KOB-TV had a story last week about the NIMBY opposition to the proposed 3-story rehabilitation hospital along I-25. Of course they are planning to appeal the EPC's decision to change the zoning of the site that allowed the project to go forward.
https://www.kob.com/new-mexico/neigh...-martineztown/
Quote:
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – Gilbert Speakman grew up going to San Ignacio Church in Martineztown.
Speakman says he was born and raised in this neighborhood. But, over the years, what he calls gentrification pushed him and so many others out.
“It was sad that south of Lomas, a lot of the people that used to live there, they no longer live near here. You know, like me, I don’t live here anymore,” said Speakman.
So, when developers announced new plans for a multi-story rehabilitation hospital in the neighborhood, neighbors were not happy.
“This area right here was our playground. We used to play here,” said Loretta Naranjo Lopez, president of the Santa Barbara-Martineztown Neighborhood Association.
The plans are to build the hospital in an empty lot behind the Embassy Suites on Lomas. But neighbors say the area is already too congested with traffic and speeding.
“This intersection here you see the cars coming off the freeway, still going above the 40 mph speed limit. There’s been so many accidents in that one corner there,” Lopez said.
They say the three schools in the area, including Albuquerque High, would be impacted – not to mention all the students.
“Very disgusted with the city even more now. I think that we’ve been sold out to just the highest bidder, and we’re not looking at the families here that have been here through generations,” she said.
Online city records show the required zone change was just approved by the city Environmental Planning Commission. But neighbors say they’ll keep working to preserve their neighborhood.
“We’re a historical neighborhood. We need the same respect Old Town gets,” Speakman said.
The neighborhood association has until March 1 to appeal the zoning approval, which Lopez said they plan to do.
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Here's another story by KRQE where they turn to a classic NIMBY tactic and propose turning the property into open space or a park. Gee, what a great idea and location for such a thing! They also call for scaling back the project to a third of the current proposal. Of course, such arguments would do nothing but kill the project, which is their true aim.
https://www.krqe.com/news/albuquerqu...r-development/
Quote:
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (KRQE) – A new medical injury rehab center could go up off I-25 near downtown. However, neighbors worry the area is already too busy with traffic and students at nearby schools.
Right now, the three-acre lot at 1100 Woodward Place NE near Mountain and Lomas is empty. A company called Nobis Rehabilitation Partners hopes the area could be used for a new medical rehabilitation center. The development has left some neighbors concerned.
“The use already allows 20 beds, but 60 beds would be detrimental to the neighborhood. The area can’t carry it. Mountain road is an old residential road,” said President of the Santa Barbara Martineztown Neighborhood Association, Loretta Naranjo Lopez.
The city’s Environmental Planning Commission recently approved a zoning change on the property allowing for a much larger three-story facility for physical and occupational therapy. Neighbors worry it will draw too much traffic in an already busy area with Albuquerque High School and two other schools.
According to city documents, developers said the rehab facility traffic would enter and exit off of Woodward Place, not Mountain. “I’m very concerned. I want this looked at a little bit closer we need a traffic impact study to help figure out what they can do,” said Angela Vigil, a member of the Santa Barbara Martineztown Neighborhood Association.
Despite the city’s recent zoning change approval, neighbors said they’ll continue fighting the development, hoping it could be turned into a community open space. “If we build another building here, it’s only going to add more traffic. We would like to see possibly this area used for the neighborhood and for the students at Albuquerque High,” said Vigil.
Neighbors have until March 1 to appeal the change. KRQE reached out to developers and the company behind the rehab facility but did not hear back.
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Here is a picture of the area where the hospital will go. It would be built on the dirt lot seen in the middle left of the view. Look at all the extremely dangerous and packed-with-traffic surface streets in the photo. Woodward Place doesn't look at all as busy as a suburban cul de sac in the photo, to say nothing of Mountain Road. I mean, how do students at the school at the bottom of the pic deal with all that traffic. How do they even feel safe going to school there.
Clearly I'm being sarcastic, but if you believe the NIMBY arguments, then how ridiculous is it to trot out the classic NIMBY cry to turn the property into a park or open space?? You want to create an amenity that would draw students across a supposedly extremely busy and congested road where they otherwise wouldn't have? That sounds smart and like a good idea.
This is all so ridiculous.
Sold out to the highest bidder, yet it's taken over 30 years for anyone to come forward and rescue this site from the previous failed project that the NIMBYs helped derail.
That would've been the highest use for this plot of land. Now we have to be thankful that anyone is interested in developing it at all, and with a 3-story building. Plus, it's a rehab hospital! That's hardly anything that's gonna attract a lot of people to the area, but at least it will be a productive, tax-generating endeavor and fulfill a need in the community.
In response to the claim of gentrification, that's also completely bunk. City housing projects and affordable apartments, condos and homes are south of Lomas. These people are so disingenuous and full of sh!t, I swear. It's shameless.
Below is the Commons at Martineztown, a scattered-site city housing project that was fully renovated and rehabilitated in a $7.5 million dollar project that was completed a little over a year ago. It occupies much of the area south of Lomas. The city basically guaranteed that it will be there and be affordable for the foreseeable future, but these people are disgusted with the city and what they are doing to their neighborhood.
Here are even more new affordable apartments that the city completed last year in Martineztown, the $18 million Broadway + McKnight townhomes.
Here's the new $4 million multi-generational center that the city is currently building in Martineztown.
And here's the new $17 million pump station and ponding area that the city also built in the neighborhood to address the flooding that had occurred during heavy rains in the past.
But yet these people are disgusted with what the city is doing in their neighborhood. I'm disgusted by them!
If you'll notice in the pic above, the NIMBY Queen of Martineztown is front and center and all smiles in the photo. It was apparently a good day in her toxic relationship with the city. It was also before she lost her race for the city council, so she mustn't have built up enough disgust yet.
Below are screenshots of apartments and condos that were built in the 1970s and 1980s that are also south of Lomas and closer to I-25 and the proposed hospital site. It's an example of what the city was trying to do in Martineztown by redeveloping empty and blighted lots back then.
These units have always been attainable for working class and lower middle class people. This isn't some rich development. There are also dozens, maybe hundreds, of older modest single family homes throughout this area still. The plan was never for wholesale destruction and removal of residents.
There is literally no gentrification of Martineztown that has went on south of Lomas. Certainly none that could be blamed on a property that was always just a piece of dirt that barely got developed beginning in the mid-2000s.
How can a hotel, a scientific lab and a rehabilitation hospital that sit separated up on a hill lead to gentrification in Martineztown?? It hasn't done so in the last two decades with the hotel and lab, I doubt the hospital will be the tipping point.
The area south of Lomas next to I-25 where all the current rehab and specialty hospitals are located was of course originally the site of the old Civic Auditorium that was built in the 1950s and demolished in the 1980s. Before that the area was always barren land. Nobody was ever displaced anywhere along the line.
Below are a couple of aerial pics of Albuquerque from the early 1930s. You can see that the area east of Martineztown and north of Lovelace (St. Joseph Hospital) was never fully or densely developed before the 1950s when the Civic Auditorium was built. You can also see all the sand hills that were present in the area. Martineztown mostly straddled Edith Boulevard from north of Longfellow Elementary School's grounds back then. It also sort of made a "T" and had a nucleus west along Mountain Road from Edith toward Broadway. Click the links to see the images full size and zoom in to get a better look!
https://images2.imgbox.com/10/87/EkTDvOQk_o.jpeg
https://images2.imgbox.com/0f/5c/J9gZkGaH_o.jpeg
I used to attend Albuquerque High and I remember walking and climbing along the sand hills west and east of the school and in Martineztown before and after school and during lunch. It was a favorite and fun thing that we used to do. But I don't expect or think that's a valid reason for a piece of property not to be developed, or the sand hills not to ever be modified or changed and built upon because of my fond memories and experiences. I'm not calling for them to be turned into a park because I have memories there.
Below is a picture from the New Mexico Department of Transportation showing the area of the former Civic Auditorium in 1959 while I-25 was being built. It and the aerial pics above help prove as untrue another NIMBY and activist claim that many people were displaced, neighborhoods split up and many homes bulldozed for the building of the freeways through Downtown.
https://twitter.com/NMDOT/status/1339611076749524993
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EpdBKAuVoAA3toU.jpg:large
The reality is that very little of that actually happened. The truth is that these areas were mostly never built upon and the sand hills created a natural barrier to contiguous urban development and any other sort of development for the hundreds of years that this valley was significantly settled and built upon. I-25 was mostly routed along the sand hills and mesa edges through Downtown and all along the valley precisely because almost nobody had built along them in the entire history of the city and human settlement in this area.
The accepted narrative and legend also is that the city wanted to bulldoze all of Martineztown in the 1970s and rebuild it as an extension of the central business district/downtown core. The reality is that the city wanted to develop and redevelop select properties within Martineztown, areas such as the Civic Auditorium site and the absolutely empty land along I-25 east of Martineztown. There were never any plans to bulldoze the entire area.
But Loretta Naranjo Lopez has built her whole existence on supposedly defeating the city's plans to destroy the neighborhood back then. It's her industry to oppose, it's what she needs to survive and live off. I was never more grateful to see someone lose a local election. She came in last place as well. Perhaps her checkered history and the accusations leveled against her in her position on a public agency's board helped voters see her for what she is...
https://www.abqjournal.com/news/new-...76c2e6aae.html
https://www.santafenewmexican.com/ne...234164769.html
I'm so tired of all the myths and distorted histories and outright lies that get thrown around and repeated over and over until they are accepted as fact. Then they are trotted out and manipulated by NIMBYs and other so-called activists to rile people up every time they want to block and obstruct development and progress in our city. They create a false narrative of injustices that supposedly occurred, but which actually never did. I'm sick of it and of what they are doing to our city.
Below is another aerial pic from the Albuquerque Museum's online archives showing the old Big I and Martineztown in 1969 looking towards Downtown proper before the new Albuquerque High School campus was built. The Martineztown NIMBYs in the 1970s even fought against that as gentrification and displacement, even though the land was empty and sat above the neighborhood on a hill and the fact that it was a freakin' school! Yet now they are pretending to advocate and be concerned for the students on this site. It's maddening!
Luckily, Newspapers.com had one of their free previews over Presidents' Day weekend. I was able to research another vague memory I had of proposed development on this land.
In the 1990s a new federal courthouse was being planned for Albuquerque. The first site considered was this empty 25-acre plot of land along I-25 between Mountain Road and Lomas Boulevard. Guess who was front and center to the opposition back then as well? Yep. Fifty years of this sh!t, and 30 years fighting
anything that comes along at this site, no matter what it is. She truly is the NIMBY Queen.
Note that the actual leaders of the Martineztown NA back then mostly did support the courthouse development. They even called it a better, low traffic option. I wonder what they would think of an option that would only create about 100 trips a day. Unfortunately, they're gone and this woman slithered her way from secretary to a leadership position that she holds to this day.
Also unfortunately, because of the opposition in Martineztown that she helped form and organize, the courthouse ended up being built just north of the Downtown core (at the time) and it meant the destruction of McClellan Park. This was an actual tragedy to lose this beautiful, historic park. Instead of a completely empty patch of dirt being developed we saw a great green space in the center or our city destroyed, all because of NIMBYs.
The park was somewhat replaced by the landscaping of the courthouse grounds, but it doesn't at all compare and it isn't nearly as inviting or accessible for casual visitors. Although, the design of the new landscaping at the front along Lomas is eye-catching and an improvement over the original from 1998, but still not exactly inviting and hospitable.
https://www.rios.com/projects/pete-v...ci-courthouse/
If there was any other reason to despise this person, remember that she also was dead set against a soccer stadium at Broadway and Lomas. I'm certain that her opposition is why it was always a non-starter, despite what the mayor later said about the USPS not wanting to sell any of its property.
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