CITE plans explained for proposed NM mock city

DEMING - It’s hard to imagine a new 33-square-mile city popping up in the desert out of nowhere, when no inhabitants will be able to live in the city. The Center for Innovation, Testing and Evaluation, located south of I-10 between Las Cruces and Deming, will be the future of testing and innovation for a better planet and will include resource production through some of the activities, according to CITE officials. Once built, the city will serve as a functioning real-time test site for projects and technologies that would improve life in cities around the world without compromising any of the amenities in existing areas. CITE will bring in a variety of companies of technology to eastern Luna County including university teams as well as federal research groups to develop technologies and ideas for the future. Various testing of city-based technologies will be the primary focus of the large scale project. While bringing these teams and tests, CITE also has the potential to create nearly 4,000 jobs – both contracted and permanent at the location, according to Paul Feiler, principal executive of CITE Development. “Our role as a county right now is to present everything that we have and to help them just as we would any other business or any other citizen that wanted to come in,” said Luna County Manager Ira Pearson. The project was first brought up by Pegasus Global Holdings, a technological development company, and has since taken up its own reins in the development phase of the project. Though the city will require a high cost to be operational, no public money has been spent on CITE or their allocated land since the county first drafted proposals to the company in 2012. Feiler said that CITE will also host educational facilities for students in the area to venture in and learn about the various projects being tested or created, therefore helping the educational system in the area with real-time experience with new technologies. CITE is in the preliminary and planning phases of construction and the plans for the city will be completed in four to seven years. It will include elements of a normal city including; roads, houses and other forms of infrastructure, as well as the test facilities inside the area. “CITE will be a channel for international research and business coming into the United States and it will be a channel for innovators from around the country to get their innovations certified and to set up businesses in Luna County,” Feiler said...more

Luna County was chosen as the location for CITE after several other locations in the state failed to be able to accommodate the plan.  

No kidding.  Luna wanted economic development, Dona Ana wanted Wilderness.  Luna welcomed a clean, high-tech project while the progressive/enviros in Dona Ana wanted a place where their counterparts could tiptoe through the cacti.  Luna's vision is forward-looking, while Dona Ana's is blinded by the enviro/left.  What a contrast.