Downtown Albuquerque, N.M.
Revitalization Drives New Market

All new-construction projects transform a downtown area into an area where residents can work and play.

BY PATRICIA STAHL

Newsweek lists Albuquerque, N.M., among the Top 10 cities that are attracting high-tech businesses. The city is projected to experience an employment growth rate of 21.9 percent through 2005, more than twice the national average. The Creativity Index, which gauges a region’s potential in the knowledge economy, ranks Albuquerque as the No. 1 mid-sized metropolitan area in the country.

Riding the crest of these trends, Albuquerque launched an ambitious downtown redevelopment plan in 1998 that incorporates the principles of New Urbanism. A 12-block area is being transformed from a 9-to-5 concentration of offices, banks, and hospitals that have little to offer after hours to a pedestrian-oriented community with entertainment, rental and for-sale housing, retail shopping, and office space. It aims to be a place where people live, work, and play 24/7.

The major focus is the $175 million effort spearheaded by the Historic District Improvement Co., which consists of Arcadia Land Co. in Albuquerque and the McCune Charitable Foundation in Santa Fe, N.M. The city has invested $8 million in land, infrastructure improvements, and tax abatements, and in return HDIC has committed a portion of its future cash flow to repay the city.

The first new residential rentals—220 units—came in two years ago at rates about 20 percent above the highest rates in the city. Rents in the next phase are even higher. Although the top rental rate in the city is 87 cents per square foot, rents downtown are between $1.04 and $1.15 per square foot. And housing sales are even hotter. In a complex of 41 lofts, 16 have been presold at about $232 per square foot—twice what properties are selling for anywhere else in the city.

Christopher Leinberger, a partner in Arcadia, a major New Urbanist development firm, acknowledges that these prices are out of reach for most people, but the underlying premise of the project is that the gentrification will help to pay for affordable housing. Forty percent of the profits from the project will go to the Downtown Albuquerque Civic Trust, a nonprofit entity with a mandate to build and finance affordable housing in and near downtown.