Albuquerque Development Thread

[TheABQJav]

RE: New Sawmill Hotel

You have a great take on this, ABQAlex (thanks for the username inspo...lol).

It's insane how hypocritical the Heritage group is being. They want to have a monopoly on Sawmill, and only make it a space exclusively for wealthy people.

Even in their Sawmill Market, they used all the tenants as stocking horses to generate popularity, and now they are replacing all the local businesses with their own restaurant concepts. It's a disgusting business practice.

What's worse is JJ Mancini (long time employee of Jim Long and Heritage & President of Old Town neighborhood association) was at the public hearings, representing himself as the President of Old Town, actively disagreeing with the development. There was no vote and NONE of the business in the association were consulted on the position. If he wanted to represent himself as an Old Town representative, they should have voted on their stance (a vote he should recuse himself from anyway due to his employment). He was doing Jim Longs dirty work at the expense of everyone he supposedly "represents". Every one of those businesses would see an uptick in volume with a new hotel bringing 50-100k tourists to the local economy annually.

Very eye opening to see how Jim Long and Heritage Hotels actually see competition and operate. They know they have a bad value proposition and will have their "lunch ate" by this new hotel.

I hear the businesses in Old Town are pissed at him. Have you heard anything about this?

This is my first post. I currently work for a local developer (small group), and have worked in development in ABQ/NM for a few firms at this point. Long time YIMBY. I have followed development news for years, but the "controversy" around this development really bugged me. Looking into it is how I found this forum, and I plan to be an active contributor.