News & INSIGHTS

A new Comprehensive Plan for the future of the city of Española has been completed, after a seven-month process driven by a group of about 15 city residents.

The group was guided by city-hired consultants.

The Plan outlines five priorities considered necessary to correct issues like disinvestment from the city’s central district on the west side and a general lack of economic opportunity for the city’s people.

The Plan states that the recommendations must be implemented within the next decade. It was written by Integrated Planning & Design, based in Park City, Utah, who took feedback from city government officials and the Steering Committee, composed of a group of city residents.

The Española City Council and some members of the city’s Planning Commission discussed the Plan in a joint meeting, June 20, at the Española Public Library.

“Doing nothing is an active decision,” the Plan states. “Accountability applies to those ‘who do’ as equally as it applies to those ‘who do nothing.’ Doing nothing or falling back to maintenance of the status quo is generally ‘executed’ from a position of fear, or a lack of understanding of the subject at hand, or the belief that the current situation is faultless and change would/could only damage this position of ‘excellence.’”

Blight and vacancy

One of the Plan’s five recommendations is to revitalize the city’s neighborhoods by keeping blight and vacancy from negatively affecting nearby properties.

Thomas Eddington, planning and design principal for Integrated Planning & Design, said during the firm’s review of housing data, they found that many homeowners are holding onto homes in which they do not live.

Between 2000 and 2016, the average sale price for a single-family home in Española was $157,792, the lowest value in the region, according to the Plan.

“This should not be viewed as a disadvantage, but rather a reflection of the community’s commitment to middle-class (working class) America,” the Plan states. “Española provides reasonably priced housing within a region that is relatively expensive otherwise.”

On average, only five to 10 houses are built in the city each year, according to city data.

“In fact, an average of less than one of these each year is actually ‘stick built,’” the Plan states.

The rest of the homes registered on building permits are trailers.

“When the block, or street, or neighborhood is seen as a predictably good place to be, it will attract additional investment and will become stable,” the Plan states.

City staff visually surveyed all the residential properties throughout the city, and scored them on a scale from one to five, with lower scores indicating better housing conditions.

They found that homes in the neighborhoods of San Pedro, Santo Niño, the west side and Fairview are the most distressed, on average.

Charles Buki, head of planning strategy for the company, said the city should be firm in enforcing the code with absentee landowners who only meet the minimum standards, to keep receiving rental payments from their tenants.

However, he said, city officials should be more gentle with cash-strapped homeowners, who actually live in their homes, by creating a code compliance assistance program that would facilitate small grants or loans to improve their property.

A town center

In a community-wide survey conducted by city officials in March, 73 percent of the 230 respondents said they would support a bond measure to finance $5 million in improvements to the city center on the west side, over the next 10 years. The bond measure would equal about $10 per month in additional taxes for each family or household.

The Plan recommends that city officials designate the city center as a redevelopment area under the state’s Metropolitan Redevelopment Area law to allow them to assemble land for development, use tax increments, issue bonds and invest in infrastructure to assist private businesses.

Downtown Action Team President Olivia Martinez said her organization does not have enough funding or volunteers to complete projects, and Eddington said the redevelopment area designation would help fund them.

The Plan states that it is impossible to organize enough annual events on the Plaza de Española to have any lasting impact that would truly benefit nearby businesses.

Instead, it states the Plaza and surrounding area should be used for local gathering spots, specialized or local retail stores, city offices and new affordable housing.

A map included in the Plan recommends the development of retail/office space and outdoor dining on the southern side of the Plaza, and a mixed-use development on the city-owned block bound by Bond Street, East Hill Street, Calle Lucero and Calle Don Diego.

A mixed-use building would have retail or other commercial spaces on the first floor and residential space on upper floors.

The map also recommends making visible the part of Los Vigiles Ditch that runs beneath city property near the Plaza, the development of a community center or other public space on the vacant parcel south of the Bond House Museum, at the corner of East Hill Street and Calle Don Diego, and pedestrian crosswalks from the Plaza to the housing development and between the Plaza and the Hunter property.

Restoring acequias

The Plan recommends protecting the 10 miles of acequias that run through the city.

“Beyond protection, the city should pursue restoration of the acequias where needed and appropriate and support activities that address community concerns and empower the next generation of environmental stewards,” the Plan states.

Planning Commission Parliamentarian Erle Wright said the Plan requires everyone to treasure the acequias as a cultural and economic resource, exclusive to Northern New Mexico and southern Colorado.

“Santa Fe has lost that, their acequias are gone,” Wright said. “That’s the beauty that we have in this community, to be able to do that.”

Restoring the city’s connection to the natural environment is one of the main recommendations of the Plan, and it would start with planting native trees and shrubs along the city’s main roads, including Japanese Zelkova Serreta, Honey locust or Lance leaf Cottonwood.

The Plan recommends city officials create a trail system along North Railroad Avenue, South Paseo De Oñate, Fairview Lane and Riverside Drive, that would include bike lanes, sidewalks and new parks and walkways overlooking the Rio Grande.

The effort would require extensive coordination with the state, Santa Clara Pueblo and Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo.

The follow-through

The next steps are to hold a community open house in August and public hearings for the Planning Commission and City Council to formally adopt the Comprehensive Plan in September. Then by winter, a new Form Based Land Use Code will be adopted.

“Our planning and zoning code does not work, it does not fit our community,” Wright said. “It was done to get us eligible for funding. So this Form Based Code is huge.”

City Councilor Manny Martinez said he wants to have a discussion about the Land Use Code.

On top of what the plan calls for, he wants to see an adopt-a-median program to maintain the city’s main streets, and install drought-resistant landscaping along the roads.

Interim Planning director Eli Isaacson said revising the city’s Land Use and Development Code is how city officials would actually implement the recommendations in the Comprehensive Plan.

The plan states that the city operates with a zoning code that was adopted some time in the late 1970s or early 1980s, and small pieces of it have been revised over the years.

“America has changed significantly since the 1970s and 1980s,” the plan states. “And so has New Mexico. And so has Española. This plan proposes a new tool — a new code, Form Based Code. A code designed to address the kind of mixed-use and well designed town center (and community) we desire.”

The code was not actually discussed during the meeting, and will likely prove to be the more important and difficult discussion, Buki said.

The code will be mandatory and act as law that the city’s Planning Commission will have to follow and enforce, he said.

Unlike the code, the Comprehensive Plan is an entirely voluntary document. The City Council has jurisdiction over the plan and control over the city’s public funds.

The Planning Commission has jurisdiction over the Development Code, meaning it oversees enforcement.

However, the City Council is in charge of putting up the money to make the code enforceable. With this separation of powers, the two groups will have to work together to actually follow through with the Comprehensive Plan, Buki said.

Once the planning consultants put the final touches on the Comprehensive Plan, the Planning Commission will vote on whether they approve it, and recommend it to the City Council. Then they will vote on it.