City keeps quiet on master developer pick
Evaluation committee’s finalist won’t be announced until April 13
An evaluation committee has decided on a midtown campus master developer to recommend to the Santa Fe City Council. But the city, in keeping with its reluctance to release many details about the search, doesn’t plan to publicize the choice for another two weeks.
Though the city declined to name the “finalist master development team” from the field of three master developers, one — Central Park Santa Fe — confirmed it had been eliminated from consideration.
That leaves Dallas-based KDC Real Estate Development & Investments/Cienda Partners and Singapore-based Ra±es Education Corp. as the final contenders to redevelop the former Santa Fe University of Art and Design campus.
“Until the Governing Body [council] votes in a public hearing on the evaluation committee’s recommendation to enter into an exclusive negotiation agreement with the master developer finalist, the identity of the finalist will remain confidential,” said Daniel Hernandez, the city’s contracted project manager for the midtown campus.
The City Council intends to have a special hearing April 13 “to provide an opportunity for the public to meet the master developer” and for Mayor Alan Webber and the council to decide on entering into an exclusive negotiation agreement with the master developer finalist.
The meeting was originally planned for March 25 but was delayed by shifting priorities to deal with the COVID-19 crisis.
The April 13 meeting could be delayed as well, though if it occurs it will be a virtual meeting.
In a teleconference Monday, Webber said city teams evaluating proposals and a team in charge of negotiating an exclusivity agreement are moving forward, but he acknowledged the technological difficulties in making public a high-interest meeting could delay the process.
“The delay, if there is one, will
“How can [the city] get what the public wants if the public can’t see the proposals? Why don’t they want the public to see the difficulties of the decision-making process?” Melanie J. Majors, executive director of the New Mexico Foundation for Open Government
come largely as a result of technology and our need to make sure that people can be heard and participate in the ongoing stages of this very carefully managed, legally managed, exercise,” he said. “But at the moment, as far as I know, the work that has been commissioned to arrive at an agreement around an exclusivity of understanding has been going on so the council can be presented with something on time.”
Though the midtown campus dorms will be put to use as Santa Fe finds housing for those who have tested positive for the new coronavirus, that move is not a factor in a long-term decision about the project.
The city’s unwillingness to reveal what each of the applicants has proposed during the process has drawn criticism from open-government advocates.
“How can [the city] get what the public wants if the public can’t see the proposals?” said Melanie J. Majors, executive director of the New Mexico Foundation for Open Government. “Why don’t they want the public to see the difficulties of the decision-making process?”
Hernandez and Webber in the past have repeatedly said the city’s request for expressions of interest is a process to gather ideas from applicants that can be patched together for a development project and that these are not project “proposals.”
However, master developers submitted elaborate concepts.
Hernandez insisted all details from the proposals must remain confidential, as the RFEI is a competitive process — even though the city is about to enter into negotiations with a single master developer.
“The RFEI solicitation, which focuses on the disposition and development of the site, is not complete until the disposition and development agreement is executed (possibly toward the end of the year),” Hernandez wrote in an email. “So, all content in a submission package is required to remain confidential until the solicitation is completed.”
Central Park Santa Fe leader Allan Affeldt, one of the three remaining master developers, confirmed his team learned it had been eliminated in a letter.
The midtown campus is an estimated $400 million-plus project that could significantly shape Santa Fe for the next several decades.
The city has insisted applicants not speak publicly about their proposals, but about half, including Affeldt, have freely shared their ideas. Others yielded fully to the city’s veil of secrecy, including KDC Real Estate Development & Investments, which owns La Fonda on the Plaza.
Majors acknowledged the city may not be violating the state Open Meetings Act but added: “What I think they are doing violates the public trust.”