At the most recent meeting of the Winslow City Council, two measures were passed that get the ball rolling on the creation of a plan for the I-40 tradeport. These two measures do not commit the city to developing the tradeport once they are done with the planning phase, and there is a method for withdrawal from the plan for Winslow if the city ultimately decides this isn’t right for them.

The first thing passed was what the council had tabled in their second meeting in May, which was a commitment to a public coalition to develop a plan for the tradeport and the I-40 corridor at large. This plan includes only public partnerships with entities like Bernalillo County, City of Kingman, City of Albuquerque, Village of Los Lunas, N.M., and a few others. This coalition would be managed by Bernalillo County; they would be in charge of the acceptance of all grant dollars and then distributing them to the other partners. This coalition at this time is only committing to raising money for the planning phase to fully vet this as an idea and see if it’s something they will want to develop.

The contract introduces a timeline for when they expect to have certain plans finished by; plans include logistics and systems, market development, revenue projections, community engagement plans, and site-specific plans. Most of these coming together within 12 months according to the document. Trish Stuhan, the City of Winslow’s attorney, spoke in the meeting last month and last week’s meeting to tell the council that this does not prevent Winslow from backing out of this plan once it is in place, also that this is not a commitment with any private partners at this time. The city will enter into the coalition to combine resources to vet the potential for something that would become a major infrastructure project for the country. That is why the city is still looking for as much public input as possible, people are still able to send in applications on the city’s website so the city can reinstate their citizen planning and zoning commission.

The other measure passed at the meeting was a commitment of $77,000 for lobbying efforts associated with the plan. They chose lobbyists different from the city’s own lobbyists because they need someone with more connections in multiple states and D.C., and according to Winslow City Manager David Coolidge, their current lobbyists mostly work in Arizona. However, $77,000 would be a small amount of money in the long run if this plan were to come to town. This plan is predicted to have more than a billion dollars in infrastructure upgrades alone, which would see Winslow make their investment back seemingly rather quickly.

This leads to the other major update the city saw with the tradeport last week. The I-40 tradeport coalition was awarded the US Department of Transportation RAISE grant. Winslow Mayor Birdie Cano told The Tribune that approximately $4.1 million of the $15 million awarded will go to Winslow, which will exclusively be used for the development of the Lindbergh Parkway, which would be the bypass that would allow trucks to go straight from the I-40 to highway 87 without disturbing the downtown area which can become congested with trucks. Coolidge remarked in a recent public meeting that this parkway has been on the city’s wishlist long before the city had ever heard the word tradeport.

These updates leave the city with a lot of work to do to vet the potential of a plan, were it to go through, is guaranteed to change Winslow forever. This would likely double or triple the size of the town and figuring out how to expand with minimal growing pains is the city’s next biggest hurdle.