CHAPTER 15

Purchase and Redevelopment of the Rail Yards by the City of Albuquerque

Demolition of the grand Alvarado Hotel (Harvey House) by the AT&SF in 1970 was opposed by many citizens who supported preserving important architectural elements of Albuquerque’s past.¹ An even larger segment of the population was shocked and immediately lamented the loss of the landmark building once it was reduced to a graveled parking lot. But it was too late then. As a result, in the words of Santa Fe architect Barbara Felix, “The teardown of the Alvarado Hotel in Albuquerque has truly haunted New Mexico” ever since.² The razing of the Alvarado has become an object lesson for historic preservationists around the state and beyond.

So when the Locomotive Repair Shops complex, not far south of the Alvarado Hotel site, was offered for sale by BNSF in the early 1990s, many Albuquerqueans were concerned that the tear-down mentality that had characterized urban renewal efforts in the 1970s and 1980s would result in obliteration of every vestige of what had been the main driver of the city’s economic activity for many decades. Eventually, that might have wiped out even the memory of the vibrancy of the Shops and their immediate surroundings.

Despite several years of delay, those citizens and officials who recognized the ongoing value of the Shops to the community argued their case in a practical outline with widespread public support. Jessica Carr, in her 2005 article in Alibi, writes, “In November 2000, the Urban Council of Albuquerque, a nonprofit community redevelopment project, bought 27 of the railyard’s 40 acres, including the historic rail-yard buildings.”³ This development continued through the decade. As the Urban Land Institute Advisory Services Panel reports, “In 2007, the city of Albuquerque [under Mayor Martin Chávez] and the WHEELS Museum [headed by Leba Freed, Allen Clark, and Joe Craig] formed a partnership to purchase the rail yards from Old Locomotive Shops, LLC. The acquisition was made possible, in part, by grants from the New Mexico State Legislature and the Office of Governor Bill Richardson. The Albuquerque City Council appropriated more than 50 percent of the total cost to purchase the property, and the city became the new owner of the old Santa Fe Railway rail yards on November 28, 2007.”⁴ The total purchase price paid by the City of Albuquerque was approximately $8.5 million.

Figure 15.1. Photo taken during demolition of the Alvarado Hotel, a Harvey House hotel in Albuquerque, 1970. Photo by Gordon Ferguson. Courtesy of Palace of the Governors, Photo Archives (NMHM/DCA), Negative No. 058706. (Compare figure 9.2.)

In March 2008, the City Council established a Rail Yards Advisory Board (RYAB) chaired by Councilor Isaac “Ike” Benton. In 2010, the RYAB issued a Request for Proposals for a master developer of the site. Two years later, the City selected Samitaur Constructs of Culver City, California, as the master developer. Although Samitaur produced an ambitious master development plan document in 2014, little further progress was made. As a result, the City terminated their contract in 2018. Within days, the City made the following announcement: “Mayor [Tim] Keller has made a commitment to the redevelopment of the Rail Yards and recognizes the cultural and historic significance of the property to the entire community.”⁵

In keeping with the mayor’s statement the previous fall, he included the following text in his list of “Top State Legislative Priorities” for the 2019 legislative session:

The Rail Yards site will be redeveloped to become a vibrant mixed use center of employment, housing, cultural, and educational uses. It will celebrate the historical and cultural legacy of the site and be connected to the community through on-site activity, public access and transportation options. Funding would be used for environmental remediation, expanding market and event space with improvements to the Flue Shop, and improvements to house CNM’s [Central New Mexico Community College’s] Film School of Excellence, as well as other site improvements. Redeveloping the 27-acre site as a vibrant destination for both residents and tourists, while preserving its historic architecture, will have a significant economic impact on the entire Central New Mexico region. The City is in the process of preparing the Shops complex for redevelopment that preserves its historical and cultural significance.⁶

Accordingly, Albuquerque is pursuing steps to ready the Shops complex for redevelopment.

Figure 15.2. Photo of the west façade of the WHEELS Museum building, 1100 2nd Street SW, Albuquerque, NM, formerly the storehouse of the Albuquerque Locomotive Repair Shops, 2020. Authors’ photo.

Further, WHEELS Museum is now located in the Shops’ former storehouse at 1100 2nd Street SW on the Rail Yards site. Its displays focus on rail transportation, the Albuquerque Locomotive Repair Shops, the process of overhauling steam locomotives, and the people who worked at the Shops. The collection of vehicles, objects, photographs, books, and documents at Wheels covers all forms of transportation, including antique autos, buggies, bicycles, surreys, milk wagons, a fire truck, and many model displays of cars and trains. A recent donation to the museum is an eighty-five-foot-long private railroad car, the Silver Iris, built in 1951. It represents the first of an anticipated group of such cars to be on display at the Rail Yards site.