big santa fe midtown campus project nearing master developer decision

As part of an ongoing and closely-followed process to redevelop a prime 64-acre site in downtown Santa Fe, city officials have announced a list of three finalists to serve as the project’s master developer.

The site is the former home of the Santa Fe University of Art and Design, which closed its doors in 2017.

The City of Santa Fe subsequently purchased the property, launching a lengthy and much-publicized input process involving thousands of Santa Fe residents, workers, and business owners offering their views on what the new campus should become.

An eventual list of seven master developers for the site has now been reduced to just three, any of which, if selected, will be in charge of providing a vision for what could end up being a more than $400 million project that may take as long as a decade to complete.

The three finalists are: Central Park Santa Fe; KDC Real Estate Development and Investments/ Cienda Partners; and the Raffles Education Corporation.

All three firms will now be subject to queries from an evaluation committee made up of the heads of the city’s affordable housing, arts and culture, economic development, planning and public works departments.

The questions will initially be written out, with scheduled in-person interviews to follow next month and into early March.

Central Park Santa Fe is a housing development corporation based in Mexico City, Mexico; KDC Real Estate Development and Investments of Atlanta is a nationally known real estate development and investment firm; while Cienda Partners is based in Dallas and specializes in real estate investment and development.
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The Raffles Education Corporation is based in Singapore and has built campuses in nearly two dozen cities worldwide. Raffles in 2016 had expressed an interest in purchasing the Santa Fe University of Art and Design, but withdrew from that proposal when all of the details of the proposal could not be worked out. 

​By Garry Boulard

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