Building Businesses in Valencia County

LOS LUNAS—Recognized as one of the fastest growing communities in the state, Los Lunas continues to attract new businesses of all sizes.

Several new ventures are currently in various stages of completion within the village. Most recently, Los Lunas senior economic developer Victoria Archuleta said she is excited to announce Fairfield by Marriott broke ground in the village.

The company is starting to lay the foundations of the upcoming hotel on an empty lot on Sun Ranch Village Loop on the westside of Los Lunas near Mitchell Starlight Cinema 8 Theater.

“I think it’s going to be a really great opportunity and will definitely generate a lot of new revenue,” Archuleta said. “I also think it’s going to be a great asset for the community to have, because we’re a growing community and we have a limited amount of lodging.”

Archuleta believes the hotel will house around 80-85 rooms and will feature other amenities, such as conference space.

A grand opening was held recently for the Amazon in-bound fulfillment center in the village’s Huning Business and Tech Park on the west-end of Los Lunas that has been in the works since 2021.

Archuleta said the center provides “a tremendous economic opportunity” and it now employs about 1,200 people and is still hiring.

A new commercial strip is also underway in Los Lunas located on Main Street at the Valencia Y next to Super Suds laundromat. The new building, known as Utash commercial strip, has space for five tenants, though Archuleta does not yet know who will be leasing those spots.

Also on the east end of Main Street in Los Lunas is an Allsup’s that is currently being constructed at the intersection of Main Street and N.M. 263. The facility looks to be nearing completion, but an estimated opening date is unknown.

“So that’s definitely a bigger location. I know they’re also building another one in Belen as well,” said Archuleta of Allsup’s. “I think we’re seeing that a little bit more from our newer incoming gas stations because of all of the logistics activity that’s going on within Los Lunas.”

On Main Street near the Valencia Y in Los Lunas there is also a new building being constructed near Pizza Hut that will soon house a Dunkin’ Donuts.

Archuleta said the company is moving fast and currently working on putting infrastructure in the ground, but she is not yet sure when an estimated opening date would be.

Archuleta also noted a Homestead RV Park is in the works for an empty lot on N.M. 47 near Arrow Animal Hospital, but not much else is currently known about the project.

Coming soon to the west end of Los Lunas is a new warehouse and Copper State Nuts & Bolts. The warehouse, located on Sand Sage Road, does not yet have an end user identified for it, said Archuleta, and it is currently undergoing construction.

“(Copper State Nuts & Bolts) is a company out of Arizona, and they have just laid their foundation,” she said. “I don’t have an opening date timeline for them just yet, but I know they’re about to go vertical pretty soon.”

Archuleta emphasized there are a lot of entities involved in attracting businesses, and while the village offers incentives for certain types of businesses, the village government generally doesn’t have a lot of authority over what businesses come in so long as they meet zoning, permitting and ordinance requirements.

For example, with regards to retail, Archuleta said companies do their own internal analysis of a market and make its own determination for new locations.

“In short, we can’t really say who can or can’t come to the village,” she said. “What I hope the community understands is that rooftops bring retail; these companies want to see the population growth.”

However, for certain industries, Archuleta said there are more incentives offered to attract them, and the majority of these incentives are facilitated through the state’s economic development department.

“A lot of those (incentives) are targeted towards manufacturing, renewable energy and technology,” she said. “There’s not really a whole lot of incentives for retail at the state or local level.

“We do have our local (Local Economic Development Act) which is kind of loosely defined, but under the right circumstances, we could offer village based incentives. So it just depends on what they’re asking for.”

Archuleta said the industrial park in Los Lunas have been getting a lot of interest from technology-related companies lately, and she anticipates Los Lunas growing as a center for innovation and technology in the future.

“On our website, we tout that we are a center for logistics, distribution, technology and manufacturing, so we do very much focus on certain industries for our industrial park and that we can have a little bit more say over,” she said.

Archuleta is excited to note that since the beginning of this year, Los Lunas has more than 2,600 businesses registered to operate in the village, including everything from companies with an established storefront to contractors and vendors.

Archuleta encourages business owners of any sort to continue to register their businesses within the village or get a vendor permit if doing something temporary because the village is looking to “tighten up enforcement” of this, which Archuleta said has always been standard operation.

Even for a one time event, all vendors need to be either registered as a business or have the temporary, 14-day vendor permit if they are looking to do business within the village.

“It’s only $25 to register and the form is really easy to find and fill out,” she said. “If you’re not sure of your business registration status, call or stop by village hall and check to see if we have all the right information.”

Village hall can be reached by calling 505-839-3840 and the business registration forms can be found on their website, loslunasnm.gov, under forms and applications.

To keep up to date with economic development in Los Lunas and learn about small business resources, Archuleta recommends following the department’s Facebook page ‘Los Lunas is a Community That Works’ and the website, acommunitythatworks.com.

(Editor’s Note: This is the second in a series about economic development. For the next several weeks, the VCNB will be exploring business growth in the different communities in Valencia County.)