All quiet on the Midtown front

By Kyle Land / Journal North
Sunday, January 17th, 2021 at 12:02am

The Midtown campus in Santa Fe, for the most part, still sits empty. (Eddie Moore/Albuquerque Journal)

Copyright © 2021 Albuquerque Journal

All was calm on a clear, but chilly, Thursday morning on the Midtown campus, the 64-acre property in the heart of Santa Fe that represents some of the city’s most ambitious development plans and, by extension, its future. And on this winter day in the midst of a pandemic that has put a lot of things on hold, many buildings sat empty and weeds had grown tall in sections of the campus.

But information about the Midtown campus project – a multi-year plan to redevelop the former college campus for a variety of commercial, residential, employment and artistic opportunities – has been nearly as quiet the past several months.

Behind the scenes, representatives with both the developers and the city of Santa Fe say the COVID-19 pandemic has complicated several aspects of the widely discussed project, including the ability to interact with the public on the project.

The pandemic, and its rippling effects on the local economy, has delayed much of the planning process so far, according to several people familiar with the project.

Representatives from KDC Real Estate Development and Investments/Cienda Partners – the master developer selected to lead the project – and the city recently held a three-day meeting at which both sides discussed the status of all facets of the project.

James Feild, vice president of development at Cienda, said the Midtown project has proven to be incredibly complicated for a variety of reasons.

“It’s very, very complex,” he said. “It literally took three days of intense, facilitated discussion to get it all out there on the table.”

Feild and City Economic Development Director Rich Brown told the Journal many aspects of Midtown still need to be resolved.

“One of the things we’ve all had to wrestle with is there’s lots of things that are going to take more time than anyone expected going in,” said Feild, who declined to get into specifics.

Brown said one of the major hurdles is getting zoning changed. For some aspects to move forward, some areas of Midtown currently zoned residential may need to be changed to multi-use, a process estimated to take around 18 months. He also said both sides will need to address questions surrounding access, road infrastructure, electrical grids and deciding if buildings can be refurbished or should be torn down.

How these projects would be financed also needs to be addressed. Brown estimated the developer would need around $30 million in subsidies, something that can be difficult to secure due to the precarious nature of the current economy.

Exactly what will be on the campus when the project is completed remains unclear. The city previously said it hoped to include housing, and spaces for film, higher education and technology once the project is finished.

“The process we’re in right now is that we’re looking at what can be developed,” Brown said.

He said he expects ground will break on some Midtown projects in 18 months, although he couldn’t say which projects exactly.

But much of this hasn’t been detailed yet in any public forum, a format also impacted by the pandemic.

In the summer of 2020, KDC/Cienda and the city hosted a “Meet the Developer” series, where residents could ask questions of the developers regarding specific topics, such as housing and arts. The city also had biweekly Midtown updates, which were last updated June 17.

However, public engagement since then has dropped off dramatically.

Tim Castillo, an associate professor of architecture at the University of New Mexico working on the Midtown project, said there hasn’t been as much public input that either the city or the developer would like to have seen and that data on public thought hasn’t really been gathered in a formal way.

“That process has been a lot slower than we’d hoped,” Castillo said. “That’s probably one of the biggest shortcomings of the pandemic right now.”

Brown said there’s been a transitional period in public engagement between KDC and UNM’s Design and Planning Assistance Center, which will handle public engagement in the future. He said the city will be providing another update on Midtown in February.

Feild said it would be “premature” to start planning discussions with the public since the city and developers are still trying to figure out an overall plan.

Public engagement, or lack thereof, has previously been an issue with the Midtown Campus. Members of the public and some city councilors felt the selection process lacked transparency and that the public hadn’t been given enough time to weigh in on the decision.

The city purchased the campus in 2009, primarily renting it to the Santa Fe University of Art and Design, which shut its doors in 2018. Without a main tenant to offset costs, the city is making annual payments of about $2 million a year in debt service alone.

Another outstanding question is just how long KDC/Cienda will continue to be involved in the Midtown project, since the current negotiating agreement between KDC/Cienda and the city ends in May.

Brown said he expects KDC/Cienda’s work with the city to continue past that date, but added the pandemic and subsequent economic fallout has created additional risk for both sides to consider.

Feild declined to say if KDC/Cienda would extend its work with the city past May since it is still engaged in discussions with the city.