By Kevin Hendricks, The Paper.
Part 1 of 4 in “Rio Rancho’s Economic Playbook,” a series on the city’s economic development strategy.
Rio Rancho has reorganized its economic development strategy at least three times since the late 1990s — and City Manager Matt Geisel thinks it’s time for the Governing Body to decide what the next chapter looks like.
Geisel walked the board through that history during a June 16 work session, starting with an in-house commercial marketing function that became the Rio Rancho Economic Development Corporation (RREDC) in the late 1990s. The city funded the RREDC at roughly $100,000 a year before cutting support around 2012 amid Great Recession budget pressures, he said.
The Rio Rancho Events Center — originally the Santa Ana Star Center when it opened in October 2006 — marked an early bid to drive economic activity through tourism, events and sports. Companies including Lectrosonics, Insight Lighting and, in 2010, Hewlett Packard’s support center arrived during the RREDC era, Geisel said, and continue to employ Rio Rancho residents today.
From RREDC to SEA
After the funding cuts, the city and Sandoval County rebuilt the model in 2013 into the Sandoval Economic Alliance (SEA), a joint venture with both governments contributing $200,000 a year. That contract ran from 2014 to 2019, when a new RFP shifted the model from what Geisel called a broad “operating grant” to a scope-of-work contract with specific, measurable deliverables. The current four-year contract — now in its third year — assigns the SEA four focus areas: business retention and expansion (BRE), micro-economic gardening (MEG), site readiness gap analysis and a chip manufacturing ecosystem opportunity assessment.
What the toolbox has actually done
Geisel’s presentation also named companies that have used Rio Rancho’s economic development incentive toolbox in recent years: Intel, Deluxe Design, NTX BIO and the Atrisco and Quail Rancho Renewable Energy Project. The county has also issued Private Activity Bonds for three multifamily affordable housing developments.
What’s driving the local economy now
Geisel pointed to several forces boosting Rio Rancho’s gross receipts tax collections — which fund roughly 60% of the city budget:
- Destination sourcing, a 2019-2020 policy change that routes GRT from online purchases to the delivery city rather than the seller’s location
- Population and residential construction growth, which Geisel said outpaced most of New Mexico in recent Census data
- Retail momentum, including three new grocery stores since 2020 and growth at Plaza Enchanted Hills and The Block
- Anchor and institutional employers — including Los Alamos and Sandia national labs, the University of New Mexico, the state of New Mexico and Rio Rancho Public Schools — that Geisel estimated have added 15,000 to 20,000 jobs regionally over the past decade
And or Or?
Geisel closed his portion of the work session with a set of questions he called “thought starters” for the board: Should the city’s focus be economic development broadly, or diversification, stability and vibrancy specifically? Should the strategy prioritize keeping it local, recruiting economic-base employers or aligning with state priorities like aerospace and defense? And critically — are those choices trade-offs, or can Rio Rancho pursue them all at once?
“It is a long-term investment that may not pay perceptual or real dividends for years,” the presentation noted.
Geisel said he wants June work sessions to become a recurring economic development checkpoint — similar to how April has become the city’s annual roads review — so the board can keep refining those answers over time.
BY THE NUMBERS
- $100,000/year — original city funding for RREDC (late 1990s–2012)
- $200,000/year — joint city/county SEA contract (2014–2019; renewed 2023)
- Year 3 of 4 — current SEA contract status (FY26); FY27 is final year
- ~60% — share of city budget funded by gross receipts tax
- 3 — new grocery stores in Rio Rancho since 2020
- 15,000–20,000 — estimated regional jobs added by anchor employers over the past decade
Follow Rio Rancho’s economic development strategy:
- Governing Body work session agendas and recordings: rrnm.gov/agendacenter
- Sandoval Economic Alliance: sandovaleconomicalliance.org
Next in the series — Part 2: City Center’s big bet: a state-designated site and a vision for a regional employment hub.