After county commissioners discussed the Pegasus Project, a mock city development plan, during Tuesday's county commissioners' meeting, commissioners voted to approve supporting the economic development agreement between neighboring Luna County and CITE Development, LLC.

"It's really important as counties that co-exist on the border to collaborate with each other," Luna County Manager Kelly Kuenstler said.

"We've seen a lot of our economic development concentrated on the border down in the El Paso/Santa Teresa area and what we're wanting to see is that development going north," Dona Ana County Commissioner Chair Karen Perez said.

The Pegasus Project will be constructed as a kind of ghost town, meaning it will have the same features and amenities of a medium-sized community but no people will actually live there. It will be used to test innovations in green energy, homeland security and intelligent transportation systems.

The Pegasus Project is expected to bring in between 350-375 permanent jobs and 300 temporary jobs to Dona Ana and Luna Counties, according to Kuenstler.

Those jobs include positions in research and construction.

"The long-term jobs definitely are good for the local people," construction worker Allen Orchard said.

The problem is that the project isn't yet guaranteed to happen, especially since plans for it have fallen through twice already.

CITE, the company backing Pegasus, previously planned to place the mock city near the Las Cruces airport and later in Hobbs. 

Now it's planned to sit east of Deming in Luna County and will stretch on to a Dona Ana County road, called C1.

Pegasus is proposing privatizing that Dona Ana County road that goes into the project site but that will be something Dona Ana County commissioners will need to vote on first.