City swaps tires for homes
Gallup looking to woo another manufacturing plant, 300 jobs

By Kevin Killough
Staff writer

GALLUP — The city is working on a new plan to bring jobs to Gallup, following the loss of funding for a much-hyped tire recycling facility.

Gallup is now taking a look at the Crimson Group, an LLC that manufactures advanced integrated panels.The company builds the panels for prefabricated housing in the Middle East and Africa.

“It’s a pretty nice product. You can have a house up in a matter of days,” City Manager Gerald Herrera said Thursday.
The plant is expected to create about 100 jobs initially. If the company is successful, the plant could create up to 300 jobs. Rough estimates place the average wage for the jobs at $10 to $14 per hour.

The question is where the funding will come from. The New Mexico Northwest Council of Government had submitted a preliminary application for a grant from the Economic Development Administration in Washington for $500,000 to fund the Petra plant. The city is considering the possibility of using the same application but substituting Petra for Crimson.

According the Evan Williams, associate planner for the NMNCOG, the prospects of doing so are uncertain. The EDA was particularly interested in the rubber recycling plant because it cleaned up a junkyard and replaced it with an environmentally friendly plant.

“It was a catchy thing for the EDA to invest in. And they haven’t funded a project in McKinley County in years,” Williams said.

He said it would be appealing to use the same preliminary application to bring in funding for the Crimson Group, because the grant process will take a couple years if it has to be started over from the beginning.

“If Crimson wants to come in six months, they may not want to wait for a measly half million dollars,” he said.

The Crimson Group most likely will not require nearly the investment from the city that Petra did. Unlike Petra’s rubber recycling process, Crimson’s panels are widely used and have an existing market, making it lower risk and more attractive to private investors. Habitat for Humanity has used similar materials to build low-income houses in Gallup. Bill Bright, a volunteer for Habitat, said he’s excited about the prospect.

“I hope it works out. We’d be very interested in working with them,” he said.

Bright explained that the materials have a high insulation value, which lowers utility bills. Bright said that one family paid $20 last December for their heating bill.

“These families aren’t hit with a large utility bill, which helps them out,” he said.

The panels also make erecting the home simple with a small crew, reducing construction costs. And if a plant here were to supply the materials, shipping costs, which are high, would be greatly reduced, Bright said.