Editorial: Infill turns to upfill neighbors need help
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11/24/2007 -
Down on Juanita Street, a no-longer-quiet, narrow lane winding its way along the east side of heavily traveled St. Francis Drive, life is getting more, well, citified: Two- and three-story condominiums are rising atop single-story homes, amid many other single-story homes.
Some of the neighbors are less than delighted with the prospect of being gazed upon from above, and their concerns about traffic and parking are legitimate. Same for prospects of living in the shadows of the new buildings for a few months a year.
The upward trend in "urban infill" has affected other parts of town, including parts of Pacheco Street, soon to sound the way big city apartments along elevated train tracks do, when the Rail Runner makes its debut.
It makes us wonder: What happened to the notion that neighborhood activists pack the political clout in Santa Fe?
To hear City Councilor Karen Heldmeyer, exponent of such activism, "the neighborhoods rule" is a fiction spun by the building-and-development companies in search of public sympathy.
Over the years, she's heard her District 2 constituents, and many other Santa Feans, express concern about projects that are too tall, too bulky or otherwise damaging to the spirit of their surroundings.
She and some of her like-minded colleagues have introduced fresh ordinances and resolutions to confront creeping construction.
Resolutions, of course, can be — and often are — ignored. And the ordinance Santa Fe really needs, one allowing neighborhood conservation districts, has yet to be approved.
The trend toward taller buildings amid single-story residences, as well as walls turning streetscapes into sterile channels, should weigh on the council — and tilt the balance toward passage of the conservation-districts law.
It would allow neighborhoods to take votes, first designating a district's boundaries, then determining, by a two-thirds majority, what kinds of limits to place on construction projects.
Maybe the folks along Juanita Street would say, oh, what the heck; let's let everyone add a couple of stories, and make the place look like an urban European old quarter. But low-slung neighborhoods not yet hit by condominization could declare high-rise infill off-limits.
What the neighbors could do, Heldmeyer told The New Mexican's Julie Ann Grimm, is face developers with a good question: How does your project relate to the rest of the neighborhood?
Enforcement of their consensus-developed rules would be by the city's building-permit process, since they affect only limited aspects of a project. Remodeling, maybe even expansion, still might be allowed — but besides height and density considerations, there'd be questions of parking and public safety the builder would have to answer. Parking is something that seems to have escaped City Hall's attention in the case of Juanita Street; once the new residents are occupying the condos, it might at least serve as an object lesson in bad planning.
Councilor Heldmeyer is moving ahead with her neighborhood conservation district proposal. Informal public meetings are being held — the next one on Tuesday, 6 p.m. at Genoveva Chávez Community Center, followed by one on Thursday at Kaune Elementary School, also at 6. The final meeting is Dec. 6, 6:30, at Gonzales Elementary. On Dec. 20, the ordinance will be heard by the city's Planning Commission.
This might prove to be the councilor's swan song; she isn't seeking re-election in March; City Hall's loss, perhaps some other community effort's gain. This is the kind of lawmaking she's advocated during her two terms on the council, all too often running up against battlements manned by pro-development forces.
It's a worthy effort. A council majority should join it.
