H-board approves four-story building near Loretto
Family now deciding if plan is still economically viable
The city Historic Districts Review Board put the final stamp of approval Tuesday on a proposal to construct a four-story building next to the Loretto Chapel, ending a decadeslong effort to clear regulatory hurdles to development of a prime piece of real estate abutting one of Santa Fe’s iconic and most treasured structures.
But, after reaching the end of a long and frustrating path through City Hall and local courtrooms, owners of the property on Old Santa Fe Trail at Water Street said after the vote that the proposed Spanish-Pueblo Revival-style building may never even materialize.
“Truly, the next step is deciding if it’s a buildable building,” Maggie Anderson, daughter of property owner Jim Kirkpatrick, said. “We’ve been part of the process so long. You don’t know when you’re going to get approval, so we don’t know the real economics behind it. Now we have to really look at that, see what is viable, what we should do.”
The board, which last month granted conditional approval of a height exception for a nearly 31,000-square-foot building with underground parking, retail shops on the first floor and residences on the upper floors, voted 5-1 on Tuesday night to give final approval.
Member Frank Katz cast the lone dissenting vote, saying the building wouldn’t be set back far enough from Old Santa Fe Trail.
How such a structure would impact views of the Gothic chapel, built in the 1870s to serve a Roman Catholic girls school but now primarily a tourist attraction, was a major sticking point as the property owners and their architect met resistance to various designs over the years. Preservationists expressed concerns about how the development might affect the streetscape in an area about a block southeast of the Santa Fe Plaza.
“I am very saddened, and I wish that this board would disapprove it,” Katz said. “But my view is that the board has already approved it with conditions that have been met, so I will not detain you further.”
Other board members agreed that the applicants had met all conditions of
approval, including widening a ground-floor portal at the southwest corner of the proposed building and modifying setbacks for the second and third floors at the northwest corner. Board members also agreed that both sides had made a lot of concessions.
“In true good negotiation, all parties would have to give up things, and I think I see that happening here,” William Powell said.
“I personally am ready to give it a blessing,” he added. “I think at this point, the only thing we’re going to do is chip away a corner here or a corner there. Unless the rest of the board members feel there’s any glaring errors that should be corrected, I don’t know that we’re going to move much further in progressing this design unless we start over, and I don’t think that’s an option right now.”
As the development proposal underwent numerous design changes over the last 20 years, it was the subject of multiple hearings, appeals before the City Council and a lawsuit that ended with a judge sending the project back to the city review board.
Architect Eric Enfield called the proposal “the toughest project ever” in the three decades he has made design presentations before the board.
“But I really feel like this family deserved an approval on a building, considering they’ve shown two three-stories, two four-stories, a five-story building, to try and find the compromise the board would accept,” Enfield said. “To the board’s credit, they accepted this compromise.”
The saga started in 1971 when Kirkpatrick bought the downtown block formerly occupied by the Loretto Academy for $500,000 from the Sisters of Loretto with the idea of building a hotel.
Four years later, Kirkpatrick opened the Inn at Loretto, now known as the Inn and Spa at Loretto. The hotel opened with four stories, and Kirkpatrick added the fifth and sixth floors in the early 1980s.
Kirkpatrick’s property included the deconsecrated chapel and an empty corner lot that Kirkpatrick said he planned to develop in the future.
In 1994, Kirkpatrick proposed a three-story office building, but the city turned him down, leading to a court battle and numerous unsuccessful efforts to get city approval to develop the site.