SAN LUIS: Three longtime tenants of the San Luis Industrial Park, located next to the U.S. Customs border crossing downtown, are planning to move to a new park at the commercial border port located about five miles to the east.
Mario Jauregui, owner of Spindle Cooling, said he and the other leaders of San Luis Commercial Operations Management anticipate their project at the Gary Magrino Industrial Park will bring 150 to 200 new jobs to the region.
Furthermore, he said, it could spur more of the kind of development needed to boost traffic at the newer, “tremendously underutilized” commercial border crossing, which opened in 2010 after the federal government spent tens of millions of dollars to build it. “In order to get the return on our investment we need to have new industries and new assets in that area,” he said.
The SLCOM group consists of Jauregui and his warehousing business; the RL Jones warehousing, insurance and border processing firm led by former state legislator Russ Jones; and Frank’s Service and Trucking LLC, owned by Frank Rascon.
It purchased 40 of the 220 acres at the nascent industrial park, now owned by the Greater Yuma Port Authority. Rascon is chairman of the Greater Yuma Port Authority governing board, and has abstained from any votes related to the purchase.
The $1 million transaction is now in escrow and expected to close in March. It also gives SLCOM the option to market an additional 30 acres at the new industrial park, and the group is already talking to possible buyers, Jauregui said.
“We could have a buyer by March,” he said.
Spindle Cooling has a 75-year lease with the Arizona State Land Department, which owns the San Luis Industrial Park at the heart of the city, but renegotiating the lease to eventually leave that property is worth it in order to be able to own the land the property sits on.
“It’s much easier to invest in the land when you own the property, it’s much easier to find financing for it,” he said.
Yuma County and the port authority have secured a $500,000 Rural Economic Development Grant to help pay for the cost of paving East County 25th Street east of Avenue E and extending water, power, sewer and other utilities to the site. The county will also apply $200,000 of the purchase price toward any additional costs to bring the road and services to the site.
County Administrator Robert Pickels, who sits on the port authority board, said the county should award the contracts for those jobs in the next couple of months, and needs to finish by Dec. 1 in order to keep the grant money.
He also wants to see it develop as quickly as it can, he said. “We want to create as many jobs as possible,” he said.
Jauregui said the three participating companies would begin setting up satellite operations out by the commercial port as soon as the road and utility projects are done, and have them fully operating by the end of 2016.
The ultimate plan is to relocate the entirety of all three businesses to the new park, he said, but other steps would need to happen, including finding a new use for the current industrial park.
“The worst thing that can happen is we would end up in both places,” he said.
