Foundation Sues Company About Donations

Payments Stopped After Foreclosure

A student who couldn’t afford to go to college got a scholarship that allowed her to begin her college career. A 13-year-old who got “jazzed” about theater is now striving to make a career in the arts.

These are just two of the examples of how a $1 million a year contribution to the Atrisco Heritage Foundation was transforming lives in the former Atrisco Land Grant community on the West Side.

The payments stopped in 2009, threatening to eliminate several educational and cultural programs benefitting Atrisco heirs, including scholarships, summer camps, theatrical productions, art projects, elder oral histories and more.

Attorneys representing the Atrisco Heritage Foundation this week filed a $97 million breach of contract lawsuit against a California development company that the foundation says failed to live up to a contract to fund the foundation’s charitable work.

Filed Thursday in Bernalillo County District Court, the lawsuit contends the establishment of a $1 million-a-year contribution for 100 years was a key incentive for Westland Development, the corporate successor to the land grant, to sell the 55,000 acres of common lands in 2006 to SunCal, an Irving, Calif., developer that planned to build new West Side communities, according to the lawsuit.

However, the foundation payments stopped in 2009 after creditors foreclosed on the

“If we were still involved in the project, we would still be paying for 100 years. That was our intention and our policy at that time.”

PETER SANCHEZ , EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, AT RISCO HERITAGE FOUNDATION

property.

A consortium of former creditors of the company, called Western Albuquerque Land Holdings, bought the land at auction and reportedly wants to go on with plans to develop the West Side. It has not, however, continued the $1 million annual contribution to Atrisco Heritage Foundation.

David M. Houliston of the Will Ferguson & Associates Law Firm, and Parrish Collins of Collins and Collins P.C., attorneys for the foundation, said the lawsuit against SunCal, Westland Development Co. and SCC Acquisition Corp., charges breach of contract, misrepresentation and other claims.

The consortium that now owns the land wasn’t named in the suit because the foundation agreement was made with SunCal, said Peter Sanchez, executive director of the Atrisco Heritage Foundation. “The original buyer (SunCal) is the party we feel legally has the obligation,” he said.

David Soyka, senior vice president of public affairs for SunCal Companies, on Friday said, “It wasn’t our choice not to be a part of the project, but unfortunately there’s been a worldwide correction, especially in the real estate market.

“If we were still involved in the project, we would still be paying for 100 years. That was our intention and our policy at that time, but it’s a function which is out of our control now,” he said.

Former Westland Development shareholders earlier this year settled a separate suit over the 2006 sale for $3.8 million.

Sanchez said the foundation — and the payments from the land sale deal — was seen as a way to “preserve 300 years of Atrisco history.”

“For us, the land was our heritage — farming, homes, opportunity, sustainability,” he said. “They (SunCal) said if they were allowed to buy the land, they would fund a foundation that, in the future, would do for the people what the land used to do,” Sanchez said.

Before the contributions stopped, the foundation, according to Sanchez:

Awarded more than $300,000 in college scholarships that benefited between 40 to 50 students a year over three years.

Awarded $150,000 in vocational school scholarships that benefited 30 to 40 students a year over three years.

Funded summer camps that served 100 schoolchildren each year.

Funded a variety of art and culture programs, including Spanish-themed performances at the University of New Mexico’s Popejoy Hall and the National Hispanic Cultural Center.

The Atrisco Land Grant of 1692, also known as La Merced, was one of several large grants of land awarded to Spanish colonists in the New World. The grant covered the west of Albuquerque between the Rio Grande and Rio Puerco.