Pegasus Global Holdings wants to build a full-size ghost town in New Mexico called the Center for Innovation, Testing and Evaluation to serve as a huge research facility. The ghost town would include houses, office buildings, roads, utilities and other infrastructure found in a typical midsize American city, but it would be unoccupied except for scientists and workers. The ghost town would allow researchers to test new technologies and projects on an entire urban environment without disrupting people. Pegasus plans to design the ghost town over the next six months, break ground in June 2012, and have it operational by 2014.

1. Why does a tech company want to build ghost town in
New Mexico?
Pegasus Global Holdings wants to build a full-size city to be populated by — no
one. The company's planned New Mexico ghost town would be a huge research
facility where scientists could tinker with the mechanics of a house,
neighborhood or whole city without inconveniencing any humans.
A conceptual drawing of the Center for Innovation, Testing and Evaluation that is being planned by the
Pegasus Global Holdings in New Mexico. Pegasus hopes to break ground in June 2012 and have the city
up and running two years later.
To test a big project, you need a big lab. Pegasus Global Holdings, a technology development
company and frequent Defense Department contractor, is planning to take that idea to the
extreme: It recently announced plans to build an entire new working city in New Mexico —
complete with a downtown, suburban neighborhoods and outlying rural areas — for
scientists, government agencies and private companies to use as an enormous test bed for
"green" development and other projects. But there's one thing this town will lack: people.
The $200 million Center for Innovation, Testing and Evaluation would be built with all the
dressings of a typical midsize American city. There would be houses, office buildings, roads,
highways, gas stations, banks and even a shopping mall, all connected by working utilities
and telecommunications infrastructure. But no one would live there. The only people around
would be experimenters and workers in an underground control center who run all the city's
systems.
Over the next six months or so, Pegasus will figure out what technical systems the center
would have, design the town and then figure out just where in New Mexico it's going to build
it. Pegasus hopes to break ground in June 2012 and have the city up and running two years
later