Before the comeback, downtown was dying
In the 1970s, Main Street, the central roadway running through the seven-block retail area of Downtown Las Cruces, was recast as a pedestrian walkway meandering through an outdoor mall, void of Southwest or Spanish themes, and covered by canopies.
“So many historic buildings were torn down to make that happen,” said Melody Burns, who has lived in Las Cruces since 1993, and whose late husband Robert Burns co-founded the Las Cruces Music in the Park series in 1995.
“It was just dying, you know, when it had the walking mall,” she recalled. “It wasn’t good for business, so, unfortunately, many of the businesses just walked away.”
During the years of 1966 to 1974, as chronicled by a 2011 academic article on Downtown Las Cruces, city leaders tore down hundreds of structures, replacing “Main Street’s rich, regional history with expansive parking lots and an unsuccessful pedestrian mall that mimicked enclosed shopping centers.”
Las Cruces was following a national urban renewal trend that attempted to update failing urban areas by paving the way for private investment in an attempt to kick-start city economies. But, in Las Cruces, this led to a “loss of regional culture and history to rational planning and its all-too frequent partners, the wrecking ball and bulldozer,” wrote Hannah R. Wolberg, the author of “The Impact of Urban Renewal on Downtown Las Cruces, New Mexico,” one of the only comprehensive examinations of the demise of the Southern New Mexico’s downtown region.
Public sentiment — which in the 1960s was demanding an urban renewal model for its downtown — soon changed tides and the woes of a failing downtown were blamed on the outdoor shopping center that was erected and the lack of traffic from the pedestrian-only pathways that replaced vehicle traffic.
From 160 businesses on Main Street before urban renewal, residents saw a drop to 90 just three years after the outdoor mall was constructed. And, in 2005, that number fell to 10, according to documents from the City of Las Cruces.
The public, nostalgic for the bustling Las Cruces before urban renewal, had soured on the direction of their downtown. And for good reason, some city leaders say.
“Between the 1940s and the 1970s, there were three or four different movie theaters operating downtown,” said Chris Faivre, deputy director of the Economic Development Department for the City of Las Cruces. “There was the State Theater, the Plaza Theater, the Rio Grande Theater, so downtown was where a lot of commercial activity took place. A lot of entertainment came out of downtown,” he said.
“By the time we started the revitalization, the only things open downtown were a couple of print shops, there was a handful of churches, doctors offices,” he said. Urban renewal “had completely altered the dynamic of what you found on Main Street,” said Faivre. “Yeah, it was pretty bad for the downtown area, definitely.”