Article courtesy of El Paso Times
By Vic Kolenc
SANTA TERESA – With a stroke of a pen, New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez on Tuesday started the wheels rolling for a proposed $400 million Union Pacific rail facility in Santa Teresa.
Martinez, appearing in a Santa Teresa warehouse filled with politicians and area business people, signed recently passed state legislation exempting Union Pacific from paying locomotive fuel tax so the railroad company will develop the new facility.
The locomotive fueling station and intermodal freight yard are expected to create 3,000 jobs during four years of construction and to bring 600 permanent jobs, Union Pacific officials have said.
Martinez also signed two other pieces of recently passed legislation: one creating a zone around Santa Teresa and Columbus, N.M., for overweight cargo trucks, which economic developers say should attract more industrial distribution centers, and another to create a border infrastructure fund to make it easier for the New Mexico Border Authority to attract private and public funds for international port of entry improvements.
“As activity increases, Santa Teresa will reap benefits for new commercial and industrial development,” Martinez said. “Today, with the signing of these bills, New Mexico has the opportunity to expand on the possibility of growth.”
Former El Paso Mayor Joe Wardy, vice president of strategic development for Stagecoach Cartage & Distribution, an El Paso trucking and warehousing company, said the Union Pacific complex should help the entire area because Union Pacific’s facilities in El Paso are at capacity. “This helps us as a logistics center,” Wardy said.
Jerry Pacheco, executive director of the International Business Accelerator in Santa Teresa, said, “We’re talking about a project that will change the face of our region and make this the logistical hub of the border.”
Zoe Richmond, director of public affairs for Union Pacific’s Phoenix office, which oversees this area, said the railroad plans to keep its El Paso facilities, including a small intermodal freight yard. But some of its 400 El Paso jobs will eventually be shifted to Santa Teresa, she said. “We had no room to grow. We are land locked in El Paso,” Richmond said.
Union Pacific hopes to begin construction on the 2,200-acre Santa Teresa facility this summer, Richmond said. The company has already begun talking to area educational institutions about work-force development, she said.
This is the third time bills have passed the New Mexico Legislature to bring the Union Pacific facility to Santa Teresa. The project never took off in 2006 because Union Pacific had trouble securing all the land it needed, Richmond said. The project was again ready to be launched in 2008, but the recession killed it, she said.
Everything looks good this time for construction to start this summer, she said. Union Pacific hopes to have the facility open by 2015, Richmond said.
James Robinson III, president of J.H. Rose Logistics, which operates a 65,000-square-foot distribution center in Santa Teresa, said the rail facility should bring more freight traffic into the area. And the overweight truck zone will allow more cargo from Mexico to come into Santa Teresa warehouses, which should help his company and other distribution centers bring in more business, he said.
Pacheco said the overweight truck zone allows trucks to cross from Mexico to Santa Teresa warehouses without heavy loads having to be broken up into several loads as is done today. This can be done at the Santa Teresa port of entry because it has no bridges, which are sensitive to heavy loads, as do other El Paso-area ports, Pacheco said.
Loads of cement or scrap metals that need to be returned from Mexico manufacturing operations to be processed in the United States, are some of the heavy loads that could be processed at Santa Teresa, he said. More finished manufactured goods also could go into the overweight truck zone, he said.
Vic Kolenc may be reached at vkolenc@elpasotimes.com; (915)546-6421.
