The owner of a historic campus on the north side of Santa Fe charges that city officials are colluding with a charter high school to acquire his land.

"This is a complete put-on by the school to try to get the city to attempt to buy this property for far less than it is worth," said James Polk, an attorney for Max Tafoya and New Mexico Consolidated Construction, the company that has owned the former St. Catherine Indian School campus since late 2005.

Mayor David Coss has proposed that the city buy the campus and lease it to the charter high school — a deal similar to the city's purchase of the College of Santa Fe campus in 2009.

On Tuesday, officials from the New Mexico School for the Arts said its appraiser valued a 10.8-acre portion of the property, which contains most of the historic buildings, at $1.9 million.

But Polk said previous appraisals conducted on behalf of the federal government and a bank valued the entire 17-acre property closer to $4 million and as much as $7 million. The land has been listed with a sale price of $8.6 million.

Polk also pointed out that the expert hired by the school never even visited the campus. In his report, certified appraiser William Browning wrote, "at the specific request of the client we did not inspect the property."

Adelma Hnasko, director of the New Mexico School for the Arts' nonprofit fundraising arm, said Polk's criticism of the appraisal is unfounded.

"This is a legitimate appraisal," Hnasko said. "Appraisers don't need to see the campus. They are totally familiar with it from prior work and they had all the information that they needed from public records. It's such a non-issue for me."

Hnasko said the St. Catherine campus is just one of the sites the school's board of directors is checking out. The state-chartered high school is currently located at the old St. Francis Cathedral School but expects to move out in two years.

"We are conducting due diligence and seeing if this might be a possible campus, and if not, we will move along," Hnasko said.

Polk said he's suspicious about the accuracy of the appraisal and noted that no one from the school, city or appraisal company asked to access the land recently.

"What they think they are doing is a little bit elusive to me. ... I am incredulous that all of this is going on without any kind of communication with the owner of the property," he said, adding later, "We will not sell for that $2 million price. I can tell you that right now."

The city can expect to end up in court, Polk said. New Mexico Consolidated has been opposed to city and state historic designations that limit development potential on the campus and is prepared to file litigation accusing the government of an effective "taking" of the property, he said.

Councilors on the city Finance Committee told city staff Tuesday night that they expect a detailed financial plan soon, and city Manager Robert Romero said Wednesday that legal vetting of the appraisal would be part of the next steps for the local government if the full City Council authorizes staff to investigate a deal. The council is scheduled to vote on a resolution calling for study of the purchase as soon as Jan. 11.

Romero said he has not reviewed the appraisal document enough to know whether it was normal for the appraiser to complete a report without a site visit.

"We will look at it very closely, and if that is an issue we will have to address that," he said. "We want to be sure that however this moves forward, it is done legally."

Councilor Matthew Ortiz, chairman of the Finance Committee, said Wednesday that the proposal from the mayor and the School for the Arts presents a risk for the local government. Even though the school has agreed to pay for improvements to the buildings there, Ortiz said the cost estimate has fluctuated, and he's not convinced the details are nailed down enough.

It also looks odd, he said, for City Hall to find money to buy the campus when it's preparing to borrow $22 million for capital infrastructure improvements and to ask for voter approval for millions more for new projects.

"If we go and do all this stuff and we put all the financing in place, we hook the city's resources to this property and then this entity that we are supposed to partner with goes belly up, where is the level of confidence?" he said in an interview Wednesday. "How do we know that the charter school is going to be in business in five years? It's an even greater risk given the political climate at the state right now."

St. Catherine Indian School closed in 1998 after operating for more than a century as a private high school under the supervision of nuns from the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament. The campus includes a three-story structure that is one of the largest hand-formed adobe buildings in the state.

Mayor Coss said in an interview Wednesday that the city didn't have anything to do with the appraisal, paid for by the school, but he still believes the purchase is a good move for the city.

"It provides a place for the school and at the same time it preserves that campus," he said. "Here we have a land use that meets the historic land use and that is supported by the neighborhood."

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