Business briefs - May 2

Invenergy, Xcel plan open house

PORTALES - Invenergy, the developer of the Sagamore Wind Project, and Xcel Energy will be answering questions today about the new wind farm southeast of Portales at an open house 5-7 p.m. at the Yam Theater in Portales.

Xcel Energy announced in March it plans to purchase the Sagamore Wind Project from Invenergy and build out a 522-megawatt wind generating facility for the benefit of regional Xcel Energy customers.

Sagamore will be the largest wind energy facility in New Mexico when completed in 2020. The proposal is conditional upon approval from regulators in both New Mexico and Texas.

Xcel Energy is also proposing to purchase three wind development projects in Texas. The company expects this new wind generation will save customers $2.8 billion over 30 years by displacing higher-cost fossil fuel generation.

Cricket Wireless opens in Portales

PORTALES - A new Cricket Wireless store opened last week at 1000 West Second Street in Portales.

Cricket is a subsidiary of AT&T Inc.

The store provides phone plans with no annual contracts and unlimited talk and text nationwide with all plans, as well as smart phones for a 4G LTE network.

Store hours are 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday and 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday.

New car wash coming to Clovis

CLOVIS - Champion Xpress car wash, a family-owned business out of Lubbuck, is set to have the new location at 3101 North Prince Street up and running by the first week of July.

"We travel to New Mexico often," said Derrick Merchant, co-owner of Champion Xpress, "and we noticed Clovis was under-served with our model (of car wash)."

The new car wash location will use less water per vehicle compared to an individual washing their own car. This is because the business uses recycled water.

It will be an automatic wash with staff spraying each vehicle before it is put through the conveyer-run wash. Staff will also dry each vehicle at the end of the wash. The location will also provide 15 free vacuums for customer use.

The car wash will be open from 8 a.m.-8 p.m. seven days a week.

Champion Xpress has eight locations, including in Roswell, Plainview and Lubbock.

Prince Street will also have a new pet supply store soon.

Petsmart, despite 10 days' worth of weather delays is set to be complete in mid-August.

Nick Makowski, the project manager from Phoenix based DG Fenn Construction company, said the work on the new building started in February and has always been scheduled to be finished in August.