Plans are well underway for the creation of a 34,000 square foot food hall inside Albuquerque’s transformative Sawmill District. The district, whose official address is 20th Street at Bellamah Avenue NW, was once the home to a thriving lumber mill dating back to 1903. The $24 million Sawmill Market is being carved out of the former Frank Paxton Lumber Company building, and will house up to two dozen individual retail spaces offering a variety of foodstuffs. What is being called “New Mexico’s First Artisanal Food Hall” will be located across Bellamah from the Hotel Chaco. Work on the individual spaces could see some facility upgrading and conversion, with plans calling for the hall to officially open next February. As designed, the building will also include cold and dry storage space, and both an interior common area seating space as well as outdoor seating. The market project was the recipient late last year of $10 million in industrial revenue bonds approved by the Bernalillo County Commission. A report put together by the county said that the Sawmill District project itself “encourages the use of a re-development strategy that encourages sustainable, smart growth in conserving land resources by attracting new infill development.” Officials say they regard the new food hall as the epicenter of the larger Sawmill District mixed-use project, which will include walkable space in a neighbor setting populated with restaurants, hotels, and retail shops. By Garry Boulard
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After months of speculation, the Department of the Interior has announced that it is relocating the headquarters of the Bureau of Land Management from Washington to Colorado. More specially, the agency’s main office will be centered in Grand Junction, a move that BLM officials say will allow for greater communication with the communities it serves. “Nine-nine percent of the land the BLM manages is west of the Mississippi River, and so should be the BLM headquarters,” said Colorado Senator Cory Gardner upon the announcement of the move. “This is a victory for local communities, advocates for public lands, and proponents for a more responsible and accountable federal government,” added Gardner, who introduced legislation in 2018 calling for the move. The relocation has won the support of Colorado Governor Jared Polis who remarked: “Grand Junction is the perfect location for the BLM because of community support, location closer to the land BLM manages, and the positive impact it will have on our western Colorado economy.” Where exactly in Grand Junction the BLM will open its new headquarters has not yet been announced. But Grand Junction officials have earlier indicated that they think the agency may at least initially upgrade an existing office structure for its purposes. It is also possible that the BLM may build an entirely new facility, mostly likely in downtown Grand Junction, officials says. Signed into law in 1946 by President Harry Truman, the Bureau of Land Management oversees nearly 250 million acres of public lands, the majority of which are located in the West, including Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico. By Garry Boulard Officials with Arizona Christian University have announced plans to build up to 1,400 new housing units in Glendale as part of a larger plan that is expected to see the private school’s enrollment more than double in the next decade. The nearly 60 year-old school, based in Phoenix, moved onto the former campus of Arizona State University’s Thunderbird School of Global Management last year after Thunderbird re-located its facilities to ASU’s downtown Phoenix site. The Glendale campus is located at the intersection of Greenway Road and 59th Avenue. Once that move was completed, Arizona Christian University officials said they wanted to build on some 85 acres of currently vacant land bordering the east and south side of that campus. Those officials also envisioned the construction of well over six hundred new homes on the same land comprising what is being called the Thunderbird Village. Now, members of the Glendale City Council have given their approval to a zoning change that will allow for the new residential construction. The planned Thunderbird Village may also eventually include medical and childcare space, as well as restaurants. Arizona Christian University’s move to the former Thunderbird campus has meant that the school has increased its campus size from the 20 acres it previously had in Phoenix to nearly 70 acres today, along with a structural footprint going from 150,000 square feet to 500,000 square feet. Lee Munsil, Arizona Christian University president, has noted that the new move has also given to the school “an expansive library ten times the size of our current library,” as well as the addition of a campus store, coffee shop and student union. The school’s new campus formerly servd as the site to a flight training school. During World War II, the Thunderbird Field Number One saw the training of more than 16,000 Air Force cadets. By Garry Boulard Up to $200 million in Texas drinking water and wastewater infrastructure project funding may be available if voters in November prove willing to approve a new constitutional amendment. That amendment, as proposed by Texas State Representative Eddie Lucio, and subsequently overwhelmingly passed in both legislative chambers, would authorize the Texas Water Development Board to provide funding for such projects. Created in 1957, that board is tasked with providing planning and financial assistance to local governments for water development and conservation projects throughout the state. By definition, the funding will specifically target projects in what are known as Economically Distressed Areas, a designation created by the Texas Legislature two decades ago. Besides water and wastewater projects, the funding can also be used for drainage projects as well as the acquisition of land. In an editorial published in the El Paso Times, Ed Roden-Lucero, pastor of the St. Thomas Aquinas Parish in East El Paso, said the amendment’s passage will ensure that “more families will live in neighborhoods that have safe drinking water and wastewater services.” The funding proposal must go the amendment route due to a Texas law prohibiting the state from borrowing money for any project without first securing the consent of the voting public. A promising trend line for water project advocates in the state: proposed voter-approved constitutional amendments, according to one analysis, have a better than 90 percent passage rate. By Garry Boulard As policy analysts, planners, and developers continue to cope with the ongoing issue of housing affordability, a new report suggests that the move toward increased green construction may serve to lessen the challenge. According to the National Association of Home Builders, one of the biggest obstacles facing the industry today in its quest to build more affordable housing is the ongoing cost of government regulations. The report says that regulations in general now add to the cost of the average single family home by at least 25 percent, with multifamily units seeing a more than 30 percent increase. According to the NAHB report, How Green Building Can Boost Housing Affordability, government incentives offered for green construction may provide a counterbalancing economic force in the home building industry. “State and local jurisdictions, and even a few public utilities, provide advantages to builders throughout the design, construction, and ultimate sale” of a defined green home. As a result, many of those same jurisdictions “have been successful in incentivizing green home certification with rebates, tax credits, density bonuses, and other tangible benefits.” The report goes on to note local policies in such states as Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Maryland, North Carolina, and Vermont that have in recent years offered a variety of incentives for green home construction projects. The question of building more affordable housing has in recent years become an NAHB legislative priority both in Washington and the states. Earlier this summer, Greg Ugalde, NAHB chairman, urged Congress to pass the Affordable Housing Credit Improvement Act in order to provide more flexibility in financing affordable housing projects. By Garry Boulard Work could begin sometime this fall on the construction of a Catholic Student Center, roughly one mile to the north of the University of Colorado’s campus in Colorado Springs. The project has been talked about for several years between officials with the Diocese of Colorado Springs, and both UCCS and city leaders. As proposed, the 8,500 square foot structure will go up on a mostly rural 3.5-acre site at 4785 Stanton Road and will include a 300-seat chapel and study, as well as meeting and office space. The building will have two wings, with one two stories in height. Project designer for the new center is Baker Architects of Denver, a firm that specializes in Catholic facility projects nationally. The Diocese of Colorado Springs, which says there are more than six thousand Catholic students in metro Colorado Springs, has launched a $7.5 million fund-raising goal to get the structure built. So far at least $2 million of the goal has been realized. If all goes as planned, construction on the new center is expected to be completed by the fall of next year. By Garry Boulard Work could begin later this year, or sometime in 2020, on a project whose architecture may be inspired by the legendary Frank Lloyd Wright. What is being called the Museum Square will go up within the boundaries of Old Town Scottsdale and will see the building of a nearly 150-foot tall hotel on a 7.3-acre site that will also include three other structures housing residential and retail space. The project at Goldwater Boulevard and Marshall Way has been the subject of several public input meetings, where support for the mixed-use development has been mixed with concerns regarding the height of the hotel. To be developed by the Macdonald Development Company of Vancouver and ARC Scottsdale Holdings, the project is being designed by the Scottsdale-based architecture firm of Swaback Partners. As envisioned, the ambitious project will also see the construction of both condominium and apartment units in three separate structures, an interactive art gallery, as well as the development of a tree-lined outdoor courtyard space. The developers say the project’s inclusion of an art gallery, as well as the detailed modern look of the structures in question, is designed to complement Old Town Scottsdale’s historic thriving art gallery scene. By Garry Boulard With the national boom in new student housing construction showing no immediate signs of slowing down, developers and owners may want to keep one market factor in mind: the closer the apartments are to a campus, the more likely are they to be rented. That, according to a new report released by the Richardson, Texas-based Real Page property management services company, is a trend that has been seen in the spring 2018 semester, but was replicated in the semester just concluded in May. According to the Real Page report: properties “less than a half-mile from campus saw more than twice the rent growth” of properties located a mile away or more. Says the report: “Stronger rent growth nearest campus also corresponds to more pre-lease velocity. Within a half-mile of campus, the national pre-lease rate through May is 78.2 percent.” Properties father away saw a lower 72.8 percent leasing rate. The report additionally notes, in response to ongoing student demands, “The average distance from campus has been shrinking consistently since 2011 as developers see the writing on the wall that these assets outperform their farther-from-campus counterparts.” The latest leasing rate numbers come on the heels of a report issued by Savills, a London real estate services company, indicating that overall investment in student housing construction projects in the U.S. surpassed the $10.8 billion mark in 2018. That number has been on a steady track upward since 2014 when it stood at around $3.8 billion. By Garry Boulard Plans for the El Paso building of a biohazardous medical waste facility will almost certainly be challenged in court, now that El Paso County is providing funds for a legal challenge. The Amarillo, Texas-based Medcare Environmental Solutions applied several months ago for a license to operate the facility at 9119 Billy the Kid Street. The project would see the upgrading and re-purposing of a one-story cement structure that would be used as processing space for what could be up to 100,000 pounds of medical waste on a daily basis. In late June, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality gave its approval to the project. Now, members of the El Paso County Commission have voted to set aside up to $20,000 in an effort to challenge the project in court. Members of that commission, as well as residents living near the proposed business, have said that they are concerned about how the company will dispose of such things as contaminated syringes, animal carcasses, and human blood and blood products. The issue of whether any of the waste processed in the facility could seep into the local water supply has also been raised. Officials with Medcare Environmental Solutions say that the more than 11,000 square foot building, which includes some 9,600 square feet of warehouse space, will be reconverted and updated in order to treat the medical waste. That structure was built in 1973 and also includes dock and office space. According to county documents, the company has said that through the use of innovative technology it would guarantee the disposal of waste in both an “environmentally safe and economical manner.” Founded in the 1960s, Medcare has provided its medical waste management services to entities in eight states, including Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas. Using what the company calls a regulated medical waste stream, Medcare processes pathology waste, non-hazardous pharmacy waste, trace chemotherapy waste, and regulated medical waste. By Garry Boulard A unique hexagon-shaped structure in the community of Gunbarrel, Colorado, that has served for more than fifty years as the clubhouse for the private Boulder Country Club, may soon be seeing renovations. Located at 7350 Clubhouse Road, the Boulder County Club was designed by famed modernist architect Hobart Wagener. The 29,200 square foot structure is distinguished by its interlocking wings, and houses lobby, dining, and office space. Now a plan has been announced to add around 2,000 square feet to the building. But to get that work approved for the structure, the Boulder County Planning Commission has determined that the owners of the country club must agree to pursue a formal landmark status through the county’s Historic Preservation Advisory Board. That status, according to county officials, will help to protect the building, which was opened in 1965, from any future exterior alterations. According to reports, the owners of the building have agreed to seek the historic designation. Once that process is completed, members of the Boulder County Commission are expected to give a final stamp of approval to the project. Actual work on the building will most likely begin later this fall, with a general completion date set for next summer. By Garry Boulard |
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