If Tierra Contenta can be called a neighborhood, it's a really big one — with a current population of over 6,000 people. It's certainly a success for Santa Fe. Yet there were a lot of naysayers when the subdivision was proposed. "When we first got started, nobody thought it would work," said James Hicks, executive director of the Tierra Contenta Corporation.

Today, the project is one of over 50 applications under review for the 2009 I. Donald Terner Prize for Affordable Housing. In a support letter for the award, Peter Werwath writes that Tierra Contenta is "a singular, remarkable success story among large-scale planned developments by achieving well over its target of 40 percent affordable homes." Werwath, vice president of Enterprise Community Partners Inc., based in Columbus, Md., adds that "no single development in the country, to our knowledge, has produced so much affordable housing with so little public subsidy."

Santa Fe City Council member Carmichael Domínguez gives Tierra Contenta a personal rave review in a guest column in the June/July issue of the local newspaper, The Next Door News: "What was really exciting was that the design of this development was intended to provide a real community, by providing the five factors of sustainable communities: places to live, work, recreate, learn and shop... With the help of what is now Homewise, I qualified, and purchased my first home. It's the best investment I have ever made.

"Although there is still much work to be done, I believe Tierra Contenta is fulfilling its promise," Dominguez writes.

Tierra Contenta got its start with Dale Bellamah, who built houses to accommodate most of Santa Fe's growth during the 1960s. Those were on the other side of Cerrillos Road, but his company — fallen into disrepair some years after his death — convinced the Santa Fe City Council in 1985 to annex the 1,401 acres that would become Tierra Contenta. Six years later, the city paid $6.3 million to buy the land from United New Mexico Bank, which had taken it over from the bankrupt Bellamah Community Development Corp.

The master-plan designer of Tierra Contenta was Peter Calthorp, a leader in the New Urbanist movement that engineers pedestrian-friendly alternatives to subdivisions. In 1993 the city of Santa Fe formed the Tierra Contenta Corporation, a nonprofit entity, to implement the Calthorp design. The corporation provides builder-ready tracts of land designed for low- and moderate-priced housing for Santa Fe's under-served families.

When it's built out, Tierra Contenta will have 3,800 housing units and more than 300 acres in open space and trails for its population of about 9,500 people. Today, 13 years after home sales began, there are approximately 2,300 single-family homes and 367 apartments. Two of the current builders are BT Homes and Homewise. BT Homes' Rob Gibbs has built close to 900 houses in Santa Fe since the mid-1990s, the great majority in 12 communities in Tierra Contenta.

In 2004, Homewise began construction on Evergreen, a community of 80 energy-efficient, low-water-use homes. That community now complete, Homewise is focusing on another green Tierra Contenta project called Vista Jemez, according to Emilee Ford, the organization's real-estate development manager. At this point, six of the 27 planned homes in Vista Jemez are occupied and three more are under construction.

The Tierra Contenta Corporation is now engaged in joint master-planning on a tract owned by the New Mexico School for the Deaf. The subdivision's Phase 3, it will be developed with up to 1,500 homes, both single-family and multi-family.

Two new roads to be constructed in this area (the subdivision's southeast quadrant) in the future will relieve congestion at the Jaguar Drive/Paseo del Sol intersection, Hicks said. Both connect to Cerrillos Road. They are Herrera Drive, which also will be a Tierra Contenta short-cut to the planned Wal-Mart Supercenter; and Las Soleras Drive, an extension of the present Ocate Road.

The southern part of Tierra Contenta includes a parcel for a new grade school. The subdivision now is home to Capital High School, Edward A. Ortiz Middle School, Cesar Chavez Elementary School, and Sweeney Elementary School in the Santa Fe Public Schools system, and the Santa Fe School for the Arts and Sciences.

The first of the subdivision's other nonresidential structures was the Santa Fe Business Incubator, which opened in 1997. Ten years later, in March 2007, the community proudly welcomed a major new institution, the Southside Library. It is an architectural standout (designed by Isaac Benton and Harvey Monroe) for Santa Fe, as are Fire Station No. 8 (designed by Marci Riskin and opened in 2006) and the Rape Crisis Center (Beverley Spears, 2004). Zona del Sol, a youth-services facility on Valentine Way across from the library, opened in 2005 and is now expanding.

Since last November, residents have had another gathering place at Miklo's Coffee House, operated by Edwina Garcia and her husband, Russell Pack. Garcia, a Santa Fe native, and Alamogordo-born Pack bought their house a block away in Tierra Contenta 11 years ago. Their daughter, who was born in the house, is a student at Cesar Chavez Elementary School, and both of their sons went to Capital High School.

"It's amazing how much networking goes on here," Garcia said as she prepared espresso. "We have so many neighbors who meet here and our customers know each other's kids and know their dogs' names. People are excited about other businesses coming into Plaza Contenta."

That's the name of the 7.5-acre square being developed by SG Properties between Jaguar Drive, Paseo del Sol, and Avenida Contenta. Most of the buildings are planned to be two stories, with commercial uses below and small condominium units above.

"The first phase included 11 residential condominium units and 12 commercial condominium units," said owner Sean Gilligan. "I have three commercial units and two residential units left."

If the market picks up and the plaza plans come to fruition, there will be more than a dozen buildings, including 61 residential units and a selection of stores and offices around a central plaza with a tree-lined promenade.

"We have the money for the plaza from the McCune Foundation. We're really just waiting for the market to improve so that we can get the remaining units sold or leased," Gilligan said. "It's hard to get the construction financing until we have that."

Home construction in Tierra Contenta has also slowed because of the downturn in the housing market and the fact that "banking regulators have turned down the screws on lending to builders," Hicks added.

The plaza has been the site, this year, of monthly art and flea markets. The final such event of 2008 will be a Fall Family Fun Day on Saturday, Oct. 18, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Mayor David Coss is scheduled to be there for a Plaza Contenta ribbon-cutting at 11 a.m., and there will be a pumpkin patch, live music, and trick-or-treat for the kids. Grown-up stuff will include cholesterol and blood-pressure screenings and a "Shredfest" truck to shred documents.

Asked about problems in Tierra Contenta, Hicks mentioned weeds and undeveloped park sites. "Weeds continue to be our biggest problem," he said. "Homeowners, just like in other parts of Santa Fe, sometimes don't take care of the landscaping strip between the sidewalk and the street. That is the responsibility of the homeowner, per city ordinance.

"And if we could just get the city to take care of the parks. There are areas that are fully developed and occupied and the park sites in those neighborhoods are still just vacant lots."

Those lots may have been visited by some of Santa Fe's earliest residents thousands of years ago. In his new book, Before Santa Fe: Archaeology of the City Different (Museum of New Mexico Press), Jason Shapiro says a late Archaic Period occupation in this area spanned more than 2,600 years, beginning in the second millennium B.C.

Shapiro cites a 1994 report by Matthew Schmader called Archaic Occupation of the Santa Fe Area: Results of the Tierra Contenta Archaeology Project. At one Tierra Contenta site, archaeologists excavated three pit structures that indicated that "not only were people visiting Santa Fe on a regular basis between three and four thousand years ago, they were also staying long enough to justify the constuction of some fairly substantial residential structures," Shapiro writes.

The archaeological survey (financed by Bellamah Community Development, the city of Santa Fe, and the State Historic Preservation Office) showed that people were living in this area — and not just passing through on hunting expeditions — as early as 1740 B.C.

One pit house was about nine feet square with its doorway facing east. Schmader and his cohorts found projectile points, scrapers, and more than a dozen stone grinding tools, as well as the remains of edible wild plants including amaranth, purlsane, grama grass, goosefoot seeds, and piñon nuts.

It goes without saying that those early residents enjoyed organic produce (when they could find it). Today's residents have a new, local source. Community-supported agriculture came to Tierra Contenta on Sept. 29. Beginning on that day, Miklo's became the city's second drop spot (the other is Annapurna Chai House Restaurant at Solana Center) for produce from Los Poblanos Organics, Albuquerque.

That's a fine addition, but a small grocery store would be a real boon to the community and would surely bring vitality to Plaza Contenta.

"Everybody leaves Tierra Contenta, but a lot of people want things here to support locally owned, small business," Edwina Garcia said. "I guess the lenders want to see a bunch of cars, but the whole idea is that you can walk here and get two bags of groceries and walk home."

Peggy Vasquez agrees. She moved to the subdivision almost 12 years ago with her two young sons.

"I do like that Tierra Contenta has progressed, although when I first moved in it was a lot easier to meet your neighbor than it is now," she said. "It's gotten a little big, but I do enjoy it here. I like having the trails and I love having the library nearby and I love the coffeeshop. We do a lot of brainstorming over there.

"Hopefully Plaza Contenta will be able to bring a little store, even a little bakery. Stuff like that's what a lot of us have been thinking. We're being patient."