Article courtesy of the Las Cruces Bulletin, by Todd G. Dickson
The company looking at creating a $1 billion “ghost town” for real-world testing of new technology is expected to make its decision by early May to either build near Las Cruces or Hobbs.
Pegasus Global Holdings is proposing to build what it’s calling Center for Innovation, Technology and Testing (CITE) for replicating city buildings and neighborhoods to confidentially and safely test new technology before they are introduced to the market.
After looking at a variety of sites near cities across the nation, Pegasus has narrowed it down to two finalists in New Mexico – Las Cruces and Hobbs.
Recently, Pegasus filed for a lease on more than 15,000 acres of state trust land around Coralitos Ranch west of the Las Cruces International Airport and in Lea County for a sublease of about 1,000 acres of state trust land near Hobbs with the intent to buy adjacent private land.
Building the city would create around 300 jobs, roughly the same number of technicians and workers who would be employed to keep it running, said Robert Brumley, senior managing director for CITE.
Brumley visited Las Cruces Monday, April 16, as part of the company’s “due diligence” process of visiting the two communities to meet with local government, economic development and education officials.
New Mexico was picked for the project because its abundance of available land, good roads and three research universities, he said. The state also has an extensive fiber optic Internet network, which he said will be critical to the work done at CITE.
Because it would be a city running at any time of day or night, a relatively isolated locale was needed, he said, but not too isolated.
Once the final site is picked, Brumley said Pegasus wants to quickly get the land acquired and all regulatory requirements in line to begin construction by the end of June. Most of the early work will be in infrastructure and development of utilities before the roads and buildings are built, he said.
Construction of CITE is expected to take about two years, he said.
Both Las Cruces and Hobbs have been welcoming to the proposal, Brumley said.
Noting a uranium processing plant that opened in Hobbs, Lea County did have a very strong economic development focus and a lot of the desired infrastructure was already in place. Because the uranium plant employs experts from all over the world, its public and technical training schools have done a good job adapting the instruction to its needs.
Although there are benefits to just leasing the state land, Brumley admitted there were concerns about the process, which would require the property leases to be put out to bid, even if it would be highly unlikely there would be competing bids for the land. In Hobbs, there is a large amount of private land that is available for Pegasus to buy, he said.
Brumley said he did like that Las Cruces residents are used to high-tech testing with work done by New Mexico State University and White Sands Missile Range.
As a concept, CITE would be a “dumb city” to test “smart technology.” This could be as simple as testing wireless communications around buildings. But it could be as complex as having driverless shipping trucks on the roads. That’s why people can’t actually live at CITE, Brumley said.
“You can’t do these things in a lab where everything is perfect,” Brumley said. “You’ve got to take it out and kick it.”
CITE would become a national asset like the federal national laboratories, Brumley said. He said CITE would help the state’s research universities and national labs to transfer research projects into commercial products.
