After sizeable grant, Sidney Paul Gordon Shooting Range expanding and improving parking

The Sidney Paul Gordon (SPG) Shooting Range at 19 Rock Cliff Road in La Luz, New Mexico was awarded a $100,000 grant by the Economic Development Department of New Mexico to expand range grounds and improve parking.

Improvements at the SPG shooting range began with the construction of five additional shooting bays and improvements to the parking lot within the long-distance rifle range area. Mesa Verde Enterprises, a La Luz-based construction company, was contracted to complete the upgrades.

The SPG shooting range that was first built in 1992 and featured just two ranges, a 50-yard range and the 200-yard range with some safety difficulties.

Range Director Mark Douglas the original range did not feature as many berms as it now does. Berms, which are rounded mounds of dirt and soil, are used to stop projectiles from striking outside certain ranges.

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Douglas said the Mesa Verde team began moving dirt, mesquite and loose gravel to mounds in order to finish the berm around the upcoming 400-yard range. He said the ground will also be flattened throughout to improve parking.

"Our parking spaces for each range vary. At the 400-yard range, you could only fit two to three cars before it was too crowded," Douglas said. "Now, we hope to fit six to eight, maybe even 10 cars, if possible, before we were lucky to have three little Honda civics to fit."

The range has not been upgraded since 2012. Douglas said he is eager to see it grow to accommodate more community members.

Among one of the recent changes to the range was the gift of a trailer which is used as a classroom, Douglas said. Monies from the grant were used to apply a fresh coat of paint inside and out of the trailer, create a wheelchair-access ramp and furnish the interior.

The classroom is used for seminars, events and classes hosted by outside organizations like local law enforcement.

"We'll use the classroom for a lot of the events we host and if say, local border patrol needs to teach a class on gun safety, or someone needs to be certified we can host those here," Chelsie Zimmerman, chief range safety officer for SPG shooting range, said.

Zimmerman offers a range of classes and events throughout the year for community members to learn about gun safety. She said in many cases the area is used for group training or team building by outside organizations.

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Zimmerman and Douglas both said that sometimes the range may be used by just a few people depending on the season, though they expect that the improvements will draw more visitors.

"So, these projects are multi-phased, right now the first phase is to work on the parking on the existing bay which is improving and phase two will be to move the firing lane further back," Zimmerman said.

Both also expected that the improvements would result in more interest from potential volunteers for the facility which is primarily staffed by citizens who give their time to the facility. Most volunteers and all new hires become certified by the National Rifle Association (NRA) as a range safety officer, which is a minimum standard according to Douglas.

With so little staff, programs with their own safety officers will be allowed to use bays five through eight, while regular visitors can use bays one through four.

"If we open bays five through eight to the public it would require an additional staff members that we have to train and hire," Zimmerman said. "Now, that's not a problem but it's required for safety reasons. But for programs with independent instructors who tend to bring their own safety staff, those will be primarily reserved for them until we have enough staff to open it to the public."

The upgrades began in September and Douglas said the work may be completed by the end of December or beginning of January.

"After all these upgrades, we still have about another 15 acres we want to expand and add more to," Douglas said. "But this is a start and we're growing."

For more information on the SPG Shooting range and open hours during renovations visit the shooting range's Facebook page.

Juan Corral can be reached at JCorral@gannett.com or on X, formerly Twitter at @Juan36Corr.

This article originally appeared on Alamogordo Daily News: The Sidney Paul Gordon Shooting Range is adding more bays and growing