County revisits Community College District Plan
3/1/2009
"The evolution of the 18,000-acre, place-based Community College District continues to be one of the County's most important sustainability endeavors," Jack Kolkmeyer writes in the 2009 edition of the resource guide Sustainable Santa Fe. "Its growth principles developed in 1999-2000 include clustered development forms, central mixed-use places, new economic development, multi-modal transportation connections, mandated open space, affordable housing, and infrastructure systems that have resulted in the popular new villages of Rancho Viejo, Oshara and La Pradera."
The Community College District (CCD) is a large planning area occupying an approximate triangle bounded by Interstate-25, N.M. 14, and the Eldorado at Santa Fe community. The Land Use Zoning Map for the CCD shows "village zones" in the level, developable areas, where homes will be built at a density of 3.5 units per acre. Most of the homes and businesses will be clustered in a dozen new community centers and associated neighborhood centers in these village zones.
Santa Fe County is now in the middle of major updates of the County Growth Management Plan (aka General Plan) and the Community College District Plan. To gather input from citizens, planners have divided Santa Fe County into four growth-management areas — El Norte, El Centro (which includes the Community College District), Galisteo, and Estancia — and are holding intensive, 3-day charrettes in each area.
The Growth Management Plan is touted as a "bottom up" plan; that is, its content was shaped not only by county staff but by the people who live in the county. Despite the protests of folks of the NIMBY ("Not in my back yard!") and BANANA ("Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything!") persuasions, the fact is that development of the Community College District at currently allowable densities could see the construction of 100,000 homes in a planner's nightmare of sprawl. The CCD Plan will permit the addition of 8,000 new homes over the next 20 years, while addressing a top priority of the plan: preserving the character and environmental values of the natural landscape in the district.
About two dozen people attended the final workshop of the El Centro charrette on Feb. 10 at Santa Fe Community College. Among them were the county's head planner, Jack Kolkmeyer; Sarah Humphries of Planning Works LLC, a Kansas firm that is consulting on the plan updates; county hydrologist Karen Torres; Oshara Village developer Alan Hoffman; Jason Hool of Santa Fe Studios; development consultant Jennifer Jenkins; and area residents.
Citizen Adriene Simpson expressed her concern for continued allowance for horses and rural lifestyle. Phyllis Baca advocated for longtime residents who prefer "sprawl" over living in a new development.
Jenkins said the plans should allow for more "creative solutions to compliance" in order to lessen requests for variances. She also spoke in favor of commercial development along the I-25 corridor.
Hool, whose Santa Fe Studios plans to build a film production facility on N.M. 14, said it could mean a thousand jobs.
Hoffman praised the CCD plan, saying it took 17 variances to build a "walkable community" at Aldea de Santa Fe and that he has not had to request one variance for Oshara.
Hoffman believes the recent change in the economy is permanent, and he has allied himself with President Barack Obama in a sea-change move away from oil dependency and toward sustainability. The homes at Oshara Village, he said, put a priority on solar gain and solar water-heating, super-insulated envelopes, and energy-efficient appliances.
"I'm envisioning that 50 percent of our residents will work from their homes or within Oshara," Hoffman said at the workshop. "If we look into the future, with gas at $6 a gallon, which is inevitable, we have to encourage high-speed telecommunications and other things that allow people to work in their homes or in other places close to their homes."
Also present at the Feb. 10 workshop was Robert Garcia, who was involved in planning for the Community College District plan in the late 1990s. "My wife and I moved to Rancho Viejo in 2000," he said in a phone interview a few days after the workshop. "Part of the reason we chose to live here is that we liked what we heard was their vision: it's not a gated community and a mix of housing prices and of residential and commercial."
He was excited about a new facility being built in Rancho Viejo by Bicycle Technologies Inc., both because it will be a significant addition to the economic character of the district, and because he likes bikes. "My preferred way of getting around would be the combination of bicycle and bus. Right now I can ride to the community college and put it on the bus to get into town. I wish the buses would come closer to my house, but I realize it's a city system."
Garcia also emphasized the difficulty regarding the commercial element. The developer of Rancho Viejo, he said, can build houses, set aside open space, and build roads and trails, but the commercial uses can't be forced. The population must be there before a business like a grocery store makes sense.
(And right now, good luck getting a construction loan without some sort of concrete guarantee as to the level of business that will be done immediately upon completion.)
Back on the subject of the Community College District plan, Garcia said it's not too soon to look at an update.
"When we finished it, there was the general idea that we would take another look at the plan in three or four years, and now it's been nine. Secondly, when the CCD plan was developed, other than a few, small, pre-existing neighborhoods, hardly anyone lived here. Rancho Viejo was just getting started and there was no La Pradera or Turquoise Trail or Oshara. Now there are thousands of people out here, and it will be interesting to see what their feedback is. Many of them might not even know this is the designated growth area for the county.
"I do feel the CCD is an attempt to try something very different," Garcia said. "I think the county was very wise to look out here and say, 'You know, if we just keep having 2.5-acre parcels where everyone drills their own well but nobody knows how much water there is in the ground, and everybody does new septic tanks and we have no idea what's happening to the effluent, and we have all these dirt roads going everywhere that are hard to maintain, we're going to be in trouble.' I think this is a much wiser way to go."
The first three charrettes were held in the El Norte, El Centro, and Galisteo growth-management areas in February. The fourth will be held in Edgewood March 2-4. (See plansantafecounty.org for times.) Beginning later this month or in April, the planners will hold countywide meetings about the growth-management plan update. The process will culminate with two public hearings before the Board of County Commissioners.
Meanwhile, interested people can fill out a survey at plansantafecounty.org, and you can visit the Growth Management Information Center in the county building, 102 Grant Avenue.
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The Santa Fe Real Estate Guide visited with Planning and Development Division director Jack Kolkmeyer in his office at the Santa Fe County Building on Feb. 16.
Real Estate Guide: When was a "Community College District" first discussed?
Jack Kolkmeyer: We started the process in 1998.
REG: In a letter to The Santa Fe New Mexican in December 2007, you said the CCD is "one of the most groundbreaking 'smart growth' efforts in the country."
Kolkmeyer: I make that statement because there isn't another New Urbanist or neotraditional development that's 18,000 acres. What we're conceding is that over time that's likely to be another city, or a major new piece of Santa Fe.
It's also unique because of the things we've mandated up front, for example having 50 percent open space, and trails. And the energy possibilities: there's so much in the CCD yet to be built, we may have the opportunity to incorporate things like photovoltaics on every house in the future.
The CCD plan and ordinance were devised by everybody working together. It was a very unique experience, because usually you do a plan and then you get input from people. Here, everybody sat at the table and you could ask the developers what they needed and everybody was able to horse-trade a little bit.
REG: This seems like a different variety of New Urbanism, because to some degree it's out in the sticks, not like Aldea and Tierra Contenta.
Kolkmeyer: We had a lot of debate about using "urban." We actually began calling this New Ruralism. We were trying to figure out the development pattern based on some of the existing communities like Madrid and Cerrillos, that they would be concentrated in very specific areas, then a lot of open space. There will not be a lot of large, single-family lots now, but the bigger idea is that there should be a wide variety of choice in the Community College District.
REG: And to plan in a way that facilitates the county providing services. This is the county's fastest-growing area, right?
Kolkmeyer: It is. And the fact is that some people like sprawl, as Phyllis Baca said. It is a preferred lifestyle for many in Santa Fe, to have your 2-acre or 5-acre lot and live out there in the landscape and that's fine, but it is an inefficient use of the landscape and services.
REG: Plus, each new house could mean one more well and one more septic tank.
Kolkmeyer: Yeah, that's right, which is probably, down the road at some point, a threat to the environment and the landscape.
One of the reasons we're not seeing more of a commitment to these ideas is that we haven't been able to have a project yet with a full complement of stores and services. But if we don't start somewhere, you just have more of the same old patterns.
REG: How does Eldorado compare with the model you're looking at?
Kolkmeyer: You have to look at the original plan that had commercial scattered throughout. What it really became was a large-lot subdivision. There are wonderful amenities there, including that trail system and a community center, but there was no commercial built in to center it. Also, you don't get open space as a buffer between the settlement areas, which is an important part of the Community College District plan.
REG: Do you see the CCD as the major, middle-income growth absorber for Santa Fe, now that Eldorado is built out?
Kolkmeyer: That's a good way to look at it, but we also include the affordable-housing element, and possibly apartments as well to try to help younger people to stay in Santa Fe. If you go through Rancho Viejo, where we have put most of the affordable housing in the county, you'll be hard-pressed to see where it is. It's more integrated with the market-rate housing.
REG: The CCD ordinance was amended in 2007 to add a Media District. There's a site in the southwest corner of the CCD. Is that about 50 acres?
Kolkmeyer: It's about 65 acres.
REG: And that's where Santa Fe Studios wants to do a film-production facility. Pretty cool.
Kolkmeyer: It's very cool. It's cool for the county at large and in terms of economic generators. People in the CCD have said they were upset because they were promised a grocery store out there. It's a legitimate beef, but the county can't do that. The problem with the whole "Smart Growth" model is that you can't have those kinds of things in place until there's a population to support them.
Santa Fe Studios makes sense because of the proximity to the community college and IAIA, which both have film programs, and because it would employ a variety of people.
REG: So now, the CCD is nine years old and it's going to be updated as part of the current update of the Growth Management Plan?
Kolkmeyer: It is. One of the issues is the possibility of rail transportation, and another is roads. Where should new connector roads go in? There's a big debate how to connect out of Eldorado, and where would they connect to? To the community college or to the N.M. 599 rail station? And who would pay for that?
The other big problem we're starting to see evolve right now is who governs this place? You have homeowner associations here and there and as they get bigger, how does everybody get a say about what will happen in the future?
The whole district isn't quite pulling together yet. My response to the economics issue that [former] Commissioner Jack Sullivan always brought up is that it needs some time and for the population base to build up.
What we don't want is more like the Turquoise Trail development that Longford Homes did. They didn't quite get what the village concept meant on that landscape. New Urbanism always says you should do porches and alleyways and have buildings oriented particular ways, but we don't want to dictate to developers. We've tried to stay away from a lot of the design issues, to leave it up to developers, and we're probably going to get some that work and some that don't.