This Tuesday, May 8, the Town of Bernalillo Planning & Zoning Commission will be considering a Master Plan for the “Santa Rosa” parcel of land which includes over 400 apartment units. This parcel, which was annexed to the Town of Bernalillo a few years ago, is on the I-25 frontage road, just south of the La Farge gravel mines. You can read the Signpost article about the April Bernalillo P&Z Meeting, where this application was reconsidered, here:
http://www.sandovalsignpost.com/html/up_front.html#b (second article)
The meeting will be at 6:30 PM on May 8, at the Bernalillo Town Hall. Those who are concerned about this proposed apartment complex right on the west border of the Placitas Area might wish to attend.
One of the major concerns here would be the additional traffic from the estimated 617 housing units, including the over 400 apartments. This on the frontage road, which already has significant traffic from residents in the westernmost Placitas subdivisions, the gravel trucks, and will receive even more traffic once the Petroglyph Trails subdivision is developed.
JoAnn English did some estimates of the additional traffic load, due to this Santa Rosa Master Plan:
According to the Institute of Transportation Engineers Trip Generation: for apartments
Average weekday trips=6.72 trips/dwelling unit=4146 tips per day
AM Peak (7-9 am)=0.51 trips/du=315
PM Peak (4-6 pm)=0.62 trips/du=383
This was assuming 617 units.
This will certainly require a stop light at the development entrance to the frontage road. I suspect Lafarge would object to their gravel truck customers being stopped frequently in the morning and evening, or the obvious alternative of redirecting the gravel trucks to the Algodones exit. It doesn’t take much imagination to predict a major accident from a gravel truck failing to stop at the stop light; it seems almost inevitable.
This would be a disaster for all of us especially those in La Mesa and Sundance. The morning gravel trucks plus hundreds of new residents would cause massive morning backup and diminish our quality of life. Not to mention property devaluation. Any way to stop this craziness?
Those of us in the ES-CA area are not voters in Bernalillo, so that sort of direct political pressure is not possible. However our neighbors in Bernalillo do care about our concerns, especially when these problems would also become *their* problems. A good showing by concerned Placitas residents at the Bernalillo Planning & Zoning meeting thisTuesday will send a message of resistance to this proposal. There are clearly those in Bernalillo that oppose this as much as or more than Placitas residents, for a multitude of reasons. (Bernalillo would be required to supply policing, water, sewage and other services to this development, and would probably not receive tax revenues from it that would adequately pay for those services. Also, many in Bernalillo view their town as primarily a community of families and supporting businesses, and so don’t welcome non-family apartment dwellers in great numbers.) Our moral support of their efforts to keep such developments out of Bernalillo could help greatly in “stopping the craziness”.
I wish we could be there in person. I know your organization will do a good job on May 8 expressing our concerns about this project, the traffic and development in and around the area.
I sent them this already:
From: Kevin Quail
Sent: Saturday, April 28, 2012 11:17 AM
To: tmortensen@townofbernalillo.org
Subject: Through http://www.townofbernalillo.org
The May 2012 issue of the Sandoval Signpost has an article about the proposed Santa Rosa high-density development. The proposal is insane, for many reasons. The Sandoval County P & Z Commission has before it a similar proposal for a mixed high-density, single family home and local commercial development on land in the Petroglyph Trails area, county land almost immediately adjacent to the proposed Santa Rosa development. Where’s the water going to come from? And who is going to purchase these units? As seen below, according to city data, Bernalillo had 9,386 people in 2009. Now the population is 8,320. That’s a loss of over 10% of the population in 2-3 years. I live in Placitas. When I drive down 550, from I-25 to 528, there are at least 9 businesses that are closed, and three more next to the Big 5 Sporting Goods on 528. The Jackalope, the Coronado Restaurant, The Bottega, the huge bank building with the brick wall and aqua fencing, a building across from the new Kelly’s Liquors that used to be a laundromat, a gas station that closed, an empty space in the mall behind the Walgreens, and one more I can’t think of at the moment. One of the motels is bound to be next. On the second link below, it shows the amount of empty commercial space for sale or rent in Bernalillo, thousands of feet of retail space and dozens of acres. The third link is to a CNBC story from last October stating that bankers don’t see housing prices recovering until 2020.
http://www.city-data.com/city/Bernalillo-New-Mexico.html
http://www.loopnet.com/New-Mexico/Bernalillo-Commercial-Real-Estate/
No Rise in Home Prices Until 2020: Bankers
http://www.cnbc.com/id/44735283
Furthermore, the following story was just published on April, 26, 2012, a few days ago:
Insight: Falling home prices drag new buyers under water
http://www.cnbc.com/id/47191744
A quote from that article states “Overall, CoreLogic data shows that 11.1 million, or 22.8 percent, of U.S. residential properties with a mortgage are in negative equity, unchanged from the summer of 2010.” Those people can’t move because they cannot sell their homes. Student loan debt, because college has gotten so expensive, is approaching 1 trillion dollars and has surpassed credit card debt in the US. There isn’t a generation of college grads poised to jump into the housing market- they can’t afford it. Now is not the time to be building some pie-in-the-sky developments, either by the town of Bernalillo or Sandoval County, on the premise that it will generate more tax revenue. And what about the scheduled improvement of the 165/550 and I-25 interchange because of too much traffic? If there’s too much traffic now, how would the improvement help at all by then adding two groups of higher density housing? Again, it’s insanity.
1. “No Rise in Home Prices Until 2020: Bankers” http://www.cnbc.com/id/44735283
Well if you read the article this was from a survey of Professional Risk Managers for FICO and the percentage of respondents that agreed on this prediction was less than half. Even the authors called it “a decidedly pessimistic outlook”. If people cannot afford houses I guess their only choice would be an apartment then, and not all famalies live in houses many chose or have no other option other than to live in an apartment.
The private developer will be the one building the project not the towns or counties. Seems the 10% reduction in population would mean that there would not be an immediate increase in water demand, police services, etc. As for water most developers purchase water rights to the land, no one will be required to ration water.
As for LaFarge trucks running red lights I don’t think the developer could be held responsible for this. I would have to place the blame for this on the operations and safety regulations of LaFarge.
“Famalies”? Really? And they don’t all live in houses? Well, duh. Again, with “famalies”, so it’s not a typo because you spelled it that way twice and then wrote “chose” instead of “choose”, so already, I can’t take you seriously because you can neither spell nor use correct grammar. Because the developers purchase water rights, no one will have to ration water? In the desert, where Albuquerque has seen the driest two years since the 1950s? So the developers can just purchase water rights and that makes water appear out of thin air? How does that work, exactly? Prayer? Rain Dances? Climate change denial makes it not factual? I fail to read where I mentioned anything about LaFarge trucks running red lights. You do understand that gravel trucks are substantially larger than cars, correct? And that the interchange is already scheduled for an overhaul because of the current traffic withoout the added flow from these proposed developments? And now, since I waited this long to see your inane response, the situation is even worse, as the new BLM Rio Puerco plan calls for an expansion of the gravel mine- more cars from these developments, more trucks from the expanded gravel mine means an increased use of water by LaFarge(average use 70,000,000 gallons per year from 1994-2001) and even more traffic pouring into an interchange already scheduled for redesign due to the current overload. Again, I say, well duh.