’s VIP lounge debuted in September.
LOGISTICS
EXPANSION: FOR THE COFFEE ZONE AND ALL COLOMBIA
Visit the warehouses and logistics parks filling up on Pereira’s outskirts, and you also feel the area modernizing. Businesses mainly distribute goods for the coffee region, and some serve the entire
MOST POPULOUS COUNTRIES IN SOUTH AMERICA
BRAZIL: 212.5 MILLION
COLOMBIA: 50.8 MILLION
ARGENTINA: 45.1 MILLION
PERU: 32.9 MILLION
VENEZUELA: 28.4 MILLION
Source: Worldometer
MOST POPULOUS METRO AREAS IN COLOMBIA
BOGOTA: 10.9 MILLION
MEDELLIN: 4.0 MILLION
CALI: 2.8 MILLION
BARRANQUILLA: 2.3 MILLION
BUCARAMANGA: 1.3 MILLION
PEREIRA: 0.6 MILLION
Source: U.N. World Population Prospects. Data 2020.
ENCHANTING ENCANTO
Call it the "Encanto" effect. Disney’s animated film about family, magic, and perseverance is giving a boost to tourism in the mountainous, coffee-growing region in Colombia that inspired the movie, especially the small towns around the Valle de Cocora (Cocora Valley), home to the world’s tallest palm trees.
In Salento, known for colorfully painted homes on narrow streets, one store now proudly displays a sign with "Encanto" written in lettering similar to Disney’s. Shopkeeper Hernan Ocampo says his great-grandparents were among Salento’s founders more than a century ago and built a typical home with thick earthen walls around a central courtyard, a structure he now rents out for Airbnb stays.
“People come here from all over the world for the greenery, fresh air, tranquility, and small-town lifestyle,” says Ocampo, 63. He wants the area to mindfully develop “sustainable tourism” based on nature and not become overly commercial, eroding the magic that enchanted Disney and others. He’d like to see more hiking, plus “forest bathing,” meditation retreats, and other environmentally sensitive visits.
Colombians have long enjoyed family trips exploring small towns, eating local specialties, stopping in local pubs, checking out shops, and taking walks in what they call “to small town” or pueblear
Visiting Salento from Bogota, the Rey family was excited to realize they were in the same town whose joyful colors pervade "Encanto." Seven-year-old Agatha, wearing glittery blue glasses, a pink sweater, and a mermaid T-shirt, gladly sang the film’s hit, “We Don’t Talk About Bruno,” in Spanish, having seen "Encanto" at least three times. Her mom, Ezra, says the movie offers a mélange of Colombian cultures, from coastal vallenato music to coffee-highland hospitality. She was surprised to see so many overseas travelers in the Cocora Valley, especially from France and Germany. Might they be part of the "Encanto" effect?
country, an area nearly twice the size of Texas and home to 51 million residents.
Juan Martin Noreña, shown above, general manager of the Coffee Zone Logistics Center, sees Pereira as a perfect nationwide hub for a simple reason: location. The city sits in the center of a circle that has, within a 120-mile radius, all three of Colombia’s biggest cities – Bogota, Medellin, and Cali – and the country’s busiest Pacific coast seaport, Buenaventura. That circle represents nearly half of Colombia’s population and more than 75 percent of the country’s economic output, Noreña says.
“Our biggest challenge has been the mountains, which traditionally fragmented our country and made road transport difficult,” says Noreña. “But with new highway systems being built under private concessions, and Bogota so crowded and running out of space for warehouses, we see opportunities for Pereira to increasingly become a distribution center for all of Colombia.”
Costs are part of the draw. Rental rates for warehouse space at Pereira area logistics centers now run under $1 per square foot, slightly less than Bogata and cheaper than Medellin, according to reports from commercial real-estate brokers. Also alluring: room to grow. Unlike Bogota, Pereira has ample acreage to develop big warehouses, says Noreña.
Among companies selling nationwide from Pereira is locally based Duna, which distributes motorcycle parts, mainly from China, and employs 55 people. Finance manager John Castaño lauds the area’s “strategic location” and its proximity to Buenaventura, where the motorcycle parts arrive by ship.
Today, most logistics in Pereira remain regional. Germanybased DHL Express, for example, centralizes its fast-turn, air-cargo deliveries in Bogota and then sends goods onward, says Colombia
JUAN MARTIN NORENA
country manager Allan Cornejo. Even so, DHL Express plans to add a third sales office in Pereira this year to handle the area’s rising volumes of air freight, such as specialty coffees and spare parts for factories. Says Cornejo, “The coffee region is becoming an important development hub for the country.”
WORLD TRADE CENTER-PEREIRA: AN ICONIC TOWER RISING
Tech entrepreneur Jacob William took a circuitous route from India through the U.S. to invest in the World Trade Center-Pereira and its signature tower, soon to rise next to the city’s convention center.
William had built up an outsourcing company, Flatworld Solutions, that grew to more than 5,000 employees in call centers and back-office services worldwide, including some in the Philippines and Latin America. While doing business in Bogota some six years ago, he visited Pereira and was captivated by the area’s generous people, hearty meals like pork chicharron, and mountains like those in his native Tamil Nadu in south India. He found the region business-friendly and poised for robust growth, its tech universities a helpful component. He sensed the city was “like what Austin was many, many years ago.”
Long familiar with the World Trade Center (WTC) network, William opted to buy the WTC license for Pereira to take part in that growth. He teamed with fellow South Florida resident and colleague Lauro Bianda, who also grew up around mountains in his native Switzerland. As co-founders, they foresaw the WTC-Pereira hosting many outsourcing firms and even offering tech courses to students from across Latin America.
“I truly believe that training, education, and technology are what [will] bring Latin America to its potential,” says William.
I truly believe that training, education, and technology are what [will] bring Latin America to its potential. And the World Trade Center brand will be a beacon for Pereira on the world map.
JACOB WILLIAM, TOP RIGHT, INVESTOR IN THE WORLD TRADE CENTER-PEREIRA, ABOVE LEFT.
BELOW RIGHT: LAURO BIANDA, CO-FOUNDER AND DIRECTOR OF WORLD TRADE CENTER-PEREIRA
“And the World Trade Center brand will be a beacon for Pereira on the world map,” integrating the city into a network of more than 300 properties licensed in some 90 countries.
The WTC-Pereira tower aims to be iconic in itself, designed by world-class architects and marketed by the Colombian unit of Colliers International, the global real estate firm based in Canada.
Colliers already has sold most of the apartments in the 14-story tower, units that can be rented out for Airbnb-type stays. It’s now selling the tower’s retail space, offices, and medical facilities, tapping the trend of U.S. residents and others to visit Colombia for affordable healthcare from dentistry to anti-aging treatments. Plans call for glass elevators to highlight mountain views and electric-vehicle chargers, among other eco-friendly features, says Colliers development director Cesar Cano, who hails from Guatemala.
“An Indian, Swiss, and Guatemalan doing a project in Pereira is something I’d never imagined,” he joked. The WTC tower, just a
LAURO BIANDA
JACOB WILLIAM
We had to deal with problems of public health and economic health at the same time, not consecutively, or too many businesses would have gone bust.
short drive from Matecaña airport, is due for completion in late 2025.
Bianda says the WTC team appreciates Pereira for its big-heartedness. An example: One night talking in the hotel lobby, William realized he’d forgotten to bring dress shoes he needed for a meeting the next morning. Bianda asked a hotel employee if stores were open, but she said it was too late, asking why he needed shoes. A short while later, the employee returned with dress shoes she’d fetched from her home – new ones her husband hadn’t worn yet. She said to keep them and hoped they’d fit. They did.
“It was beyond kindness and generosity,” says Bianda. “And that’s what keeps surprising me about Pereira: the people.”
PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIPS: TAX BREAKS, OPPORTUNITIES
Government and civic groups play a key role in any community, and in Pereira, they’re united in promoting the city, infrastructure, and jobs. Mayor Carlos Maya, elected in 2020, works closely with the Pereira Chamber of Commerce and spoke with Global Miami at its offices. He’s been prioritizing the economy and education, even personally earning an online master’s degree in “smart cities.”
Under Maya’s helm, Pereira became the first city in Colombia to open after COVID-19 lockdowns. “We had to deal with problems of public health and economic health at the same time, not consecutively, or too many businesses would have gone bust,” says Maya, 43, a longtime accountant with the municipality. Pereira offered vaccines widely, even in its soccer stadium. It also boosted tax breaks for companies creating jobs, with rates falling to zero percent when firms added at least 100 new positions.
That unified approach has helped the city excel, with the lowest
Pereira has the lowest unemployment rate among cities in Colombia (8.6 percent in January), the lowest inequality score nationwide (a Gini co-efficient of .4 in 2022) and an improved municipal credit rating.
unemployment rate among cities in Colombia (8.6 percent in January), the lowest inequality score nationwide (a Gini co-efficient of .4 in 2022) and an improved municipal credit rating (AAA from Fitch in August), surveys show. “City coffers now take in more tax revenue than they did before COVID,” thanks to added business, says Maya.
In recent years, Pereira has been welcoming new call centers, agribusiness, factories, retail stores, and hotels, with a Hilton soon to open. Investors often find the customer service better, staff turnover lower, and costs more modest than in bigger Colombian cities, says Chamber President Jorge Ivan Ramirez.
“Your dollar really stretches here,” says Andrea Salazar, who runs the Chamber’s Invest in Pereira program. Colombia’s minimum wage now runs about $300 a month at March 2023 exchange rates. In Pereira, an employee earning $1,000 monthly and manager $2,000 monthly earn good salaries, she says. A family of four can
CARLOS MAYA, MAYOR OF PEREIRA, ON THE COVID-19 LOCKDOWNS
AAA FROM FITCH IN AUGUST
live well on $5,000 monthly, with children in private school, household help, and a country club membership – a lifestyle impossible with that income in Miami or even in Bogota, says Salazar, who left Colombia’s capital and jobs at multinationals during the 2010s to return and give back to the coffee region where she grew up.
Of course, faster growth and in-migration bring challenges too, as longtime Floridians can attest. “One thing I worry about is losing our culture: the way we help others, say hello, and welcome everyone. We stop at an intersection and let someone pass,” says the Chamber’s Ramirez. “We joke now, when we hear someone honk their horn, ‘Oh, they must not be from here.’ I was taught to only honk in an emergency.”
AERIAL CABLE CAR: A SYMBOL OF PEREIRA’S ASCENT
Perhaps the clearest sign of Pereira’s rise is its new aerial cable car, known as MegaCable, which links hillside communities with the downtown, slashing transit times and opening new opportunities for jobs, education, and other activities.
Colombia pioneered the use of Alpine ski-lifts for public transport in the early 2000s in Medellin in a “social urbanism” project that helped usher in what’s called the “Medellin Miracle.” By boosting access for the poorest residents and better integrating them into the mainstream, crime and poverty plunged. The transit system worked so well that it’s since been deployed in many Colombian cities and across Latin America, including in Mexico, Ecuador, Bolivia, and the Dominican Republic, says project advisor Juan Pablo Lopez.
Pereira opened its aerial cable car system, Colombia’s longest at 2.1 miles, in September 2021. Now, residents of the low-income, hilltop Villa Santana neighborhood can reach the downtown in comfort on a single fare in 14 minutes, instead of paying at least two fares on separate, crowded road trips that often take an hour or more. Plus, they can access the city’s MegaBus system on that same fare.
“The role of public transit in economic development can be quite intangible, but it’s important,” says Lopez, 35, who works on cable car projects internationally. “It improves the quality of life. You can have more hobbies, more time with the family, and not spend all your time going to work and back.”
Pereira’s MegaCable now averages some 8,000 riders per day, reducing vehicular traffic and pollution. Construction took about 21 months, less time with less disruption than light-rail or subway, he says. “Development costs for aerial cable cars are about 10 percent of the price for a subway,” says Lopez. “And the space you need for cable car towers is relatively small, like placing needles in urban acupuncture.” The cable system is such a source of pride that coffee zone families often ride it for fun to enjoy the lofty views and sensation of flying. Some elders who’ve never boarded a plane have cried on the ride.
Managers of MegaCable personify how far Pereira has advanced. Many are sons of farmers, the first in their families to finish college. Lopez’s dad worked with farm animals, then for the city, and in his 40s, graduated as an economist. He encouraged his children to study and attend college, “preferably a public one.” Lopez earned his engineering degree at Pereira’s public research Tech University, where he first worked on maintenance software for a cable car system. “That’s the story of all of us,” he says.
Ramirez can relate. He’s the son of coffee farmers and put himself through law school, working and studying full-time. At 43, he warmly helps the community keep banding together to modernize, and, more and more, to tap international tourism, investment, and opportunities.
“Pereira,” says Ramirez humbly, “is a city that’s discovering the world, and the world is discovering.” l
Development costs for aerial cable cars are about 10 percent of the price for a subway, and the space you need for cable car towers is relatively small...
JUAN PABLO LOPEZ (TOP), PROJECT ADVISOR FOR THE AERIAL CABLE CAR
JUAN PABLO LOPEZ
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CIVISMO 101
NO MONEY TO BUILD AN AIRPORT? WE’LL DO IT OURSELVES!
To understand Pereira’s ascent, a key word to know is civismo, or civic action. Civismo explains how residents banded together to build the city’s airport in the 1940s and the sports complex in the 1970s, contributing everything from jewelry to muscle power in order to develop the projects.
Mauricio Vega drew on that civic heritage in the early 2010s, when the city faced 24 percent unemployment in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. Vega, then president of the Pereira Chamber of Commerce, saw a lifeline in tourism and a convention center, but the city lacked cash.
Here’s what happened in Vega’s own words, translated from Spanish and lightly edited, in an inspiring effort that earned the first award ever for a Colombian Chamber of Commerce from the World Chambers Federation:
We do things here in a very special way. Our grandparents wanted an airport, so they went to the department capital, which then was Manizales, and said, “Look, we have land we can buy cheap. We need your support to go to the national government.” And Manizales said, “What airport? You’re very small. If we get an airport, it’ll be here.” And our ancestors said, “We’ll do it ourselves.” And they did.
Rich families donated the land. Women gave up their rings, necklaces, earrings, silver candlesticks… And the townspeople turned out to public invitations (convites) on weekends with picks and shovels to build the airport. There are wonderful photos of a chain of children passing rocks, one by one from the river, all the way up to the airport. They built the airport through enormous effort and gave it to the city, which is why we have the only international airport in Colombia that doesn’t belong to the national government.
We built San Jorge Hospital earlier in the same way… There was even a short article in The Times of London about it, saying that a remote town in a distant country in South America offers a lesson on how to get projects built through civismo.... And the people did it again and built the Olympic Village for the national sports championship in 1974.
So, in the early 2010s, Pereira had 24 percent unemployment, one of the highest rates in the country. About 60 percent of households said they had a family member living overseas. Between earthquakes, low coffee prices, the global financial crisis, and violence elsewhere in Colombia, the situation was critical. And from all our research, we saw the solution in tourism. UNESCO had just declared the region a World Heritage Site. And I thought: How can
We do things here in a very special way. Our grandparents wanted an airport, so they went to the department capital, which then was Manizales, and said, “Look, we have land we can buy cheap. We need your support to go to the national government.” And Manizales said, “What airport? You’re very small. If we get an airport, it’ll be here.” And our ancestors said, “We’ll do it ourselves.” And they did.
MAURICIO VEGA, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE, ON THE CIVIL ACTION NEEDED TO BUILD THE CITY’S AIRPORT
MAURICIO VEGA
we become a tourist destination, if we don’t have anywhere to host conferences and conventions?
And in my despair, with no money, I remembered our history. I asked our PR people to design a campaign to raise funds for the project… and they came up with The First Brick. The idea was, recalling the civismo of our ancestors, to invite citizens to donate the first brick to build the convention center. Back then, a brick cost about 500 Colombian pesos, or maybe 10 [U.S.] cents – not much.
So, we began with an event for all the politicians to get their support. We got initial donations from businesses active with the Chamber, and the ball started rolling. Within two months, the city was full of signs for The First Brick. Then, we started going to schools and telling the story of the airport – I must have visited 40 or 50 schools - and asking everyone for 500 pesos. We’d take the donations – sometimes literally a brick - and write down the donor’s name. And we promised when the convention center was built, we’d have a civismo wall and list all the names of every person who donated.
We raised so much money from citizens that politicians couldn’t say no. The governor said, “I’ll put in millions,” the regional Council donated, and things snowballed. The federal government joined in. President [Juan Manuel] Santos fell in love with the project, came to Pereira, and gave us 15 billion pesos. And with that, we could start to build … We inaugurated the convention center on Feb. 1, 2016 on the 50th anniversary of the department of Risaralda.
Someone from Colombia who worked at CNN en Español told journalist Ismael Cala the story, and I went to Miami to speak on his show. I was so proud of Pereira…
There’s an international group of Chambers of Commerce that holds a conference every two years. In 2016, it was in Australia. They hold a contest for best Chamber projects, and we always compete. That year, they called us to say we were finalists in the “unconventional” category, and they asked us to come to the conference and defend our project. The presentation was in English, so I wrote out everything I had to say and practiced. About a week before the trip, I said, “I think the most beautiful part of this campaign was the participation of children.” So, someone on the PR team said, ‘Why don’t we find a child in Australia? There’s got to be someone there from Pereira with a child who can bring you a brick and share our message....’ So, we all started looking. Through Facebook, we found a couple in Sydney with an 8-year-old boy, so I went and met the child to build rapport. We went to lunch and a park, we gave him a gift, and we showed him the auditorium where we’d speak.
After the presentation, the audience gave us a standing ovation, and some people cried. The boy was perfect. He said something in English like, “With this brick, I give you the hopes of the children of Colombia.” And we won first place! It was the first time a Chamber of Commerce from Colombia won an international competition. Even President Santos tweeted out congratulations. What a celebration! That prize is now in the convention center. l
The Business Climate
OBSERVATIONS ON COMMERCE AND LIFESTYLE BY THE ARCHITECT WHO DESIGNED WTC PEREIRA
He helped design the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, among other iconic structures around the world during four decades at global architecture firm SOM, living mainly in Chicago.
Now, architect Jaime Velez is back in his Colombian hometown and collaborating on the city’s most sophisticated tower, the World Trade Center-Pereira. Here’s our chat with Velez, 64, on how business and lifestyle differ in Pereira from big cities in the U.S. and beyond.
Tell us about your career before your return to Pereira. I received my master’s in architecture from the University of Wisconsin and worked 32 years with SOM, mostly from Chicago. It was extremely demanding, although the global aspects were quite interesting. I worked on the Burj Khalifa in Dubai and the World Trade Center-Beijing, focusing on interiors… and my last project was a renovation of the UN headquarters in Geneva.
The lifestyle took a toll on me. With United Airlines, I have 2.5 million miles flown, which is insane. So, at 58, it was time to come home.
How is doing business here different than in the U.S.?
First, the American style of business is much more direct and efficient. Here in Colombia, there’s a lot of emphasis on the personal side of things, on the social aspects of work. People like to do business with people they like. It’s really important to become someone’s friend.
Second, you need to be fairly flexible, because the schedules which drive a lot of the success of American business are more lax here. When we’d start a project in the U.S., there’d be a timetable, and it would be followed in a very strict fashion. Here, the schedule is more malleable. The projects are not quite as well-defined from the get-go.
But in the end, there’s a lot of room to bring new ideas to bear. People here are willing to listen, while in the States, to a degree – and I don’t mean to be negative – there are formulas that are followed. Here, there’s still an opportunity to explore and more willingness to take a chance.
It’s been difficult coming home, because I had to un-train
Here in Colombia, there’s a lot of emphasis on the personal side of things, on the social aspects of work. People like to do business with people they like.
myself. But my partner Oscar Valencia has helped me find a middle ground and say, “Don’t get so frustrated. This is what happens here.”
Would you advise others coming from overseas to get a local partner?
Not just in Colombia, but everywhere. With SOM, we always, always had a local partner. It’s suicidal not to, because the local partner helps you navigate logistics.
How is it living here, compared to Chicago?
At 58, I was looking for a lifestyle that was quieter, more focused on nature… Now, I live in the countryside. I enjoy having a garden to go to, as opposed to living in a small apartment in a high-rise. And the weather is so comfortable. Chicago winters are not for the faint of heart.
What do you miss in the U.S.?
I have an American friend who says, “I can live anywhere, as long as it has an airport,” and he’s right. I go to the states often.
I miss that life in the U.S. is more orderly – you know what to expect. You plan, and it happens. Here, the lifestyle and the way the world moves is a little more spur-of-the-moment – which is nice, once you get used to it and un-program yourself. l
ARCHITECT JAIME VELEZ
Adding a Third Shift
INSIDE THE BUSTLING MANUFACTURING WORLD OF MAGNETRON
Colombia’s coffee-growing region may not be where you’d expect to find a company supplying renewable energy equipment to the world, but that’s just what family-owned Magnetron does, providing transformers to German, Spanish, and U.S. solar titans and even electric car makers.
Business is so brisk that Magnetron plans to hire 150 more employees this year, boosting staff to 820 and the number of countries it supplies to almost three dozen. “We’re adding a third shift at the factory to meet demand,” says Magnetron’s second-generation CEO, Alejandro Navarro.
Started a half century ago as a repair shop for electric motors, Magnetron now makes custom, built-to-order transformers that energy companies use to distribute and store electricity. Its products run in solar-energy parks in the U.S. and beyond.
The company’s pivot to renewable energy was born out of adversity. In the 2000s, Magnetron relied on oil-producing Venezuela as its top customer, but by 2015, after the global financial crisis and Venezuela’s political turmoil, that market collapsed. The company was forced to trim staff and consider new options. The worldwide shift to energy from the sun, wind, and batteries looked promising.
With manufacturing costs lower than most build-to-order producers in the U.S. and Europe and quicker delivery times than many larger rivals, Magnetron broadened its focus. Today, renewable-energy accounts for about one-third of its sales, mainly in the Americas. The rest of its transformers go to conventional electricity producers, some in the Middle East.
“In Miami, we have a local distributor that has sold our transformers in Puerto Rico, among other markets,” says Navarro, 56, who often travels to meet customers and welcomes them in Pereira.
The story of Magnetron spans from popular candies to a respected Colombian president, from U.S. manufacturing giant Westinghouse to Japan’s just-in-time production used by Toyota. It all began when Alejandro’s dad, Marcial, was working at a factory for longtime candymaker Colombina (which now has its U.S. headquarters in Miami). Marcial, an electro-mechanical engineer, sometimes brought motors for repair to a local machine shop. When that shop’s owner looked to retire in the 1960s, he asked Marcial to take over his business.
Back then, the Coffee Federation was starting a project to bring electricity to rural areas. A manager in the Federation suggested Marcial make the transformers needed to switch the voltage of electricity from poles to homes.
Marcial and his team reverse-engineered a transformer from a different producer through a process of trial and error – “the first attempt gave off pyrotechnics,” his son admits – and came up with a safe, quality product that met international standards. Sales took off with rural electrification.
“When I fly over the coffee-growing region, it’s very emotional for me, because those are our transformers that I see that have
changed the lives of so many families,” says Alejandro Navarro.
Working at the company was a young economist from Pereira named Cesar Gaviria. He became city mayor, Colombia’s president (1990-94), and later, chief of the Organization of American States in Washington, DC.
In the 1970s, Magnetron partnered with Westinghouse, which provided capital and technology and became majority owner. In the 1980s, Europe’s ABB bought out Westinghouse’s transformer business. Marcial parted ways and went out on his own.
By then, his engineer son Alejandro had joined the venture. With Japan as the world’s manufacturing beacon in the 1980s, Alejandro earned a fellowship to study in Kyushu, learning such concepts as just-in-time production and continuous improvement. He took those lessons back to the Pereira factory.
Nowadays, Magnetron is investing some $4 million to expand production. It trains painters and others using virtual-reality glasses that measure dexterity and range of movement. It shares profits with employees, paying 70-day salary bonuses last year. And Alejandro’s son, Juan Jose, has joined too.
Says Navarro, as employees pack equipment for export: “We transform energy into growth for our company and for the coffee-growing region.” l
ALEJANDRO NAVARRO, MAGNETRON CEO, AT THE FACTORY IN THE COFFEE REGION
Our story is a love story...
ALEJANDRO BEDOYA, LOCAL COFFEE PRODUCER
Coffee Tourism
HOW A VISIT TO COMBIA ALTA BOOSTED OUR RESPECT FOR COFFEE
We were still in the early rounds of coffee-tasting when a European in our group – so impressed by the wealth of information – interrupted the presentation. “I know so much about wine,” he confessed, “but I drink lots more coffee than wine, and I realize now that I don’t know much about coffee.”
Our group was inside the family home of Alejandro Bedoya, a third-generation coffee producer. At 32, he’s combining his college degree in business, his international certification in coffee-tasting, and his family’s love of art and ecoogy to develop a small “specialty” brand called Combia Mountain Coffee.
We’d driven about half an hour from Pereira into the steep, verdant mountains to reach the farmhouse. Bedoya greeted us warmly with stories of his grandparents who’d started the homestead. They had met and married elsewhere, but his grandma’s parents didn’t like granddad, so the newlyweds took off and settled in this highland, dubbed Combia Alta. “Our story,” says Bedoya, “is a love story.”
Business degree in hand, Bedoya seeks to honor his elders in a modern way. He’s created specialty coffees to match their personalities: Dali, gentle like his mom; and Delio, strong like his dad, for instance. Each blend comes in a box decorated with a print of a
floral painting made by his sister.
We first sat in the living room, adorned with the same colorful floor tiles and dark wood furniture that the grandparents installed. From the kitchen came the smell of wood burning in the stove.
Bedoya started us off with a cup of chaqueta, a typical morning coffee that acts as a "jacket" to warm you in the crisp air before farming. It’s a drip brew, made with medium-roast beans and sweetened with panela, an unrefined sugarcane juice.
Daniel Henao, a manager in the area’s Coffee Cluster that helps farmers and roasters, joined us and explained how Colombia is moving up the value chain. Instead of selling mainly green coffee beans abroad, more producers like Bedoya are roasting, blending, and developing their own brands, both for local sale and export. That helps them earn more per kilo – a needed boost now that climate change is reducing local production.
“Because we have so much rain, there’s less fruit,” says Henao, referring to the juicy, red cherries that hold the bean inside. “That’s a message to the world: We have to take care of our ecosystems.”
We then gathered in the dining room around a table full of glasses holding blends from Bedoya’s farm and others nearby.
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WORLD’S LARGEST COFFEE PRODUCERS*
More than 70 countries produce coffee, but more than two-thirds of total production comes from five nations. Brazil accounts for more than one-third of world output.
BRAZIL: 58.2 MILLION
VIETNAM: 30.4 MILLION
COLOMBIA: 14.1 MILLION
INDONESIA: 11.4 MILLION
ETHIOPIA: 7.3 MILLION
WORLD TOTAL: 164.9 MILLION
*Production of 60-kilo bags in 2019-2020 crop year.
Source: International Coffee Organization, ico.org.
shared the basics of the region’s coffee as we peppered him with questions.
Plant a seed and reap fruit some 24 months later. A bush can last 25 years, if well-tended. Harvesting is by hand, which Brazilians call “romantic.” (Brazil often uses machines.) Most coffee is arabica, which tastes lighter and more flowery than the robusta species. A blend is designated a “specialty” coffee after a panel of certified tasters rates it at least 80 of 100 points, says Bedoya.
Next, we slowly inhaled the fragrance off each glass of the dry ground coffee to "wake up" our noses, "because we’re inside our heads, in our every-day thoughts, disconnected from the present moment,” according to Bedoya. Then, we learned the anatomy of the fruit, from its outer skin, pulp, and hull to the silver skin protecting the seed or bean. Bedoya showed us seeds in varied forms. He told us he dries his beans in thin layers in the sun for 10 days to get the right humidity for optimal roasting. Too much moisture, the coffee can spoil fast; too little, the taste fades. The fullest flavors come from medium roasts, he says.
Bedoya then added boiling water to the glasses, and we inhaled the aroma or bloom, head down, nose to each cup. The scent differed, now wet. No one shared their opinion so as not to influence the rest.
Finally, we tasted the liquid in each glass off small spoons, sucking it in swiftly “to feel a splash in the back of the mouth and particles up toward the nose,” as Bedoya said. We washed off the spoon after each slurp. Then, we repeated the cycle after the coffees cooled a bit to check if the taste was consistent. We found the coffees diverse, some with more hints of berries, others more florals or chocolate. Bedoya linked the variety to soil, altitude, micro-climate, drying, roasting, blending, and more. Most of us chose the same blend as our favorite, but there was no judgment. “The best coffee is the one you like,” said Henao open-heartedly.
After homemade pumpkin cake, we headed out, up a windy, dirt road to touch the coffee bushes and munch on their fruit. We walked by orange and banana trees, hibiscus bushes, and other tropical plants amid sounds of birds and vistas of valleys, quite relaxed. Bedoya's grandparents surely would be proud. I’m grateful for his love of family and pursuit of excellence, with a deeper respect for coffee. l
Colombia’s coffee-growing region is developing a “Ruta de Café” featuring small farms that offer tours, tastings, and, in some cases, overnight stays, even with cottages. Pereira recently launched a “Passport” that highlights farms and other coffee stops, with details on Instagram at @pasaportedelcafe.
Bedoya
ALEJANDRO BEDOYA AT THE FARMHOUSE IN THE STEEP, VERDANT MOUNTAINS. COFFEE PRODUCERS LIKE BEDOYA ARE ROASTING, BLENDING, AND DEVELOPING THEIR OWN BRANDS, BOTH FOR LOCAL SALE AND EXPORT.
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