Pegasus Global LLC, with headquarters in this DC building, failed to interest the administration of former Gov. Bill Richardson in its "ghost town" project.
As the company planning to create a "ghost town" to test new technologies narrows down its construction site to Lea County, the unique project is starting to gain national attention.---
National Public Radio and Salon.com are some of the national media outlets keeping an eye on the so-called smart city, which has now quintupled its expected price tag. Originally described as a $200 million project, the Center for Innovation, Testing and Evaluation is now a $1 billion one.
Pegasus was previously considering land in Doña Ana county, but announced Tuesday it chose land about 15 miles west of Hobbs, in Lea county. Unlike the Doña Ana site, the Hobbs land is mostly county and privately owned, so it won't dramatically affect the state land grant fund that benefits public schools, as the state Land Office originally predicted.
The CITE will be a fully-developed city, with houses equipped with all utilities, but will be uninhabited. It will be modeled on Rock Hill, South Carolina, which has a population around 66,000 that covers 43 square miles.
Pegasus still hasn't released names of any contractors or partners who will be using the town. Among the types of technologies it now says it will test are self-flushing toilets. Although CITE is touted as a green technology project, Pegasus is a defense contractor with no ties to that type of development. CITE's managing director, Bill Knauf, directed Sandia National Laboratory's national security programs for over 10 years. He has also served on the federal Department of Energy's Weapons Program Modernization Task Force and the DOE's National Task Force on Combating Terrorism.
