Las Cruces City Council annexes nearly 2,000 acres.

Fast-growing Las Cruces grew by leaps and bounds when the Las Cruces City Council voted 6-1 late Monday to annex 1,964 acres on the city's East Mesa north of U.S. 70, the Las Cruces Sun-News reported today on its Web site.

The newly annexed subdivision known as Sierra Norte could add anywhere from 16,000 to 41,000 people to the city's population over the next 10 to 15 years, according to the Sun-News and Las Cruces/El Paso television station KVIA-TV (ABC-7). And according to KFOX-TV, it was the third largest annexation in Las Cruces' history.

Las Cruces currently has about 80,000 people.

The subdivision is expected to include residential, commercial and industrial uses, with a 580-acre public golf course, at least 1,300 "affordable" homes, a town square with shops, restaurants and other businesses, schools and small neighborhood parks, the Sun-News reported.

The city will supply waste-water service, Rio Grande Gas will provide natural gas and a water supplier is still to be determined, the paper reported.

First-phase construction is scheduled to begin by this fall, with up to 3,788 homes to be built in the first phase, former city planner Kirk Clifton told the council.

The lone dissenting vote came from Councilman Ken Miyagishima, who worried about too-rapid growth, the paper reported.

"The question is, do we let Las Cruces grow normally through thoughtful growth or do we want to see Las Cruces grow at a rapid pace through annexations?" Miyagishima asked, according to the Sun-News. "I don't want to see Las Cruces turn into a huge metropolis overnight. I want to see Las Cruces grow at a normal pace, preferably filling up a lot of the open areas within our city."

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