Rio Rancho as a viable city at City Center is forming before our eyes one business and organization at a time.

If you are not in the know, it is at the intersection of King Street and Unser Boulevard. There are four signposts with street signs with the city logo at each corner.

People passing through see the signs, and two buildings to their right or left depending on which way they are traveling. They look around and see the wide open land and open sky and wonder what’s going on. It is hard to believe that the prophecy of prosperity will become an eventuality.

As many have been saying about building everything out to the county line, it is, “in the middle of nowhere.”

Well, scoffers (and possibly ranters) will soon see the vision turn to foundations, roofs, and steel beam lines.

There is no holding back the building now...

Now, that the modern steel and glass structure of Rio Rancho City Hall and the Santa Ana Star Center have a central position, we hear that Hewlett Packard has now joined two hospitals, a university and college branch, a new elementary high school to call City Center home.

Hewlett Packard will provide 1,300 new jobs at the call and technical center.

Presbyterian and the University of New Mexico hospitals will immediately employ more than 1,200 as a total sum when they open in 2010. Years later, they will expand and employ even more residents.

And with two new higher education branches, countless more will be employed in technical or teaching fields.

Families and educated baby boomers, who still want to work or not, will be moving to Rio Rancho and changing the dynamics of the city even further.

They will volunteer to take city and board positions, they will help raise the quality of life here, and the children could stay to improve Rio Rancho for the next generation.

Yes, the now bare intersection will be bustling in the not to distant future.

New and not so new Rio Rancho residents are seeing into the future, and are buying houses in the two or three subdivisions at that location.

They will have a front seat view as Rio Rancho: the “City of Vision” emerges as the third- largest, and possibly the second-largest city in the near future.

New Mexico, here we come!