Things might have been very different. There might have been a hotel,
65-foot buildings separated by "view corridors," a shopping mall and two 1,000-car parking lots in the area around the Santa Fe railroad depot. The tracks would be gone, along with most of the old warehouses and any sense of the gritty, industrial vibe of the historic district.

If not for some farsighted Santa Feans.

As word leaked out in 1991 about the high-density proposal by the Catellus Development Corp., local people were shocked and saddened. "Is this what our town has come to?" they wondered. Many recalled how they came to the depot to send their sons off to military service or had summer jobs at railyard businesses when they were teenagers.

They didn't know exactly what to do about Catellus, but they didn't want the area demolished for another tourist-oriented development.

Ultimately they prevailed. And, in September, they celebrated the grand opening of the community-planned Railyard Park and Plaza, home to the Santa Fe Farmers Market, El Museo Cultural, other local nonprofits, galleries, restaurants and stores as well as a 10-acre park.

Credit goes to the people who participated in the design process; the city, which had the foresight to buy the property; the Trust for Public Land, which brokered the acquisition and built the park; and the nonprofit Santa Fe Railyard Community Corp., led since its founding in 1999 by Steven Robinson, a local architect.

Robinson, who moved to Santa Fe from New York in 1989, first heard about the proposal from a friend in New York whose firm had been hired by Catellus. The New York firm asked Robinson to be its local representative. He hesitated, thinking, "I can't do that; I'm just learning about the community."

Robinson started asking around and soon concluded that the plan Catellus was proposing was inappropriate for the area. He joined a group of opponents meeting at the community room at DeVargas Center. He's been actively involved ever since.

"Very few in the long history of this city have made a greater difference than Steve Robinson has made by shepherding through to its current conclusion the 50 acres of this marvelous Railyard," said Craig Barnes, a writer who has also served on the community corporation board since the beginning.

"Steve had a different vision, one of a public space that could be a gathering place for Santa Feans, that would retain its old warehouse authentic look, where our own citizens could enjoy the park, get on the train, go to performances, and where the legacy tenants who had been there for years could afford to remain and not be displaced by high-end tourist attractions and hotels," Barnes said.

Over the 17 years he has "attended more meetings, made more calls to the mayor's office and put out more financial fires than anyone can imagine," Barnes added.

John Utton, a Railyard developer, called the project "one of the most significant achievements in the history of the city of Santa Fe, and said, "Without Steve's leadership, vision, patience and diplomacy, the Railyard would have remained only an idea ... Now it is a reality — a careful mix of uses that both caters to important community needs and represents a new edginess and direction for Santa Fe."

In 1991, the Neighborhood Coalition, of which Robinson was a founding member, began holding public discussions about the Catellus proposal. After the City Council rejected the plan in 1992, the coalition began a new set of discussions about what might replace it. To participants, it became clear that so long as the property was in private hands, development would be determined by the "highest and best use" of the property. Robinson was part of a small group that approached Debbie Jaramillo soon after she was elected mayor in 1994 to urge the city to acquire the land. She became a leading proponent for public acquisition of the property.

In 1995 the Trust for Public Land negotiated a deal by which the city was able to acquire the land from Catellus for $21 million. TPL turned the land over to the city and the community-planning process began in earnest.

The Neighborhood Coalition morphed into the nonprofit Santa Fe Land Use Research Center. More than 6,000 people ultimately participated in the design process culminating in 1997 in a Community Plan that was approved by the city.

At first, the city rejected the idea of having a nonprofit implement the plan and assumed responsibility for negotiating longer-term leases with the 26 existing tenants. But between 1997 and 2002, Robinson and others continued to meet monthly to keep the public conversation about the Railyard going and to monitor the work of the city. In 1999 they created the nonprofit Santa Fe Railyard Community Corp., with Robinson as its president. Finally, in February of 2002 the city approved a master plan for the property and entered into a lease and management agreement with the nonprofit corporation.

The corporation has responsibility to develop the 37 acres of mixed-use space including museums, galleries, restaurants, retail shops, office space and live/work residential units. One of its first tasks was to address the infrastructure needs. Many tenants were on extension cords and Porta-Potties. The nonprofit also negotiated new leases with existing tenants and worked with developers on new buildings.

When Robinson, accompanied by his grandchildren, walked down Alameda from Montezuma Avenue to the park on opening day in September he said he realized, "It's better than I had imagined." He said he saw looks of complete amazement on the faces of people over "what happened to this dust bowl."

Although time will tell whether the Railyard becomes the new gathering place for Santa Feans, Robinson said it is true to the community plan. "I'm thrilled and gratified at the way things turned out. And I think it could only have happened in a city with so many diverse stakeholders who really cared about what it could mean for the city as a whole."

The board's job is to prevent things from going sour as they have in other redevelopment areas like Seattle's Pike Place, which Robinson said has mostly been turned over to tourists.

Before moving to Santa Fe, he fought another developer— iconic real-estate magnate Donald Trump. Robinson was a founding member of Westpride, a nonprofit that successfully blocked Trump's plans to build a 152-story tower, a row of 70-story towers along the Hudson River, the largest shopping mall east of the Mississippi and a 6,000-car garage on a 76-acre site on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Westpride and a coalition of civic groups finally defeated Trump's proposal in a 1989 lawsuit. After months of negotiation, the Riverside South Planning Corp. was founded to craft a master plan based on the Civic Alternative, which eliminated the mall, included a 21-acre waterfront park and reduced densities. Robinson served as architectural consultant to the RSPC and the plan was approved by the city in 1992. Trump eventually sold the property to a group of Hong Kong investors. Today the park is half finished and 4 million square feet of residential and street-level retail is built and occupied. The tunnel relocating the West Side Highway is well under construction.

The Brooklyn, N.Y.-raised Robinson still makes regular trips to New York and he plans to write a book about both projects, focusing on how communities get a seat at the table when private developers are proposing inappropriate enterprises in their backyards. "I guess I like long-term projects," he said.