Closed midtown campus process serves no one

Whoo-hooo. Three semifinalists to develop Santa Fe’s midtown campus have been identified. By April, it’s possible that a final choice will be announced, at which point Santa Fe will find out more about the master developer’s vision for the abandoned Santa Fe University of Art and Design campus.

What a smooth process, right? Wrong.

By the time the curtains are pulled back and residents learn what the developer has in mind, it will be too late. That’s because, without knowing what city officials rejected, residents cannot fully evaluate the final choice.

It is not enough for a group of unelected bureaucrats — the evaluating committee is made up of a host of city department heads — to sift through applications and then tell the rest of us the choice.

Citizens need to be able to look at applications and make their own judgments. We cannot evaluate the wisdom of the choice without all the information. Right now, the city is not sharing.

Using a small portion of state statute, the city believes it is legally on solid ground to keep the bids secret. This statute, which applied to the disclosure of competitive sealed proposals, reads in full: “The contents of any proposal shall not be disclosed so as to be available to competing offerors during the negotiation process.” We aren’t going to argue what is legal; but we will focus on what is right.

City residents were promised an open, transparent process. Hundreds of people sat through meetings, answered surveys and otherwise gave feedback to city officials — identifying that they wanted such things as higher education, use and expansion of such landmarks as the Greer Garson theater and film studios, arts and culture offerings, entrepreneurial spaces and housing. Whatever development occurs, citizens said, developers should avoid gentrification of nearby neighborhoods or displacement of residents — that was a key concern of planning process participants.

The committee is supposed to keep those broad themes in mind, as well as investigate bidders for financial depth, the ability to complete projects and acumen at handling public-private partnerships, basically performing the most rigorous background check possible.

Here’s the reality. By opening up the process, the background check will be crowdsourced — and in Santa Fe, with its diverse population, we can promise that citizens will find information that even the most rigorous checks missed. An open process saves grief later.

We fully understand that too many cooks can sometimes ruin the whole meal. But we also know that the long-term buy-in in a place like Santa Fe demands that as much light as possible be directed on the next phases of the project. After all, this is the future of the town.

Development of the midtown campus is the most important project occurring in Santa Fe, with the potential to reshape not just the center of town physically, but to offer opportunity for sustainable growth and progress for the rest of this century and beyond.

Santa Fe must get this right. To do that, an open process is the best way forward. This is not a call for development by committee, but for vigorous citizen review. After a finalist is announced without public scrutiny, it will be too late.

We want to remind Central Park Santa Fe, KDC Real Estate Development and Investments/Cienda Partners and Raffles Education Corp. — the finalists — that just because the city wants secrecy, they can open up about their plans. What we do know about potential prospects for the site, which could end up as large as 100 acres through land swaps with the state of New Mexico, in fact, is because developers have shared information. It certainly did not come from city officials.

Those same officials now are insisting that developers not talk. It is past time to end the secrecy and begin to discuss openly what could happen in the middle of our town. City councilors could demand more transparency and they should. Citizens need to speak up. Otherwise, Santa Feans will be left to weigh in after the decision has been made.

That’s too late.