Rumble in El Rio

That, and where it will be.

The debate over the El Rio apartments is predicted to be so well-attended that the City Council has moved its June 24 meeting to the ballroom of the Santa Fe Community Convention Center, with seating for at least 400. That meeting starts at 7 pm.

Backers of the proposal say apartment living closer to downtown is textbook infill that matches longtime plans to reduce sprawl and encourage multimodal transit. They've chosen a tract of land that's been virtually unused for years, perched along one of the city's bus lines and on the edge of the soon-to-be expanded Santa Fe River Trail.

Opponents, meanwhile, fear increased traffic in their single-family-home subdivisions and the semi-rural part of Santa Fe that they believe should stay that way. Even though 80 percent of the land is already zoned to allow up to 21 homes per acre, they say the move to develop the whole 16-acre tract to a density of 24 homes per acre will mar the area.

For Santa Fe schoolteacher Bridget Love, the discussion has devolved into a mess.

"I just want people to calm down," says the mother of two young boys who lives nearby on Agua Fría Street. "The thing that makes us all so passionate about this is that we love our neighborhoods and we love our city, and I don't think it needs to be so contentious."

Dueling online petitions, opposing yard signs, rabid Facebook exchanges and heated dialog on an online neighborhood message board are just some of the ways the conversation has been swirling for most of the year.

The last time the proposal saw a government meeting, it was in February, when the Planning Commission listened to a 45-minute presentation from developers, followed by more than two hours of public testimony largely against the project that would combine four tracts of land, including the former campus of the EcoVersity sustainability school. Commissioners voted 4-2 to recommend that the City Council reject the idea. The basis of the plan's flaws, they said, was all about location. They argued it would allow a few property owners in the area to profit at the expense of others and alter the character of the community.

The proposal before the governing body for the vote that really counts is a slimmer version—399 apartments instead of 450, two-story buildings along Agua Fría Street instead of three-story ones and a promise to keep a scenic tree canopy. It's a series of compromises that the developers hope will help earn trust from neighbors and officials, but they say they can't bend much further and still make the numbers work.

El Rio is the brainchild of three Santa Fe business partners who even project opponents agree have a reputation as quality builders, with their firm called Tierra Concepts. They're currently sitting on a number of vacant lots in Las Campanas that they'd hoped to erect homes on sooner than now, and they also own Pacheco Park, where a restaurant and a number of other businesses are cozying up along the railroad tracks just west of St. Francis Drive.

The partners also all have teenage children, and they see the apartment project as an investment in the kind of housing that's better suited to young workers, says Eric Faust; once it is constructed, Faust, along with his brother Kurt Faust and Keith Gorges, says they want to retain ownership of the complex.

While they understand the consternation about the project, they claim that doesn't balance out the pitch of development geared toward ownership and situated on the southwestern edge of the city in recent years. Rental housing is lacking, they say.

"We are going to have to make some allowances, or we are going to have two different cities: one downtown and one on the Southside," Faust tells SFR as he makes another round of media visits last week. "The big picture thing is really about infill versus sprawl, and it is an easy thing for people to be behind in theory. It's a much harder thing to be behind when it is next door."

Or down the street. Or even a few miles away. Many longtime west siders are fierce about protecting the once-rural nature of the community, established along the banks of the river when it was still a force available for thriving agriculture. While much has changed in the area, these residents still live where their grandmas lived, still have horses and still like their dirt driveways. But they don't want to see even more traffic zooming by.

They include Pablo Sanchez, who told commissioners he's lived on or near Agua Fría Street for his entire life. Even half of the proposed number of apartments feels like too many, he said.

"Agua Fría is El Camino Real, the oldest road in the Americas," Sanchez said, according to the meeting minutes. "Let's have some respect for it."

For Love, reluctantly supporting the project is about another kind of respect.

"I feel really lucky to be able to own a house here," she says. "Even though it makes me nervous, and I know there are going to be problems with bringing a development like that in, I really just think other people who can't own a house and maybe don't want to own a house deserve the opportunity to live in a great neighborhood like this."

Santa Fe Reporter