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November 30, 2021 Nuclear-weapons-oriented "innovation triangle" developments, tax changes, pitched to NM legislature
Dear friends -- We have said that the proposed expansion of Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), including but not limited to $18 billion (B) in plutonium warhead core ("pit") production expenses planned for this decade, would badly damage Los Alamos, Santa Fe, and the region, and do so in a comprehensive way. The social, political, economic, and environmental impacts of deeper nuclear colonization involve a sea-change in identity and culture. A sea-change is also in store for LANL. Industrial pit production is a nearly impossible mission at LANL for many reasons. Some of the difficulties lie in LANL's location, others in the limited regional workforce and training available. Still others lie in LANL itself. To solve some of its external problems, LANL hopes to leverage private efforts, State funds, and various forms of local governmental and tribal support to enhance its worker "pipeline" and to provide housing and targeted education for its workers. This letter provides background and talking points that may be helpful to citizens, activists, and journalists regarding LANL's informal partnership with one active developer, John Rizzo, who in turn is an active sales agent to an elite network of movers and shakers, to local governments, and to the legislature -- without bringing LANL and its controversial, dangerous missions into the discussion. Buzzwords and euphemisms are used instead -- especially, "innovation." Rizzo's company is called "New Mexico Innovation Triangle," a name originally provided by LANL's Deputy Director Kelly Beierschmitt prior to July 20, 2019 (email of that date from John Rizzo to Rich Brown, City of Santa Fe Economic Development Director, and several others). As always, those who want to special favors from government in New Mexico always tell their elected audiences they will create "jobs." In this case, this developer believes his projects will add a total of about 165,000 new jobs (25,000 direct and the balance indirect; see the legislative presentation below). If, that is, he is properly subsidized. It sounds laughable, but for Santa Fe and Los Alamos it is very serious. What's somewhat unusual about this effort is its boldness, which includes changing the tax code to favor investors like him as well as those who will rent from his company. Where would these renters work? For now and the foreseeable future, they will work mostly at LANL. LANL is the "anchor tenant" in his virtual "mall" and the only one of any size. What will these workers do? What LANL workers mostly do, and will always mostly do: work on nuclear weapons. At the moment and for the foreseeable future, these developments are mostly housing for LANL's pit factory, not to put too fine a point on it. Background On Sunday morning, May 5, 2019, serial entrepreneur John Rizzo met with his invited guests over brunch to discuss the future of New Mexico -- specifically, technology "triangles and villages." From an email* Rizzo sent to them, these guests included:
Other meetings followed with other guests that included Rich Brown at the City of Santa Fe, State Senator Michael Padilla, Paul Laur of Pebble Labs, Daniel Hernandez (program manager for the City's Midtown project), and others. Rizzo and his wife hosted their guests in a brand-new, award-winning multi-million-dollar "Grand Hacienda," half a mile from the Las Campanas clubhouse. The fact that Rizzo's development ideas were developed and discussed in secret, with some of the most influential people in northern New Mexico, tells us a great deal about the nature, quality, and purposes of those plans. As does the venue for his sales pitch, which I for one hesitate to call a "home." According to the well-informed Santa Fe New Mexican (SFNM), the couple had not yet actually moved to New Mexico at that point ("20 who will make news in 2020," 12/31/2019). Despite living here only on weekends, he's already broken bread with many in Santa Fe’s mover-and-shaker crowd. Rizzo reportedly had been "evaluating Santa Fe as a potential innovation center" since 2015, "noting the housing shortage, lack of modern office space, no major university and limited venture capital" ("Silicon Valley executive enters midtown campus derby," Teya Vitu, SFNM, 12/10/2019). The time was not right for him back then. I would like to insert some comments here. John F. Rizzo, who heads the Santa Fe Innovation Village team and was thought to be a serious contender, said he’s in discussions to potentially collaborate with three other master developers that may make the short list. One of those "things in play" became apparent in March of this year, when Rizzo announced plans to develop a 140-acre site in southwest Santa Fe ("Innovation Village aims to combine tech sector, housing in Santa Fe," Teya Vitu, SFNM, March 29, 2021). To make his plan work, Rizzo sought "to apply Midtown LINC (Local Innovation Corridor overlay district) components to his project, such as a streamlined development process, more modernized architecture and increased density that would allow for a 75-foot height limit." The city’s economic development director, Rich Brown, is a believer. He would be, having discussed it privately the year before at Rizzo's house, as did the Mayor. He sees "Rizzo’s project [as] adding to the patchwork of innovation centers sprouting around the city" [?]. Rizzo’s project, he added, would fit nicely in an innovation hub with Los Alamos and Albuquerque. “We think of the three cities as part of an innovation triangle just like you have in North Carolina,” Brown said. “It’s innovation place-making of the future. It’s building a corridor in Santa Fe that helps us recruit companies and create jobs.” ... “Why don’t we build a tech economy so I have something to do?” Rizzo said. “Could we build an innovation economy in Santa Fe?” ...Rizzo has partnered with heavy hitters for his innovation triangle with the San Francisco-based global architecture firm Gensler and the Chicago-based global real estate and investment management firm JLL. ... JLL buys, builds, occupies and invests in industrial, commercial, retail, residential and hotel real estate. “They are raising the capital,” Rizzo said. “It’s going to be hundreds of millions of dollars over 10 years.” Meanwhile Rizzo's company, New Mexico Innovation Triangle (NMIT), LLC, which incorporated in May of 2019, had been active in Los Alamos, negotiating with Kroger to buy the Mari Mac Village Shopping Center in the center of town. According to Los Alamos County Council Chair Sara Scott, that shopping center would be demolished and redeveloped by NMIT ("Scott: Mari Mac Village Shopping Center Under Contract," Los Alamos Reporter (LAR), June 3, 2020). Eight business tenants would be evicted. Another business had mysteriously been prevented from opening in a vacant space on this site by the County, a matter which is still being litigated. We (LASG) fought these highway plans in Washington, DC, as well as locally. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) nixed them. "Not one dime" of taxpayer money was going to any such bridge and highway, OMB decided, as we were told by a colleague present. Returning to the Hilltop House, now apparently an orphaned part of what had been a much larger plan, the County Fire Marshal found that the property, still unsecured in late September after the Fire Marshal's June letter, to be a "clear and inimical threat to human life, safety" and issued an order requiring NMIT to finally secure the property and prepare for its demolition by no later than March 30, 2022 ("Fire Marshal Takes Action On Former Hilltop House Hotel Property," LAR, October 20, 2021). With no response from Rizzo or NMIT, Los Alamos County held a special session "to discuss a resolution declaring the former Hilltop House a menace to the public comfort, health, peace, and safety and ordering the removal of the building along with associated ruins, rubbish, wreckage and debris from the County" ("County Council To Vote On Hilltop House Resolution During Special Virtual Meeting Friday Afternoon," October 27, 2021). LAR was able to reach Rizzo, who stated that "he is traveling and was unaware of the proposed resolution." The resolution passed. NMIT objected without providing why or further details, and so a special hearing by the Los Alamos County Council is planned for December 3 ("County Schedules Hearing On NMIT’s Objection To Resolution On Former Hilltop House Property Requiring Removal Of Building," LAR, November 16, 2021). Should NMIT fail in its appeal and fail to demolish the buildings and remove the debris, the County could obtain a court order to do so itself, placing a lien on the property for reasonable costs and if necessary foreclosing on the property as provided in statute. It is unclear why NMIT and Rizzo would maintain such a hazard and fail to respond to County warnings. Presumably there will be some answers at the hearing this Friday, December 3. Back in Santa Fe, NMIT's plans required overcoming Santa Fe's height restrictions, as noted above. In the summer of 2021, City Councilors Roman “Tiger” Abeyta and Signe Lindell were persuaded to introduce a bill that would excuse “qualifying innovation projects” and “qualifying innovation village projects” from the height restrictions in the City's land development code ("Growing like weeds? Many Santa Feans worry taller buildings will proliferate," Sean Thomas, SFNM, July 25, 2021). As the author noted, "building heights have long been a sensitive topic in Santa Fe, and if history is any guide, agreement on the proposal is far from assured." The two sponsors held back the measure "for further discussion, clarification and outreach." By late November of this year, “Tiger” Abeyta was a lame duck councilor and Signe Lindell, who was reelected, had withdrawn her sponsorship for the targeted exemption bill. On the morning of November 18, the day of the Planning Commission meeting at which the proposed bill was the only item on the agenda, Abeyta withdrew his bill, which would have allowed “qualifying innovation projects” and “qualifying innovation village projects” to build up to 75 ft in height ("Proposal withdrawn to relax limits on building heights in parts of Santa Fe," Sean Thomas, SFNM, November 18, 2021). It appears likely the proposal was withdrawn to avoid on-the-record defeat. Rizzo's latest plan The alert Los Alamos Reporter noticed that Rizzo had presented the latest iteration of his "innovation triangle" plans to the Legislature’s Revenue Stabilization & Tax Policy Committee on November 22, 2021 ("Rizzo Indicates Two ‘Innovation Villages’ Planned For Los Alamos In Presentation To Legislators," LAR, November 26, 2021) There are now two "innovation villages" planned for Los Alamos, a 7-story behemoth located on about 10 acres in the eastern heart of downtown Los Alamos (slide 19), "Los Alamos Innovation Village -- East," and a mysterious "Los Alamos Innovation Village -- West" (slide 18) of unknown size. Apart from the former Hilltop House, NMIT does not own any of this property.
Rizzo's "preliminary master plan" for his Santa Fe development (slide 21, zoom for details) is presented in more detail than previously:
A fourth "innovation village" is supposedly to be located in the Mesa del Sol development in Albuquerque (slide 23). There is no precise indication of precisely where it would be, or what it would entail. Satellite "innovation hubs" would or could, in Rizzo's vision, be located in Springer, Vaughn, Taos, Tierra Amarillo, Cuba, Farmington, Gallup, Grants, and Belen (slide 24). Really. No minutes or video are available from Rizzo's testimony at this time. According to the vigilant LAR, Rizzo told the legislature that his "strategy is to build these three innovation villages which are highly dense work/play environments to essentially create new capital formation initiatives to bring new start-ups to the state and to encourage people in the state who are bright and have a lot of energy to start their own companies which are great job creators, to transform and help the education system, create more graduates that could work in these companies and also most importantly, to prevent the young people that grew up in New Mexico and have been here for centuries from feeling they have to leave the state because they can’t get a good job or can’t find a place to live.” The real meat of Rizzo's legislative pitch lies in a package of proposed tax exemptions, credits, and subsidies (slide 31) as well as infrastructure investments, specifically:
He would like an "integrated program" of state subsidies with "a narrow focus on job, education, tax incentives" that focuses on six industrial sectors (slide 39) that is "completely integrated and aligned across education and industry," including LANL (slide 40). These six sectors are:
Five of these six are of interest to LANL. Not mentioned: plutonium pit production, LANL's fastest-growing program. Rizzo never uses words like "nuclear" or "plutonium" even though these missions comprise more than 80% of LANL's work and are the major driver of LANL's needs for new housing in the region. The bottom line (slide 45) is that Rizzo would like to see, in his six named technology areas,
Concluding harsh comments There is nothing altruistic here. Basically, it seems that Rizzo believes he can make a huge, narcissistic splash here in this state because we are all greedy rubes, or so he thinks. We are seen as a colony in other words, with no independent destiny or sovereignty; a region peripheral to centers, especially financial centers, elsewhere. His huge developments would sit at the entrances to two cities, proclaiming to all who enter that he is the greatest mover and shaker of them all, a kind of king. It's a con. His diagnosis of New Mexico's problems is wrong as noted above, and tailored to the specific subsidies and rule exemptions he wants. His answer to the problems he names is basically a variation of "if you build it they will come." Why would they come? They won't. Well, they might come to work at LANL. For a while. And why would our northern New Mexico towns want all that growth -- his 165,000 or so jobs -- assuming that ever happened? Where would the water come from? This plan is based on resource-crisis denial and climate-change denial -- as is LANL's. But above all it's based on ignoring the poor and any comprehensive social contract and policy. It's very targeted, as he says -- on his vision and what it needs to succeed. These "villages" [sic] are not just buildings. They comprise, as LANL's Beierschmitt said in 2019, a plan for the whole region -- and not just a development plan but with the tax changes and targeted subsidies, a very specific economic plan and therefore also a social plan, that would complement LANL in five out of six foci, with the unstated nuclear component the largest of all. With Rizzo doing it, LANL's fingerprints are kept away. It's also a plan to further shift power to wealthy elites by changing the tax code to favor developers like himself and his technology-workforce renters, while decreasing public participation in zoning and building height decisions. It's carpetbagging. The infrastructure needed to serve his developments (e.g. a RailRunner link between "innovation villages") is going to expensive. We need more mass transit, but transit investments need to be made more democratically. These subsidized tech ghettos would not rank highest on the list of needs. Talk about throwing the poor "under the bus." By the way, the Brookings study he cites (slide 10) says innovation clusters cannot easily be started in places in Santa Fe. In other words, the study says the opposite of what his slides and proposals imply. Public investments to create innovation clusters in adverse locations would be wasted, though profitable to those who could get out in time. Like many others before him, Rizzo misunderstands or misrepresents the nature of LANL, thinking it is a sort of generic "high tech" institution. It is, fundamentally, a top-secret nuclear military enclave, that also does other national security missions. The small remainder is largely window-dressing. It is possible that the Los Alamos component (for which NMIT aka Rizzo does not actually own the land) is unnecessary and could even be a feint, or at a minimum less certain. The same goes for the (remote, isolated) Mesa del Sol. Santa Fe is a different story. To us, the Santa Fe tech "village" pretty much implies a new highway to LANL, down the line. He wants a new Railrunner stop immediately, of course. Meanwhile Rizzo is maintaining a clear public hazard in Los Alamos (Hilltop House), and appealing the County's order to tear that fire-trap down. If student debt is forgiven or converted to a lower interest rate there will be conditions on the length of service required. It is very reasonable to do this for much-needed public service jobs, but why should society put its thumb on the labor market scale to favor LANL and its nuclear weapons jobs in this way, or for that matter the entertainment industry? There will be a length-of-service requirement, which will conveniently create a class of semi-indentured servants -- servants of The Bomb, in most cases. And then what? Will they stay? Will these developments provide roots for them, or the family-oriented, single-family dwellings many of them will soon want? Will these be local people? Perhaps a few. But five words we did not hear in 5 hours of LANL presentations on their infrastructure plans in August 2019 were "Espanola," "Chimayo," and "Rio Arriba County." Who will own these innovation villages? Rizzo says JLL will raise "hundreds of millions" for his Santa Fe project. How could Santa Fe or Los Alamos governments ever control these developments? We see secret dealing already. We think this would more or less destroy the cities of Santa Fe and Los Alamos. Greg and Trish |
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