Remaking St. Michael’s?
It’s an idea that’s been kicking around for years, dating from the mayoral term of former Mayor David Coss: Turning St. Michael’s Drive, the six-lane commercial thoroughfare that is the major east-west traffic carrier in mid-town Santa Fe, into something of a scenic urban boulevard. The vision is for multi-family housing — mainly apartments — landscaped bike and pedestrian paths, and neighborhood shops rising where there’s now big box stores, strip malls, banks and big parking lots.
City Hall is finally turning the idea into action, or at least a paper plan, with a new “overlay district” ordinance with incentives for developing apartments and otherwise conforming with what sometimes goes by the moniker Re:Mike.
Matt O’Reilly, the city’s asset development manager, isn’t making any predictions for a quick transformation. “It will happen slowly,” he said.
A new twist has entered the situation since Coss first started talking about remaking St. Mike’s. The road has made something of comeback as a traditional late 20th-century, all-American, non-hip, big parking lot commercial strip in the past three years or so.
Some examples of this turn of events include: a re-do of the Smith’s supermarket with addition of a coffee shop, sushi bar and an amazing cheese department; Smith’s new gasoline service station; a new Big R farm and western clothing store; a relocated Hyundai dealership; the Just Sprinklers store in what was an abandoned bus depot; Jimmy John’s sandwiches moving in where The Green Owl café closed; a nice Food King replacing the closed Lowe’s supermarket; the St. Mike’s Toyota dealership staying put and abandoning plans to move south; the venerable Tecoloté Cafe moving to St. Mike’s; and, on the trendy side, the opening of the fine Loyal Hound eatery. The St. Mike’s Kmart so far has avoided closure as the big-box chain continues to shut down dozens of stores nationwide.
With all that going on, trying to turn St. Michael’s Drive into something new or different may seem like swimming against the tide. And the activist Chainbreaker Collective, starting very early, is warning about the potential effects of gentrification on the nearby Hopewell neighborhood if the city happens to make St. Mike’s too attractive.
Frankly, appealing loft apartment buildings with cupcake shops, brew pubs and vinyl record stores at a well-landscaped street level does seem an unlikely outcome for St. Mike’s any time soon. And when it comes to developing a cluster of rental apartments — something the statistics show Santa Fe really needs — finding a happy medium between good, affordable units and cheap, overcrowded buildings headed for long-term disaster could be difficult.
But the city’s effort to improve and sustain the viability of its older (but not historic and often forgotten) mid-city core is commendable. The overlay district ordinance should be passed by the City Council to provide goals to shoot for on St. Michael’s Drive over the next couple of decades.