This story was originally published by City Desk ABQ, a local nonprofit daily newsroom covering local government, politics and more. If you like this story, please support local, independent journalists like these by reading more and donating today at citydesk.org
By Damon Scott
It’s known as a dilapidated part of the city, but it wasn’t always so. Today the stretch of San Mateo Boulevard near Gibson Boulevard to Copper Avenue — like much of the International District — seems to feature as many shuttered storefronts as open ones. Few nearby services are available to neighborhood residents, resulting in longer trips for food, prescriptions and other necessities.
But some hope has emerged near the intersection of San Mateo Boulevard and Kathryn Avenue SE as city-owned land is beginning to be developed.
The new headquarters of Albuquerque Community Safety opened May 31 at 1210 San Mateo Blvd. SE, and just to the north are a handful of artist-decorated shipping containers that previously hosted vendors in a marketplace setting.
The marketplace idea has stalled, and city officials said they’re evaluating options for the site.
But most exciting for neighborhood residents is the roughly 3-acres just north of the shipping containers at 1100 San Mateo Blvd. SE, where previous businesses and a shopping center once stood. The city’s Metropolitan Redevelopment Agency has been soliciting ideas from surrounding neighborhoods on what they’d like to see developed at the site.
Residents have given their input before — for many years and under multiple city administrations. But this time they’re optimistic that plans will materialize quickly — and none too soon.
“I’ve been in this neighborhood for 34 years and the overall decline in community services has been drastic,” said Janet Simon, president of the Parkland Hills Neighborhood Association.
Simon said residents have been sharing images on social media of the area from the 1950s and 1960s when a healthier mix of small businesses were booming, including at the former Parkland Hills Shopping Center. In more recent memory, the area has had a series of hard hits, including the 2007 closure of the nearby Lovelace Medical Center-Gibson, which displaced hundreds of employees and the financial crisis of 2008.
“[The area] was fully sort of abandoned around 2015,” Simon said, adding that the Covid-19 pandemic was a “tipping point.”
What residents want
As small businesses have folded, the need for services and amenities has increased.
Representatives of area neighborhood associations such as Parkland Hills, South San Pedro and Elder Homestead say the potential of the 3-acre site for residents shouldn’t be underestimated.
“We believe that a huge part of what happened to this entire business sector to some extent revolved around this property,” Simon said.
Residents appear to be on the same page when it comes to what is most important: some mix of daycare, hair salon, grocery, pharmacy, fitness-wellness, restaurant, retail and green spaces.
Tawnya Mullen, board chair of the South San Pedro Neighborhood Association, said residents don’t want just any business though.
“We’re really interested in building the character of the neighborhood and increasing local job creation,” Mullen said. “We’d rather not see some big outside corporation come in, but want opportunities for our local business owners to be able to operate from that site.”
She said residents are open to a strip mall-style development, but with stipulations.
“As long as we had a focus on renting to local businesses and not chains that are more extractive and taking money out of the community, not bringing it back in,” Mullen said.
Simon said a fitness center would be a welcome addition. She said Defined Fitness considered opening a location at the site years ago.
“Because those [businesses] clearly tend to get people out in the community, and it’s good for everybody’s health,” Simon said. “But certainly restaurants and places where people can get some form of prepared food are needed.”
Time for more ideas
Meanwhile, the city has teed up incentives for developers and business entities to submit proposals for the site.
Terry Brunner, the Metropolitan Redevelopment Agency director, said a request for proposals (RFP) will be issued after his staff goes through the feedback and ideas from an active request for ideas process that ends Sept. 18. He’s met with neighborhood associations in recent months.
“We’ve got a couple ideas that have come along and we’re looking for more — we’ll use those ideas to craft the formal RFP for the property,” Brunner said. “We’ll see what those responses look like and how complex they are.”
Brunner said the RFP would likely be issued sometime in October.