City seeks input on future of campus
Officials say three-month process gives public chance to offer ideas for Santa Fe University of Art and Design site
Santa Fe’s 64-acre question is a step closer to an answer.
City officials Wednesday unveiled a three-month public input process intended to help shape the future of the sizable parcel in the middle of town — an outreach initiative they said will result in a single, communityled “strategic vision” for the Santa Fe University of Art and Design campus.
With the impending closure of the university coloring coffee shop conversations and the March municipal elections, the city wants to cast a wide net across the community and get residents’ redevelopment ideas for the centrally located, city-owned tract.
Some sort of educational component remains a focus, as do workforce housing units, a job-creation function and “civic uses,” such as a possible new public library, said Councilor Mike Harris, citing a broad resolution that outlined the prospective future of the campus approved by the City Council last fall.
The idea of the newly christened Midtown Campus Project is to
invite the community to “help us think through” those priority areas and potentially others, said Matt Brown, city economic development director.
“How would we define that for this property? … That’s why we’re doing this: Put some meat on the bones,” he said.
The project calls for three phases of community involvement, beginning this week and stretching into May.
The first, “collection,” entails surveys and online activities to solicit “what residents consider appropriate and desired for the property, as well as [what] they absolutely oppose,” according to the project overview.
A “visioning” process would follow, in which five design teams take the community input and “create visual and written representations” of what the property could be. The teams — made up of planners, landscape designers, architects, developers and the like — each would receive a $5,000 stipend, for motivation’s sake, the project overview states.
“Evaluation” is last. After residents vote on their favorite design or ideas, a final report will be compiled and presented to the City Council and the public.
“The first goal is deep engagement throughout the town … to a greater extent than what’s been done before in various master-planning efforts,” Harris said.
When the lights go out at the forprofit arts school in May, city taxpayers will be looking at some $2.22 million in annual debt service payments — absent new tenants and lease payments.
Officials continue to explore and collect different “scenarios” behind the scenes, Brown said. He and others declined to be specific, saying the negotiations were private, though Brown did allow that talks with The University of New Mexico exploring some kind of campus footprint remain open at the site, which served for decades as the Christian Brothers-owned College of Santa Fe before the city purchased the property and the arts school took over.
“If the [public input] process leads to a determination of, ‘The community really does want X,’ we might have an entity that wants to deliver X, and that could happen very quickly,” he said. “… We’re trying to tee up different scenarios
to act quickly on any opportunity that we’re collecting after we’re finished with the public process.”
Certain “purpose-built” buildings on the campus will be off limits as participants play around with the online activities, Brown added, suggesting their value is such they will continue through whatever redevelopment entails. Brown mentioned the 513-seat Greer Garson Theatre, the Fogelson Library and visual arts center as facilities that would remain, adding that the list of other structures falling into that category would be available when the first online activity goes live.
“They’re too important, too valuable, both strategically and for future use of the property,” Brown said.
An old Army hospital barracks on a state-owned piece of the campus, damaged in a fire in May, will soon be demolished and removed from the campus, said Matt O’Reilly, city asset development director.
Last month, councilors approved a reduced rent to reflect the university’s diminished use of the city-owned campus in the spring semester. The school will use only 23 acres of the 64.2-acre site, including parts or all of 12 buildings. O’Reilly said the city is reviewing whether to allow some “freed-up” space to be used in other ways as school operations wind down.
“We really do need to respect the young adults who are still students there,” Harris said.
The university’s final commencement is May 12. Its lease with the city will terminate June 30.