McKinley County holds public presentation on trade port
By Molly Ann Howell
Managing Editor
During the 2025 legislative session, Rep. Patty Lundstrom introduced House Bill 19, the Trade Ports Development Act. After it passed both the House and the Senate, and Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed it into law, HB 19 opened the doors for cities to become trade ports.
Now that the bill has become law, Gallup business partners and lawmakers are moving to make Gallup’s trade port a reality.
In a previous interview with the Sun, Lundstrom explained why trade ports could be beneficial for New Mexico, calling them an economic development driver.
“We’ve had a lot of trouble over the years, and even still do today, with supply chain distribution,” she said. “We have to figure out a way in this country where we can unload and distribute cargo coming from outside the U.S. quicker than we currently are.”
QUALIFICATIONS OF A TRADE PORT
But what is a trade port?
During a Feb. 5 news conference, Rep. Patty Lundstrom described those trade ports as essentially industrial parks specifically designed to facilitate the distribution and processing of goods. Customs agents, for example, would be on-site to process shipments, she said.
To become a trade post, an area must have interstate access, railroads and airports.
Trade ports in Los Angeles and New York handle a wide variety of goods, including raw materials, manufactured goods, agricultural products, and consumer goods. Specifically, items like iron, coal, electronics, appliances, grains, fruits, and vegetables, are all items that are shipped in and out of the U.S. through trade ports.
McKinley County’s trade port is reportedly going to find its home at the Energy Logistics Park, which is near Carbon Coal Road in Gallup, north of Interstate 40.
Lundstrom said she’s been working on the Trade Ports Development Act for two years. But Jeff Kiely, who has been working with Lundstrom and other partners behind the scenes to make the trade port a reality, said the project has actually been in the works for about 12 years now.
Kiely began working in the regional and economic development sector in 1990. He worked under Lundstrom when she worked as the Executive Director of the Northwest New Mexico Council of Governments and then took over the position when she left the organization in 2009.
He retired from the NWNMCOG in 2019 and has been doing his own consulting ever since. He now works with the county and the Greater Gallup Economic Development Corporation as a consultant. Lundstrom, of course, is the Executive Director of GGEDC.
Kiely has been helping community leaders with the trade port project, and he was the facilitator for a May 15 roundtable held by GGEDC and McKinley County. The roundtable, held during Economic Development Week, gave contractors and subcontractors a chance to present the project to the public.
In an interview with the Sun, Kiely said the project is finally coming out of the planning and development stage, and now the team behind it is moving into the “pure planning process.”
“If you’re growing a field of corn, you don’t just push down into the Earth and pull out the corn stalk in one fell swoop,” Kiely said. “The seeds are planted [and] now we’re implementing the garden so to speak.”
WHAT COMES NEXT?
Now, the committee behind the project, which includes representatives from BNSF and Gallup Land Partners, is looking at the studies that have been done over the last couple years and figuring out the next steps.
Both the Trade Ports Development Act and the Site Readiness Act, which were passed during the 2025 Legislative Session, help the committee take steps to achieve their goal by opening up funding opportunities for critical infrastructure.
Kiely said the next step will be assembling a team to raise the funding. The team will include a local team of experts and grant writers who will all work toward filing a funding application.
“We don’t think the state will be soliciting that funding until late summer/early fall, but we’re wanting to be first in the door,” Kiely said. “So we’re already working on translating those plans into a step-by-step development proposal.”
As for a final price tag, Kiely put the number for the final project in the “dozens of millions” of dollars range.
WHEN WILL THE TRADE PORT BE UP AND RUNNING?
Kiely said he couldn’t pinpoint an exact “open for business” day for the trade port. Instead, the port will develop over a multitude of years.
The committee behind the project currently has about six companies that are currently under confidential agreements at the moment, but they have all reportedly shown interest in working in the Gallup community.
But before they can bring companies in to work on the trade port, the county has to work on getting the infrastructure up and running.
THE PUBLIC’S REACTION
Kiely said that the public can sometimes react negatively toward industrial development like the trade port, But overall, he said the McKinley County community has been nothing but positive toward the project.
“Sometimes when you’re doing industrial development you get pushback,” he said. “People asking if you’re going to pollute or if you’re just going to build just another industrial-looking place. We didn’t get that kind of pushback.”
He stressed that McKinley County and GGEDC is trying to be different than what people might expect from a trade port by focusing on sustainable industrial development that boosts the local economy. It prioritizes high-wage manufacturing jobs and the production of goods and services for export, which brings revenue and wealth into the community. The goal is to grow the area’s industrial base while also embracing green practices and decarbonizing transportation.
“It’s industrial in all of that sense, but we’re also trying to self-identify as sustainable, looking for sustainable industry, thinking green, and decarbonizing the transportation corridors that run through us,” Kiely said.
