Plans for floating baseball park, golf course-turned-multipurpose space point to Anthony's future

ANTHONY, N.M. – For a year and a half, a hole in the ground at Adams Park in the middle of town provoked criticism from residents of this small city near El Paso.

On a recent Friday morning, however, sprinklers watered the outfield of a new baseball diamond, which sat on a peninsula raised above a large drainage pit.

The floating baseball field is both a recreational park and a flood control project.

"When you're struggling with economic development, often you can find it's tied to infrastructure, drainage being one of the most common factors," the city's recently-hired interim city manager, Mario Juarez-Infante, said in an interview. "Banks don't loan money to developers if you're in a floodplain."

The city of 9,163 residents, incorporated in 2010, sits in the path of storm waters that flow from the surrounding mesas and mountains into the Mesilla Valley.

While the Lauson and Anthony dams protect the town from catastrophic floods, seasonal heavy rains and storm drainage generate heavy flows that move downhill across the town through a system of arroyos that have come under increased pressure from development, vegetation and illegal activity.

Over the past decade, the arroyos have been redesigned to route water that drains from the Anthony dam across the town, but the city needed additional infrastructure to capture more of the water and filter it before feeding it back through the tributaries into the Rio Grande.

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That's where the pit around the Adams Park baseball field fits into the plan. Besides concession areas and shade structures, the city is moving ahead with plans to build a $2.5 million intake system and lift station capturing water from an outlet in the park's southeast corner before conveying it west toward the Anthony Wash stream.

Meanwhile, matching grant funds for recreational facilities will be used to bury utility lines and eliminate existing poles, light the park at night to deter trespassers and replace fencing that separates the park from a small cemetery owned by a neighboring church.

Meanwhile, plans for a refurbished arroyo further east include a public park running alongside tributaries that, during peak flooding, would serve as canals alongside walking paths. Juarez-Infante said the hope was that by turning arroyos into open parks they would be easier to police and contribute to more business development.

"As we start moving towards this sort of natural development, it's got to be an attractive amenity for industry to move in," Juarez-Infante said. "It's through those revenues that we're going to be able to maintain these facilities."

Such "blended funding" projects, as Juarez-Infante noted, involve grants and local matches involving different government entities and agencies, all of which come with their own rules and restrictions — and the possibility that they will fall through.

Although Juarez-Infante has been on the job for only a month, he is familiar with Anthony's water infrastructure and construction projects. For more than two decades, he served as a vice president at Wilson and Company, the engineering contractor responsible for multiple projects in the municipality, including the Adams Park project.

Juarez-Infante has stated he left the company at the end of April, shortly before Anthony Mayor Diana Murillo selected him as the interim city manager. The position had been vacant since February.

Dos Lagos Golf Course

A mile and a half away from the Adams ballpark, a transformation is also underway on the ground that once held the 112-acre Dos Lagos Golf Course, which closed in January 2019 and was subsequently acquired by the city for $3.6 million.

The first phase of construction is underway in a plan to develop multiple facilities including an urgent care center on the city's north side.

Crews have begun work on a $1.5 million facility, or $2.2 million including infrastructure, planned as a "multigenerational center," or multipurpose space for family services and programs, often including fitness and recreational attractions. The city plans multiple meeting spaces and educational facilities for arts instruction, workforce training and continuing education.

The master plan envisions a community college that includes early college and nursing degree programs.

The city has also obtained federal funding to design and build a 2,685-square-foot urgent care facility, bringing medical services and jobs into a community where the closest urgent care is 26 miles away.

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The grant, issued by the U.S. Economic Development Administration and matched with local funds, came from federal COVID-19 dollars. Anthony's application was developed with the help of state Rep. Doreen Gallegos, D-Las Cruces, who welcomed news of the grant last year by stating, "...a campus that will be an economic engine for the city of Anthony and the surrounding communities will be a critical factor for this area."

Additional facilities under the master plan for Dos Lagos, still in search of funding, include court facilities and $35 million in additional recreational facilities, roadways, drainage improvements and other infrastructure.

Juarez-Infante described the projects as the outcome of a determination by Anthony's mayor and trustees, past and present, that "every citizen in this community and in the region deserves facilities as good or better than El Paso, Phoenix or Albuquerque."

Algernon D'Ammassa can be reached at 575-541-5451, adammassa@lcsun-news.com or @AlgernonWrites on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on Las Cruces Sun-News: Two transformations underway in Anthony reflect border city's ambition