Sherry Robinson
All She Wrote
In the spirit of the season, I’m devoting this week’s column to good news. Despite the dark times we think we live in, there’s a lot to buoy our spirits.
Let’s start with simple solutions to complex problems.
Bernalillo County used $7 million from the Legislature to buy and renovate an old hotel in October and open it weeks later as transitional housing for homeless people. It’s now the largest such facility for families in the city, reports the Albuquerque Journal. During 90-day stays, care givers help residents get their kids back in school, replace lost ID, find jobs and learn life skills. Compare this to the City of Albuquerque’s Gateway Center, which is so complex and tries to do so much that it’s taken years to get off the ground.
Turning to the economy, I was intrigued this year that despite constant worries about “uncertainty,” tariffs and recession, New Mexico saw a steady stream of economic development announcements. Many were substantial, and they were distributed around the state. It’s important because these companies can locate anywhere, and they said: We like what we see in New Mexico, we have confidence in the workforce, and we will spend a boatload of money here.
Pacific Fusion, Mantis Space, Castelion, and Quantinuum chose Albuquerque or Sandoval County after national searches. Pacific Fusion will build its first research and manufacturing campus, a $1 billion facility, to build a commercial fusion system. Mantis Space will build a headquarters and manufacturing hub where it will develop the first power grid in space. Castelion will build a solid rocket motor manufacturing campus. And Quantinuum will build a quantum R&D center, a salute to the state’s footprint in quantum computing.
The first time I read about fusion I was working for a coal-fired electric utility. I thought this energy source was so far in the future that I’d never see it in my lifetime. And now, thanks in part to research at Sandia National Laboratories, they’ll be in our back yard.
Outside the state’s urban center, Navitas Global will revive a mothballed ethanol plant in Portales to convert whey derivatives, a dairy byproduct, into biofuels and animal feed. In Santa Teresa, on the border, thyssenkrupp Materials opened a metals manufacturing services facility. And in Torrance County NewBridge will expand its hemp and CBD farming, processing, manufacturing and distribution businesses with a processing plant and canning facility.
Data centers are controversial, but they belong on this list. New Era Energy & Digital plans to develop an AI data center on 3,500 acres near Caprock in Lea County. Zenith Volts Corp. plans a data center on 8,500 acres near Roswell. And Project Jupiter, on 1,400 acres at Santa Teresa, is one of five sites in the massive Stargate Project. They would join Meta Platform’s data center in Los Lunas.
There’s noisy concern about water and power, especially for Project Jupiter, but I think New Mexico should look at its young people and welcome these opportunities. The data centers can’t be built without great oversight, and they have the potential to transform the economy, especially in rural areas.
Taken together, all these projects set us on a path toward the future. I’ve written about New Mexico’s business or economy for decades, and all this time people have said we need to diversify. Well, diversification is coming to us.
Finally, at this time of year we often recognize people who work day in, day out, regardless of economic challenges or political winds to make our communities better places to live. I’d like to give a shout out to one guy who’s made a huge difference – Shel Neymark.
Nobody has fought harder for the state’s smallest libraries, beginning with his own Embudo Valley Library in Dixon. Those of us with city-funded libraries may not realize that in small communities, libraries survive on donations, volunteers and the occasional grant, and yet they’re community hubs.
Many “are one broken water heater or damaged roof away from having to close their doors,” said New Mexico Magazine, which just named Neymark one of its ten True Heroes. In 2018 Neymark organized the New Mexico Rural Library Initiative and successfully lobbied the Legislators for an endowed fund.
I doubt that Neymark ever said, “I’m just one person. What can I do?”
The good news I’ve gathered here is what will fit in one column. There’s much more. And that’s what we need to remember in the coming year.
