The preferred route has been selected for a planned $79 million highway to provide Santa Teresa, New Mexico, a border logistics hub, another major link to the greater El Paso metro area.

The Border Highway Connector will be a 7.5-mile, four-lane highway going from Pete Domenici Highway, or NM136, in Santa Teresa to Anapra Road in Sunland Park, New Mexico, near Doniphan Drive in West El Paso, according to New Mexico Department of Transportation, or NMDOT, information.

It’s designed to ease growing traffic from freight trucks and commuter vehicles on Pete Domenici, which connects Santa Teresa’s international port of entry and nearby industrial parks to Artcraft Road and Interstate 10 in El Paso.

It will be a quicker route from Santa Teresa to neighboring Sunland Park and El Paso and provide another way in and out of the Santa Teresa industrial area if an emergency closes Pete Domenici. (McNutt Road, NM273, also provides a connection from Airport Road in Santa Teresa, south through Sunland Park.)

Final decision due by July

The preferred route, labeled Alternative 3, was selected after a study, which began in 2022, and two public meetings, by NMDOT officials and Bohannan Huston, the Albuquerque engineering firm hired by the New Mexico Border Authority to study and engineer the project.

The final decision won’t be made until after the June 13 deadline for public comments on the project, Ami Evans, a NMDOT spokesperson, said in an email. Those comments will be used by NMDOT officials to make the final selection in late June or early July, she said.

Terry McLachlan, a major landowner and developer in Santa Teresa, is urging NMDOT officials and the project design team to pick a different route closer to his planned, huge Alta Mesa Estates housing community.

Jerry Pacheco, president of the Border Industrial Association, aimed at attracting companies to Santa Teresa, said whatever route is selected will be good for the area because it will help Santa Teresa’s four industrial parks and its port of entry by providing a second route for trucks in and out of Santa Teresa.

It will be a quicker route for trucks to head east, while Pete Domenici is best for traffic heading north, Pacheco said.

Alternative 3 gets highest rating

The Alternative 3 route received the highest rating among a final list of six route choices. It also received the most support at a May 23 public meeting.

The Alternative 3 route would begin at Pete Domenici, at a new intersection about two miles north of the Santa Teresa port of entry. It would traverse roughly 5.5 miles of privately owned, vacant desert land in Santa Teresa before crossing active Union Pacific Railroad tracks over a new bridge into Sunland Park.

It would then parallel Union Pacific tracks for about two miles through Sunland Park before connecting to Anapra Road, which Sunland Park city officials have committed to upgrade to handle more traffic, Evans said. From Anapra, vehicles can easily access Sunland Park Drive, which connects to Interstate 10 and Highway Loop 375 in El Paso.

Developer prefers NM9 extension

McLachlan, who plans to develop the 1,180-acre Alta Mesa Estates, which eventually is to have more than 4,400 homes and apartments, near the industrial parks in Santa Teresa, wants the Alternative 5 route to be the final choice.

Alternative 5 would extend NM Highway 9, known as the Columbus Highway, from Pete Domenici, where the paved highway currently ends, to McNutt Road at Camino Real Drive. A variation of this route, Alternative 5a, would skip the McNutt Road connection and continue to Anapra Road.

This route would benefit Alta Mesa, which borders the dirt road portion of NM 9 for 1.7 miles, McLachlan said. It’s also closer to the Santa Teresa industrial parks, he said.

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The Alternative 5 route would save New Mexico money and speed up the project because public property records indicate New Mexico already owns the right-of-way needed for the route, McLachlan said. Also, money wouldn’t have to be spent later to upgrade NM9 to connect to Sunland Park, he said.

However, Evans, the agency spokesperson, said the state owns only the three-mile dirt road extending east from NM9 at Pete Domenici. The remaining right-of-way to Anapra is abandoned railroad tracks owned by Union Pacific Railroad and private land owners, she said.

McLachlan said, “We’re certainly not going to get in the way of any decision. We benefit either way.”

NMDOT to buy private land for highway

The roughly 5.5 acres of Santa Teresa land where Alternative 3 would be built needs to be acquired from private property owners, who are aware that NMDOT may need to purchase the land, Evans said. The same goes for the other alternative routes.

Most of the vacant land where any of the alternative highway routes would be built in Santa Teresa is owned by Santa Teresa Land LLC, operated by Chris Lyons, an El Paso-area real estate investor, a map provided by NMDOT through an El Paso Times open records request shows.

Lyons did not respond to an emailed request for comments about the new highway project.

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The project’s website has a small image of the ownership map in a project slide and video, but the individual owner information is difficult to read.

The project is being funded with a $45 million federal grant and $34 million from New Mexico. The construction contract is expected to be awarded in fall 2025, with construction projected to begin in early 2026, Evans said. Construction is expected to take about two years.

Public comments, info

Public comments on the project can be emailed to the design team by June 13: (BorderHighwayConnector@bhinc.com).

More information is on the project website: bhi.mysocialpinpoint.com/border-highway-connector

Vic Kolenc may be reached at 915-546-6421; vkolenc@elpasotimes.com; @vickolenc on Twitter, now known as X.

This article originally appeared on El Paso Times: Preferred route picked for $79M Santa Teresa to Sunland Park highway