SANTA TERESA − Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and Doña Ana County officials on Friday celebrated promised upgrades and improvements at the county airport near the Santa Teresa Port of Entry to prepare for the facility’s first long-term tenant.
In a speech, county chairman Manny Sanchez said, “Sitting here at the intersection of three states and two nations, along the proximity to a major rail line and the interstate system, there’s one thing that everybody here in New Mexico and across the nation needs to know: We are primed to grow here in Santa Teresa.”
Doña Ana County commissioners unanimously approved a 30-year lease with Burrell Aviation in July. Jetport manager Bill Provance said at that time the company planned to construct an air cargo handling and cold storage facilities, a distribution center and aircraft maintenance hangars at a cost of $72 million over three years. The lease amount is $372,860 annually for use of a little more than 45 acres.
On Friday, the Burrell Group’s founder and CEO, Dan Burrell, said the company would invest up to $150 million after that.
“We think we’ll get up to a footprint of well over 500 or 600 jobs over the next several years,” he said. A release from Lujan Grisham’s office estimated 1,300 jobs. Since Burrell Aviation is not receiving grants from the state Economic Development Department contingent on job targets, the company is not obligated to meet either number.
The deal with Burrell depended on public investment, however. For one thing, the jetport would need to build capacity to receive larger and heavier cargo planes. The county is proceeding with $3.19 million in improvements to the jetport, funded through a combination of federal grants, New Mexico transportation dollars and capital outlay and the jetport’s own operating budget.
“We have not asked for any state funding, any state assistance,” Burrell said during his remarks. “We really just asked for the local community … to support us.”
The Burrell Group’s holdings include a range of businesses in construction, food service, real estate, financial services, quarrying and medical education. Dan Burrell was a co-founder of the Burrell College of Osteopathic Medicine in Las Cruces, though he is not currently affiliated with the school.
Lujan Grisham minced no words in stating the investment was about competing with neighboring Texas for trade with Mexico, and hinted another announcement related to economic development in the area might follow soon.
“We are positioned in an incredible way,” she said. “If you don’t have the hangars and you don’t have the maintenance, and you don’t have the offload and you don’t have any of that infrastructure, we can have as many runways as we want but we can’t support the kind of commercialization that this area is ready for.”
“We want every success that we can get our arms around to occur right here,” she continued, “and you can keep counting on us to make these investments for priority.”
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Algernon D’Ammassa can be reached at 575-541-5451, adammassa@lcsun-news.com or @AlgernonWrites on Twitter.
