By Brook Stockberger, Las Cruces Sun-News
LAS CRUCES – Gov. Susana Martinez said she loves the sunlight and warmth of her hometown of Las Cruces because Santa Fe can still be chilly this time of year. She said she also loves visiting southern New Mexico to help announce economic development, a task she undertook Tuesday. Martinez was on hand for a ribbon-cutting ceremony for Albuquerque-based Heritage Home Healthcare and Hospice that has opened a regional headquarters in Las Cruces and could hire as many as 100 new workers over the next three years.
“As an Albuquerque-based company with locations throughout Albuquerque and northern New Mexico and Phoenix, I am thrilled you all will be setting up a presence in southern New Mexico,” she told Heritage CEO Len Trainor in front of the gathered crowd. “As governor, I promise to do what I can to help make sure these businesses are successful, those that come to the southern part of the state.”
Heritage Home Healthcare and Hospice is located at 1065 S. Main St., in Building D, Suite H.
Trainor said the time was right to expand. “Last August Heritage acquired 800 HomeCare, and that company was serving about 80 clients, mostly in Doña Ana County,” he said. “We’ve been wanting to expand into southern New Mexico for quite a long time. This was such a great opportunity to use this acquisition as our platform to establish a regional headquarters here.”
Heritage Home Healthcare was founded in 1993 by Trainor and his wife Liz. “Liz and I started our business out of a rental home in the northeast area of Albuquerque in 1994,” Trainor said. “We literally had a copy machine in the bedroom and a fax machine on the table.”Nineteen years later, we have over 2,050 clients and patients and employ 1,717 people of which 1,656 are New Mexicans.”
According to the Albuquerque Journal, the company is the eighth largest, non-government employer in the state.
Martinez said she hopes to be at more ribbon-cuttings, pointing to legislation passed recently that she said will help with New Mexico job creation. “We’re going to reduce our corporate tax from 7.6 percent to 5.9 percent; the average nationally is 6.4 percent,” she said. “This makes us competitive in the region at a bare minimum.”
Martinez said the lowering of the tax rate will help so that companies “don’t just skip over us and go to Texas. That if they’re going to leave another state, like California, that they consider New Mexico because we are competitive.”
Las Cruces Mayor Ken Miyagishima pointed out that the city has become attractive to other companies as well, but that there is plenty room for growth. “Think about Microsoft, when it was a relatively new company, the stock price and now what it would be if you bought it,” he said. “That’s Las Cruces. We’re starting to see so many different organizations come here.”
City Councilor Nathan Small said that the Heritage announcement is another feather in the city’s cap. “Las Cruces is an incredibly up-and-coming anchor, not only for southern New Mexico, but also for the region,” he said. “We look forward to having more headquarters in Las Cruces.”
More information about Heritage Home Healthcare and Hospice can be found online at heritagehomehealthcare.com.
