Building Battles

Development in Santa Fe lands again in front of City Council on Wednesday, Oct. 28. Stick with us here: Councilors expect to reconsider their efforts to reconsider their decision on the MorningStar Senior Living facility, proposed for Old Pecos Trail and approved at a July 8 meeting before being sent back to remediation at a July 29 meeting. The closest councilors could then come to making a decision was to ask the interested parties—the developer and the Elks Lodge on one side and the Southeast Neighborhood Association on the other—to sit down with a mediator to see if they could arrive at a compromise. According to materials submitted to City Council on Sept. 20, SENA, MorningStar and Confluent Development met in Santa Fe on Sept. 15 to discuss their concerns and concluded "that mediation would not be productive." MorningStar stands firm that the project cannot be any smaller than the currently proposed 84 units in 73,550 square feet and still be economically viable, and the neighborhood association maintains that it's too big and incompatible with the surrounding residential area, which is zoned R1.

Also on the agenda is the review of a proposed master plan amendment for Christus St. Vincent Regional Medical Center to allow for a 65,500-square-foot two-story addition to the St. Michael's Drive side of the property. The structure will also require a variance on height limits and a special use permit. Neighbors are challenging the expansion as interrupting the "sense of visual openness and continuity of development" for the city and mixing architectural styles "in a manner that is not representative of Santa Fe." They also object to proposed signs they claim will further affect the view, in addition to the construction noise affecting the health of neighbors.

We suggest someone with a food truck and perhaps a mobile espresso cart park outside City Hall that night. It promises to be a long one.

Santa Fe Reporter