New Mexico Development

Growing Pains for Santa Fe?

By Sharon Fisher, 9-16-08

Two major development projects are opening up in Santa Fe this week: the Railyards, a brownfield project turning an old rail yard into a park and retail center, and the Santa Fe Convention Center, which is having a preview in advance of its grand opening next month with a series of free concerts sponsored by an organization, the homophobic views of which have caused Santa Fe’s mayor to pull out of the event.

The Railyards is a redevelopment project more than twenty years in the making and is a great example of citizens standing up for their own vision, rejecting attempts to bulldoze the area and turn it into commercial developments by Cattelus, an agency created by the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad (the same organization that developed the Mission Bay project in San Francisco).

While the project featured unprecedented neighborhood involvement and coalitions between a variety of public and private groups, now that the project is finished, there are some mixed feelings, with some people wondering whether the Railyard will be seen as “just another part of Santa Fe taken over by the elite with the poor and middle class Santa Feans again discouraged from the area by high prices.”

Some residents criticize the development for offering little housing. However, the facility features a 10-acre park, a farmer’s market, and a great deal of emphasis on the nearly 400-year-old city’s history, particularly on the Acequia Madre, a series of irrigations ditches that date back to the 17th century. It is also hoped that more housing will be added as time goes on.

Part of the Railyards project was an emphasis on retaining train service to Santa Fe, which will come to fruition later this year, when the Rail Runner Express commuter rail service between Santa Fe and Albuquerque will begin.

The Santa Fe Community Convention Center, scheduled to open formally in October 2008, is open this week for Revive Santa Fe, a week’s worth of free concerts sponsored by a Dallas organization. However, after being alerted to the fact that the event’s website listed the “homosexual ‘explosion’” as one of six indicators “towards the path of national destruction”—a sentiment that did not go over well in Santa Fe, which reportedly has a same-sex couple population of 1.7%, second only to San Francisco—Mayor David Coss decided not to speak at the event.

The situation puts a shadow on the opening of the 72,000-square-foot convention center, which was intended to be one of the “greenest” ever—an important factor in Santa Fe—by being built on the site of the previous convention center and using a great deal of recycled material. 

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