Site slated for swap
Garrett’s Desert Inn acreage in downtown SF would be worth more as vacant property
Editor’s note: This is an abbreviated version of a story that appears in today’s Journal North. The complete version is available at abqjournal.com/north.
SANTA FE — The Garrett’s Desert Inn property in downtown Santa Fe, slated to be swapped to the State Land Office in a trade with Cochiti Pueblo, would be worth more as vacant land than it is now with the current 1950s-era hotel standing and open for business.
That’s one of the findings of an appraisal of the Garrett’s site at 311 Old Santa Fe Trail recently commissioned by the Land Office. The appraisal report says demolition of the hotel “is considered maximally productive.”
Under tentative arrangements announced in January, Cochiti is to purchase the property and then trade it to the land office for 9,268 acres of state trust land near the pueblo. The trust land is remote open terrain except for what used to be the well-known Dixon’s apple orchard.
State Land Commissioner Aubrey Dunn has said the trade should be a big boost for the state land trust, which generates revenue for beneficiaries including public schools, universities, hospitals and prisons.
Cochiti is now paying $30,000 a year to lease the thousands of acres of trust land near the pueblo that includes numerous ancient Puebloan sites. Dunn believes the trust can make 10 times more by making the trade and renting out the Garrett site in downtown Santa Fe.
The appraisal by Hippauf & Associates of Santa Fe says the 2.7 acre hotel site, about three blocks from the Plaza and across the street from the land office’s own headquarters, is worth $7.1 million if it were “vacant and unencumbered by lease.” The hotel’s lease for the site dates from 1957 and runs out in August 2017. The Catron family of Santa Fe owns the property and has agreed to sell it to Cochiti.
The appraised value of the downtown property drops to $5,050,000 with the hotel standing, again assuming it is no longer encumbered by the lease, says the Hippauf report dated March 3. Demolition costs are estimated at $350,000.
Either way, with buildings or not, the Garrett’s property unencumbered by the expiring lease is said to be worth more than the appraised value of the land that the Land Office wants to trade to Cochiti Pueblo.
The values for the hotel site will now be compared with an appraisal of the trust land near Cochiti that was finalized in December 2014. That appraisal put the value of the Cochiti-area land at $4,750,000, including $125,000 for the apple orchard. The final value for trade purposes was bumped up to $4,825,000 due to a 2014 agreement with Cochiti over the value of the apple orchard, which was ruined by wildfire and subsequent floods in 2011. In a recent meeting with the Jour
nal’s editorial board, Dunn said some interested parties are already “stirring around” the Garrett’s site.
It may be hard to believe considering the high commercial rents around the Plaza, but the decadesold lease on the hotel property that expires next year brings in only $20,000 a year — “well under market value for the area,” the Garrett’s appraisal says with some understatement. The appraisal estimates that a market rate rent for the hotel site, if vacant, is $568,000 a year.
The Land Office has no plans to demolish Garrett’s Inn to make it more valuable if the trade goes through. “The Land Office cannot expend funds to make improvements on State Trust Lands,” according to a statement from the office.
At the meeting with the Journal, Deputy Land Commissioner Laura Riley said the land office will probably put together a task force on “what will be the best vision for this property, for beneficiaries as well as the community.”