A map that tells property owners whether their land is considered part of the city's escarpment district could change next year.

Although they have not finalized their proposal, a working group that includes Santa Fe city staff and interested citizens has recommended a way to use modern technology to better define the mountain area and its development restrictions.

Wendy Blackwell, director of the city's Technical Review Division, conducted a series of public meetings this month to vet the draft plan for the first time among real-estate agents, architects, preservationists and others.

Now, Blackwell says she will return to the working group to discuss the feedback, make any desired changes and send the proposal to policymakers.

"No matter what we do, we know that some people are going to be upset or want things changed," Blackwell told a crowd of about 10 people who talked about the idea at Frenchy's Field barn.

She noted that once a final recommendation emerges from the working group, up to a month will be allowed for more public review before formal City Council committee review begins.

In an effort to preserve views of the mountains, Santa Fe has restricted development on many of its hillsides and ridges for about 30 years. The current Escarpment Overlay District map was created in 1988 using binoculars to look at the mountains from 16 "viewpoints" and three "corridors," then drawing zoning boundaries on paper with a marker.

In 2006, elected officials asked for an updated map using computer data. Two years later, staff gathered a dozen people for the working group. Then, they hired Computer Terrain Management to analyze the mountain area and apply criteria in a scientific manner using digital terrain modeling.

Together, they came up with was a way to identify 7,100 viewpoints along roads or in city parks from which the mountains were visible and from which development could obstruct ridge views.

For more than a year, the working group has been reviewing possibilities for how to use the electronic data to redraw the zoning map. This fall, they settled on a plan that would retain the same amount of land currently in the district — 2,786 acres. It would add another 306 acres to the district in areas that are planned for annexation in the near future.

The proposal includes property in the map as part of the Escarpment Overlay District if a 14-foot structure built there would be visible within three miles from the perspective of 570 or more of the viewpoints, or about 7.97 percent. Further, it would define the area along the upper ridge tops as a "high visibility zone," with extra development restrictions if a 14-foot structure would break the ridgeline from 171 points or more, or about 2.39 percent of the viewpoints.

For some in the building industry, the ideas fell flat.

"It seems quite arbitrary to me," said Gayla Bechtol, an architect who attended one of the public meetings.

Bechtol said that given all of the computerized information, it was suspicious that the group decided to keep the acreage of the district exactly the same. "Do we protect the escarpment views or not with this?"

Another problem with the scientific criteria that the group decided on, said group member Karen Heldmeyer, a former city councilor, was that some areas wouldn't be in the district anymore. For example, the Cerro Gordo hill area is on the current map, but falls off using the proposed algorithms.

"So, in our recommendations for an ordinance that will accompany this map, what we said is that this area historically has been an important view and may need special protection," Heldmeyer said, adding that for the most part she sees the selected criteria as tracking "fairly closely" with the current map.

The proposal would call for other areas that are not currently in the escarpment overlay district to become part of the restricted area, including almost the entire land mass between St. Francis Drive and Old Taos Highway north of the Paseo de Peralta loop.

Blackwell said that the working group considered criteria that would drastically expand the shape of the map and not exclude any land on today's map, but didn't rule to recommend that route.

"The thought was that it would be too difficult to get the support from the community and get the councilors to even pass it if we were to increase the acreage by that much," she said.

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


FOR MORE DETAILS

A "draft preliminary Escarpment Overlay District Map" is available for public review at City Hall in the Land Use Department, 200 Lincoln Ave.; Main Library, 145 Washington Ave., Southside Library, 6599 Jaguar Ave; Santa Fe Area Home Builders Association office, 1409 Luisa Street, Suite A; the Santa Fe Association of Realtors office, 510 North Guadalupe, Suite E; and Historic Santa Fe Foundation office, 545 Canyon Road.