Southern NM is dreaming big

COMMENTARY: Picture Las Cruces in 20 years as a city with tens of thousands of new residents. Its median income is higher and its poverty lower than in 2015. It’s an innovative, thriving, multicultural city that has America’s attention.

The improved economic situation in this future scenario is largely due to people coming together to build two important projects that have transformed the region.

Some 40 miles to the south, business is booming at the Santa Teresa Port of Entry. On the American side of the border an active industrial park includes a rail hub that is home to distribution centers for companies like Home Depot and Target. Across the border in Mexico, Foxconn operates a manufacturing plant where Dell, Apple and other companies build devices that are shipped all over the globe.

And 45 miles northeast of Las Cruces is Spaceport America, where paying customers fly into space and companies launch satellites and other payloads. The spaceport’s success has attracted businesses to the region, most centered in Las Cruces.

The spaceport brings tourists to the area. So does a national monument created two decades earlier that has preserved the mountains around the expanding city. We market the majestic peaks of the Organ Mountains and the chance to watch spaceships launch in a tourism campaign that focuses on the region’s open space and skies.

The area’s schools have programs geared toward preparing our children to work in the commercial space industry. We have privately owned medical and dental schools housed at New Mexico State University. More of our kids find jobs and stay here than was once possible, and other people come to Las Cruces for school or work and end up staying.

Las Cruces is already a majority-minority city in 2015, which makes it a window into America’s future. Those future transplants further increase Las Cruces’ multiculturalism by 2035.

This is Las Cruces as a successful mid-sized city in the middle of the 21st Century. Southern New Mexico’s people may be creating such a future right now.

Laying the groundwork

I grew up in Santa Fe, but I make Las Cruces my home in part because its people are having a moment of innovation that could be transformative. I find Las Cruces to be an accepting and friendly place that is full of energy. During a time of rapid change for our nation and world, Southern New Mexico isn’t afraid to try new ideas.

In a state that’s often at the top of bad lists and the bottom of the good ones, many New Mexico communities could learn from this region.

It’s not because we’re moving in any particular ideological direction. I’m not endorsing any specific policy or project.

Las Cruces and the surrounding region have active political factions, nonprofits, activist groups and citizens working hard for change. We have some forward-thinking government officials and agencies. We have lots of recent transplants, some young, some old, some wealthy, some poor. The constant movement and dialogue they engage in is healthy. Things are happening.

Consider some examples:

• Las Cruces sits between the state’s two largest economic development projects – the Santa Teresa Port of Entry and Spaceport America. If those projects are successful, Las Cruces and the surrounding region will grow in population and gain jobs, many of them high-paying.
• A private company is building a medical school in partnership with New Mexico State University. There’s talk that a dental school – which would be New Mexico’s first – could follow.
• Foxonn is already manufacturing Dell Computers at its facility in Mexico, just across the border from Santa Teresa. Union Pacific has completed its rail hub in Santa Teresa. This bi-national industrial project could make that port of entry one of the most active in the United States.
• Las Cruces has spent a great deal of money working to revitalize our downtown, which is home to one of the more awesome farmers and crafts markets in the nation.
• The successful effort to legalize same-sex marriage in New Mexico started in Las Cruces.
• We are the third city in New Mexico to raise the minimum wage and possibly the poorest in America to do it.
• The largest national monument President Obama has created surrounds the City of the Crosses.
• Though you might identify those last three moves as left-leaning, that doesn’t mean Las Cruces is all blue or “progressive” in the political sense. Progressives have had significant victories here in recent years. But three of four seats that flipped from Democrat to Republican in 2014 to give the GOP control of the N.M. House of Representatives for the first time in six decades are located partially or entirely in Doña Ana County.

Hope and optimism

Las Crucens tend to have energy and a sense of discovery about this place. Maybe that’s because so many of us are recent transplants, including retirees and immigrants. Almost half the city’s 101,324 residents in 2013, the last year the Census released a population estimate, have moved here since 1990.

We have a higher poverty rate than the state average of 20.4 percent but we also have more residents with a bachelor’s degree at age 25 than the state average – 32 percent compared to 26 percent.

In other words, we don’t have the money that exists in some of the state’s better-known cities, and we have lots of potential.

New Mexico doesn’t often dream big, but I have watched it happen in this region. We’re building the infrastructure at the spaceport. We’re putting money into our education system for space-related programs – which makes the area more attractive to space-related companies and, longer-term, prepares our children to compete for those jobs.

That’s especially important given that Las Cruces’ median income of $40,040 is almost $5,000 lower than the state average and $10,000 below the national average. We need those jobs. Since high school I’ve watched friends leave the state and never return. Today, New Mexico’s economy remains stagnant while the states around us are growing theirs.

There are lots of hurdles to overcome, our high poverty and low income among them. Southern New Mexico is plagued by bitter political division just like the rest of America. Water and our changing climate are massive hurdles to plans for growth. We need better regional cooperation and planning. NMSU, with its immense resources, is among the governments that needs to do a better job of thinking outward.

Our retirees bring a lot of experience to our community and volunteer their time. We spent a lot of years focusing on being primarily a great place to retire. That’s a solid component of an economic strategy but it can’t be our endgame. This community literally needs to reach for the stars, to create a city for our children and their children. Our retires, like others in this community, must help us get there.

The details are critical. An immediate challenge is coming together to help the U.S. Bureau of Land Management create a land-use plan for the Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument that preserves all historical uses of our mountains. Another important task is paving a road that connects the spaceport with Doña Ana County.

I believe this community’s people can create this better future if they come together, as they’ve done to get us to this point. It takes people having courage, vision, and a determination to dialogue and build understanding even when it’s difficult.

I have a sense of hope and optimism about the future of this city and region. We’re trying to build a better future. Here’s to hoping the tenacity and optimism pay off.