From New Mexico State University’s Arrowhead Center in Las Cruces, to incubators and entrepreneurship centers in the state’s largest city, to thousands of acres of flat desert outside Truth or Consequences, it’s clear innovation spans the entire state of New Mexico.
Over the last year, New Mexico Inno has traveled throughout the Land of Enchantment, taking a peek inside the places driving innovation. Those travels have extended down to El Paso and up to Santa Fe.
The stories that have come out of those journeys have displayed the unique qualities of technology, entrepreneurship and startups in New Mexico, both through photos and through conversations with the folks leading innovation at the plethora of diverse locations.
The following section shows highlights from the ongoing series, showcasing five unique spots in New Mexico shaping the future of technological innovation and entrepreneurship.
Spaceport America, Sierra County
Location: Co. Road A021, Truth or Consequences (corporate office at 4605 Research Park Circle, Suite A, Las Cruces)
Size: 18,000 acres
Purpose: Aerospace operations and launch facility for various commercial tenants and aerospace-related events.
Right before the calendar year 2008 ticked over to 2009, the then-executive director of the New Mexico Spaceport Authority, Steve Landeene, signed a 20-year lease agreement with space tourism and travel company Virgin Galactic for a planned aerospace facility to sit on tens of thousands of acres on flat desert in rural Sierra County, about half an hour southeast of Truth or Consequences.
Almost two years after that lease was signed, Sir Richard Branson, Virgin Galactic's founder, and former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson stood on a fresh 2-mile-long runway etched into the desert as part of Spaceport America — the 18,000-acre site paid for by an approximately $215 million state capital outlay funded by gross receipts taxes leveraged against Sierra and Doña Ana counties.
Virgin Galactic is the Spaceport's anchor tenant. The company's "Gateway to Space" building — part spaceship hangar, part hospitality facility — is the Spaceport's largest structure.
It sits near the Spaceport Operations Center, a small building home to the Spaceport's mission control and emergency services, as well as offices for New Mexico Spaceport Authority staff and various meeting rooms.
In terms of aerospace operations, the Federal Aviation Administration-licensed Spaceport has three areas — a vertical launch area, or VLA; a horizontal launch area; and an advanced technology area.
Its airspace is covered under White Sands Missile Range, and, besides Virgin Galactic, some of its other permanent tenants include SpinLaunch, which operates in the advanced technology area, UP Aerospace at the VLA and AeroVironment at the horizontal launch area.
Santa Fe Business Incubator, Santa Fe
Location: 3900 Paseo del Sol, Santa Fe
Size: 30,000 square feet
Purpose: Incubator that leases lab and office space to startups and hosts entrepreneurship-related events.
In the late 1990s, the City of Santa Fe and the Santa Fe Chamber of Commerce teamed up to launch a campus for fostering startup development and entrepreneurship in the City Different. Over a decade later, that campus would expand and turn into the facility that today houses the Santa Fe Business Incubator, a 501(c)(3) organization that supports startups and entrepreneurs with lab and office space and other resources.
Spaces available at the Incubator include offices, light manufacturing areas, warehousing and wet labs, alongside other workspaces, a fabrication laboratory and a bioscience-specific laboratory that can be rented out on a per-bench basis.
The Incubator has a blend of in-house tenants that lease space within the 30,000-square-foot facility and affiliate clients, which pay $200 per month for access to conference rooms and drop-in office space, in addition to programming and coaching.
The cost to rent lab, light manufacturing and warehouse spaces ranges from $400 to $800 per month. Longer-term lease arrangements come with flexible pricing, as well.
Startups that currently use space at the Incubator include Mercury Bio, Tartle and Pebble Labs.
Arrowhead Center and Arrowhead Park, Las Cruces
Location: 3655 Research Drive, Genesis Center-C, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces
Size: 200 acres
Purpose: An entrepreneurship-focused center and larger technology and research park development tucked between the intersection of Interstate 10 and Interstate 25.
New Mexico State University doesn't think small — at least when it comes to supporting entrepreneurship and planning what would be Las Cruces' first established science and technology park.
The Arrowhead Center and Arrowhead Park are evidence of that. The Center, which is housed primarily at the Genesis Center, a four-building complex at the southern end of the New Mexico State University (NMSU) campus, runs a slew of support programs for entrepreneurs, including "sprints" aimed at rapidly accelerating small businesses in certain industries and programs to assist entrepreneurs with grant and other federal funding applications.
Arrowhead Park takes up a bit more space than the four-building Genesis Center complex. The master-planned development, which could come together to cost upwards of $250 million if all of its plans take shape, sits on 200 acres of NMSU-owned land tucked between the intersection of Interstate 10 and Interstate 25 — what creates a sort of arrow shape and where the park gets its "arrow" name.
Park plans call for 378,000 square feet of development, ranging from retail shops to corporate campuses to multi-use facilities. One building, currently being developed by Birmingham, Alabama-based Capital Growth Medvest, would focus on leasing space to bioscience, life science and medical technology companies, specifically.
Combined, Arrowhead Center and Arrowhead Park hope to establish Las Cruces' position as a center of technological innovation, research and development and support for budding industries like film and media. Energy technology, too, has been a recent focus of the Center, specifically, thanks in part to some federal funding support.
Lobo Rainforest Building, Albuquerque
Location: 101 Broadway Blvd. NE, Albuquerque
Size: 30,000-square-foot lower floor; six stories, 158,000 square feet total
Purpose: A large University of New Mexico building in Albuquerque's Innovation District for startup incubation and support, alongside student housing, a coffee shop and a national laboratory satellite office.
The University of New Mexico (UNM) is the state's flagship university, and a big part of its local impact is situated several miles away from its main Albuquerque campus.
On the northwest corner of the intersection of Broadway Boulevard and Central Avenue is the Lobo Rainforest Building, a sleek, six-story-tall structure that includes a coffee shop, a Sandia National Laboratories satellite office, over 100 rooms for UNM students and the office of Indigenous-owned firm Roanhorse Consulting.
It also houses UNM Rainforest Innovations, a nonprofit owned by the UNM Board of Regents tasked with helping spin startups out of the flagship university. The nonprofit's done that over 150 times, in fact.
Rainforest Innovations occupies much of the Lobo Rainforest Building's lower floor, which includes a large central meeting space, a few smaller side areas and offices for budding startups. The building hosts a slew of events, from Native entrepreneurship showcases to energy-focused pitch competitions.
The large building is one part of the ongoing Innovate ABQ development, which is in turn part of Albuquerque's larger Innovation District, which includes the WESST Enterprise Center, the headquarters of robotics startup Build With Robots and Roadrunner Venture Studios' Albuquerque headquarters.
The Bioscience Center, Albuquerque
Location: 5901 Indian School Rd. NE, Albuquerque
Size: 20,000 square feet
Purpose: A large, multi-story building housing a blend of wet and dry labs and office space for bioscience and life science companies.
Bioscience is one of New Mexico's target industries, and bioscience and life science companies in the state have pulled in some of the largest investment rounds in recent years. A facility near Uptown Albuquerque is responsible in no small part for much of the state's broader bioscience development.
Aptly named The Bioscience Center, the 20,000-square-foot building houses wet and dry labs that it leases to bioscience and life science companies. It also includes office space and meeting rooms for those companies to use.
Stuart Rose bought the building in 2012 for around $1.5 million. After some renovations, the Center opened in January 2013.
Leases in the Center come on a per-square-foot basis. It has over a dozen resident companies, including Circular Genomics, Armonica Technologies Inc. and TS-Nano.
But the idea isn't for those startups to stay in the Center forever. Some companies have outgrown the Center, moving into their own standalone facilities as they scale up — Albuquerque-based biothreat surveillance startup BioFlyte, which has its headquarters in the Sandia Science and Technology Park, presents one example.
