Thursday, December 11, 2008

Bright Future Ahead

By Rosalie Rayburn
Journal Staff Writer
      The new year looks set to bring a flurry of much anticipated economic activity to Rio Rancho's new city center.
       Hewlett-Packard, Central New Mexico Community College and the University of New Mexico are all slated to break ground on previously announced building projects during the first quarter.
       “The stars are beginning to line up,” Mayor Thomas Swisstack said as he announced the dates Wednesday at an economic development briefing in Rio Rancho.
       Rio Rancho Economic Development Corp., the organization tasked with bringing jobs to the city, hosted the event for an invited audience of about 85 local developers, builders and real estate professionals.
       Swisstack, City Manager James Jimenez and newly hired Sandoval County Manager Juan Vigil were the key speakers.
       Swisstack said HP will begin preliminary work Jan. 2 on what will be a 218,000-square-foot customer support center that will house 1,350 employees by 2012. The center will be on a 17-acre site northwest of the Santa Ana Star Center.
       He said UNM is planning to break ground on its first campus building in mid-January and CNM is slated to start work by the end of March on the first of six buildings for its downtown Rio Rancho campus.
       “Everything looks very positive right now,” said Marc Nigliazzo, UNM's vice president of Rio Rancho operations and branch academic affairs, in a phone interview after the briefing.
       Nigliazzo said UNM expects to finalize the ground-breaking date next week. The 40,000-square-foot two-story building will house library facilities, book store, food service and offices for UNM's medical group. UNM plans to open a hospital on the campus in 2011.
       The UNM and CNM buildings will be east of City Hall and north of Paseo del Volcan.
       Swisstack, Jimenez and Vigil all expressed a commitment for closer cooperation between Rio Rancho and Sandoval County on two challenges that will determine future development opportunities — water and transportation.
       Swisstack said he has begun talks with Sandoval County officials on how to partner to develop a water source the county has discovered in the Rio Puerco valley.
       The county is studying methods for rendering the brackish water suitable for domestic use.
       Swisstack and Vigil said city and county staffers have both begun to identify infrastructure projects that could qualify for funding from the economic stimulus package being discussed by Congress and the incoming Obama administration. Swisstack is hoping to get federal money for road improvements on Paseo del Volcan, Unser and Cherry.
       

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