ART project needs public support to function

MY HUSBAND and I recently moved here from Portland, Ore., where we lived downtown in the Pearl District, one of the most vibrant, walkable, urban-core development projects in the nation.

(Current) comments about Albuquerque Rapid Transit (ART) simply dissolving back into the downtown traffic patterns of the past within 19 years could only be made by those who have not experienced what a project like ART can do to a city. It is naive to project that after 20 years of ART, Albuquerque will have nothing but a more congested version of its old pre-ART city.

Instead, if ART is successful, our city will have exploded and changed in a million new, surprising, creative directions due to small business entrepreneurs, big corporate investors and urban developers. If ART is intelligently supported by city leadership, both sides of Central will look very different than they do today — dense with amenities, full of activity, with construction expanding both vertically and horizontally due to potentially dozens of mixed-use developments. Traffic patterns will have changed numerous times. The potential is impossible to even conceive in advance. So much lies in the hands of entrepreneurial initiative — which Albuquerque is simultaneously cultivating along with ART.

I suggest the Journal run an educational series on downtown urban development and the stories of cities like Denver, Portland, Austin, Nashville and others. Why are people moving away from Albuquerque to Denver? In significant part, because a grim old cow town had the vision to develop its urban core, which is now growing by leaps and bounds with attractive, walkable options for residents. As a former Colorado resident also, I know that 15 years ago downtown Denver was a place people avoided like the plague. But today it is a place where people are flocking to live.

Albuquerque can pull off this model of urban development in a unique way like no other city — with intelligence, quirkiness and verve. But it needs the support, leadership and vision of its leaders who have the power to educate and persuade — like the Albuquerque Journal. LOLA S. SCOBEY Albuquerque