The undulating mountains that frame Santa Fe are among the features that give the city its personality. The spines, fingers and ridges, as Native American writer N. Scott Momaday wrote, are "the spiritual and aesthetic bridges between the urban sky and the sacred earth" that are "indispensable to the integrity of the community as a whole" and "must be preserved at all cost."

For 30 years, the city has restricted development on many of its hillsides and ridges to protect the views of the mountains for people who live in Santa Fe — or visit here — and are inspired by them.

Over the years, the rules have led to clashes between the community and property owners hoping to build lavish mountaintop homes. But they clearly restrained some of the more aggressive development in the go-go decades of the 1980s and '90s.

Now the city is preparing to re-examine the rules, beginning with an effort to remap the "escarpment overlay district" using computer modeling technology. Later this summer, officials plan to begin a public discussion about using the information to modify mountain development rules.

Redrawing the lines

On the wall in Karen Walker's downtown office are maps featuring green blobs that represent Santa Fe's mountains. She uses the images to help clients locate properties they are checking out, but most of them don't know about her role in creating the escarpment district.

The real-estate agent. who is a longtime member of the Planning Commission, joined another commissioner in the late 1980s in identifying view gates, or places in Santa Fe from which the ridgelines are visible. A city staff member then used binoculars to look up at the mountains and guess where to draw the boundary.

The result, in 1988, was a map and ordinance creating two areas — the ridge top and the foothills — and imposing regulations on each to "preserve a visual asset for the benefit of the community."

"To the current people, the concept of a view gate is old-fashioned," Walker said. "But it worked and it was cheap. It cost nothing. We got in a car and went to an intersection."

Walker said she will reserve judgment on the city's newer method until she learns more about it. She just hopes the rules will be clearer and harder to circumvent.

Although the regulations have worked most of the time, she said, they have failed at times because of faulty city staff interpretation and threats of litigation by private attorneys representing property owners.

In 2006, the City Council asked staff to update the map. Computer Terrain Management, a Colorado firm, was hired to write a program to analyze the mountain area, at a cost of $10,000. The program includes data from hundreds of viewpoints along major arterial roadways all over the city. Now the city has to figure out how to use the models to draw the map.

One practical way of crafting the map, said City Technical Division Director Wendy Blackwell, might be to define the ridge top and foothills as areas that can be seen from a certain number of those viewpoints.

The city would not release acreage estimates for proposals based on the computer model; however, it is likely that no matter what the new criteria, a remapped escarpment district will have a different shape.

"If it is the more conservation-oriented or more strict interpretation, then there is going to be a lot more acreage in the escarpment," Blackwell said. "But if there is a less strict, and more private property rights-oriented approach, it may be less acreage. It's up in the air."

After getting a recommendation on how to use the model, city officials could decide on whatever set of assumptions they find appropriate, she noted.

A working group of current and former planning staff recommended last year that the rewriting of the mountain ordinance should include "extensive public involvement" and assistance of a consultant.

Causing a stir

Two high-profile mountain homes brought the escarpment rules back into the limelight in recent years, and a development near Sun Mountain coming up for review this summer is likely to get the conversation going again.

About five years ago, Andrew and Sydney Davis went through a painful process when they proposed to build a home east of Hyde Park Road at the end of Monte Verde Street, a hilltop with up-close views of the Sangre de Cristos and a wide-angle lens on the city spread below.

Much of the opposition to the project came from nearby landowners who didn't want their views spoiled by the home or who thought it was too large.

Even though Walker said the home ended up as too "in-your-face," she said many city residents have false expectations about what the rules do.

"We weren't trying to protect neighbor from neighbor. We were trying to protect the community. If the goal is to keep the ridgeline unfettered from the point of view of most citizens, you have to go where the citizens go," she said.

The family prevailed in the end, and the house appears to be nearly complete, although the Davises could not be reached for comment for this story.

Meanwhile, fashion designer Tom Ford's east-side house is under construction on the site of a former reservoir off Camino Santander not far from Cristo Rey Church.

Standing on the upper deck of his two-story, five-bedroom home, David Groenfeldt can see the home. However, Groenfeldt said he and his wife deliberately avoided the neighborhood fracas about Ford's house.

"I stayed out of it," he said. "We didn't really feel like we had any right (to complain). We moved here knowing someone was going to build there."

But Groenfeldt said he does question some of the development rules aimed at preserving scenery. He was prohibited from using efficient rooftop solar panels on his home and was forced to use shorter, less-effective panels.

"It seems to me like the standards should be modernized on the energy side," he said. "There are ugly power lines and telephone lines criss-crossing all over the place and that's fine, but when you want to do solar panels, that is not fine."

Pending development

On a hill near Groenfeldt's and Ford's homes is a piece of land with 360-degree views put into conservation easement by Sally Wagner. Of particular note is the view of Sun Mountain. Developer Doug McDowell's proposal to build the Mirasol subdivision in its foothills has caused quite a stir among adjacent landowners who now say they want to raise money to attempt to purchase the land.

Joann Balzer is among east-side residents who joined the effort to find what she calls a "conservation solution" to the proposed development. She and others are hoping the Trust for Public Land will be successful in its negotiations to act as a conduit for private fundraising to buy some of the area.

"When I came to Santa Fe — it was 35 years ago — I remember standing on the patio of the Wheelwright Museum — I'll never forget it — and looking at Sun Mountain and saying, 'This is such a beautiful place, a magnificent mountain. ... I want to be here forever.' And that's exactly what happened," said Balzer, who has now lived in the city for more than 20 years.

"It seems so unnecessary," she said of the development proposal. "I see more and more homes being built in the foothills and up on ridge tops. There has just been an incredible amount of development everywhere, in the south, in the north — everywhere in Santa Fe. The whole view scape of Santa Fe has changed."

McDowell has scaled back his proposal. A development review hearing is planned for July 2.

Effective change

Even in the areas defined as foothills, as long as slopes are not too steep under other regulations, property owners still assert their rights to build homes on the privately owned land. McDowell was among those in the building community who worked on the original escarpment rules and defends them.

"I think the ordinance really has helped in making people respond to the existing topography of a piece of land and made sure that building follows the land and the landscape," he said.

Applying current rules in a variety of situations is challenging for city decision-makers, however. Residents who serve on the Planning Commission, for example, face routine requests for variances to the rules for matters that range from large additions to roof replacements.

Planning Commission Chairman Matthew O'Reilly said he hopes the city takes a serious look at its interpretation of the rules and spends the money to make them clear, the message that emerged from the "working group" he was part of.

"We were hoping that someone would look at the whole ordinance and try and fix it as a whole rather than tweaking bits and pieces of it. ... The ordinance does not allow, in my opinion, for really minor things to be done. To me, that is not fair," he said.

Meanwhile, a proposed city housing project called the Northwest Quadrant would be located partially in the escarpment district between West Alameda Street and N.M. 599. City planners who are working on that project are requesting an exemption from any changes to the escarpment rules that may be imposed before the project is built. They also plan to set aside the property's ridgeline as open space.

To some who have been following the history of hillside and ridgetop development in Santa Fe, today's circumstances are a mixed bag.

"Some of these sites probably shouldn't be developed, but somehow there has been no effective way of dealing with that. It appears to me that almost any site can be developed, and that's a little questionable in my mind," said Harry Moul, who served as a key member of the city's planning staff from 1971 to 1995.

But Moul, who is also participating in the working group, does not believe all is lost.

"Just the fact that these questions are being raised ... is a good thing," he said, "because the developers and architects and owners" know that their projects are "going to be reviewed by staff for these issues."

Contact Julie Ann Grimm at 986-3017 or jgrimm@sfnewmexican.com.