ALBUQUERQUE — How do urban governments strike a balance between the demands of urban growth and the protection of important cultural and environmental landscapes?

 

It’s a question at the center of a debate over whether to allow a developer to build taller homes within the Petroglyph National Monument boundary, which, in addition to being a cultural landmark, is a sacred site to Native American people.

 

The request comes at a time when the National Park Service says the monument is increasingly threatened by noise pollution from the proposed expansion of the nearby Double Eagle airport, plus increasing housing development adjacent to the monument, along with nearby residents who treat the monument like a back yard, leading to concerns over fire hazards, graffiti, and trash.

 

Albuquerque recently resolved a long and contentious battle over the extension of a road, Paseo del Norte, through the monument, a battle that saw lawsuits, civil disobedience, and organized civic engagement and public relations campaigns on both sides of the issue. This high-profile case brought a lot of attention to urban pressure on the monument, but less public awareness exists about the ongoing attrition to the integrity of the park from urban development.

 

In an interview with the Independent, Diane Souder of the National Park Service said the monument, established by Congress in 1990, has often been described to her by developers as a “seventeen mile long barrier to growth and development.”

 

About 50% of the land adjacent to the monument is developed today, compared to 10 percent when the monument was created and current proposed developments would increase that to about 75 percent, Souder said. Souder also described the added complexity due to private land existing within the monument boundaries:

 

“Like many national parks, not all the land within the Monument boundaries is publicly owned. Private landowners are free to do with their property as they see fit within existing planning and zoning regulations. In the case of the private land abutting and within the Monument, the Northwest Mesa Escarpment Plan governs how and where they can build. The conservation area described in the Plan was envisioned as the land to be acquired in its entirety for conservation. It includes the Escarpment face [on which development is prohibited] and the land immediately surrounding the Escarpment face. The plan allows no building on conservation land unless it is offered to the city for purchase first, and is then not accepted. Then, if building proceeds within the conservation area the plan lays out clear rules for how it can be developed.”

 

The current issue before the city involves the developer of a subdivision called Sundance Estates asking the Albuquerque City Council for a variance to build homes within the conservation area of the monument at a height considerably higher than allowed by the Northwest Mesa Escarpment Plan.
 
The developer, Ron Bohannan, made his case before the Albuquerque City Council’s Land use Planning and Zoning Committee last week, saying that the Plan infringes on the property rights of the land owner.

 

When Bohannan presented his case originally to the Environmental Planning Commission in November 2007, he told commissioners that property owners have a right to develop their property "the way we see fit."

 

Plus, he said, the owners of this property followed regulations and gave the city a chance to buy the land first only to be offered pennies on the dollar.

 

So he and the owners went ahead with their plan for development, which included presenting the site plan to the city’s development review board in 2004. After winning that approval, roads and other infrastructure were put in. But then the city refused to issue building permits for building plans that violated the restrictions spelled out in the Northwest Mesa Escarpment Plan. This triggered his request to the city to waive the height restriction on the proposed homes.

 

City officials said that approval of the site plan from the development review board isn’t the same as the developer being cleared to build homes as high as this subdivision would like. Only the city council has the power to do that, city officials said.

 

Some city officials feel that Bohannan is trying to get the most bang for his bucks by seeking the waiver because the land is of little value without it, a sentiment captured last November by Environmental Protection Commission member Jonathan Siegel, an architect. In response to Bohannan’s claim that the site isn’t developable without the waiver and therefore an infringement on the owners property rights, Siegel said:

 

“[the]property only has limited value and the city in fact only offered you limited reimbursement because there was only a limited development potential on it and development would have been expensive in compliance with two facets of this Escarpment Plan…But it is doable.”

 
Other city officials say that the owners of the land knew of the development restrictions when they bought the property.

 

At the City Council land use committee meeting last week, the owner said that the land had been purchased almost a decade after the plan was put in place and Bohannan acknowledged that he knew about the plan before embarking upon the project.

 

City Councilor Michael Cadigan, who supported the extension of Paseo Del Norte through the monument, opposed granting the waiver request. He said:

 

“…the Petroglyph National Monument is a unique asset. A very delicate balance was struck with this plan, and now this developer is asking to change the deal after the deal was made. The plan is not permissive. It is prohibitive of this request. .. this would significantly impair the visitors experience of the monument. There is a lot of recreation in there, neighborhoods in there, Petroglyphs in there. I already get a lot of complaints about the encroachment on the monument. … What we can do by not passing this is not allow any more two story houses. Let them live with the rules like others have to. They can just build single story houses, they won’t be denied the right to build on their land. … I’m vehemently opposed."

 

 

Souder told the Independent that the threats posed by urban encroachment fall into several categories, with roads posing "the most serious long term threats to resources.”

 

The other factors were:

 

Noise pollution from the proposed expansion of Double Eagle airport, which includes a “seven fold” expansion of runways facing the Monument.

 

The increasing density of housing subdivisions backed up to the Monument, causing homes along the perimeter to use the Monument like a back yard.

 

As an urban park that receives a lot of visitors, the monument is being “loved to death.” Uses range from hiking, horseback riding, mountain bike riding, plus balloonists, hang gliders and rock climbers want to use the monument. The large number of visitors add a lot of pressure to a park that does not have an extensive trail network.

 

Finally, Souder said that erosion mitigation through storm drainage management is critical to the long-term health of the park. With increasing development, both the nature of the water and the velocity of water needs to be planned for. Natural storm water contains a lot of soil, and moves through the park at a “slow” rate, she said. By contrast “clean” storm water that doesn’t contain much soil and that flows directly into the monument from pavement moves at a high rate causing “severe erosion.” Souder emphasized the importance of developers working with the Monument to plan drainage for new subdivisions.

 

Sundance Estates’s waiver request was given a “no pass” recommendation by the city’s planning and zoning committee last week, although Councilors still have the option of revisiting the issue at the next full City Council meeting.

 
 


Disclaimer: The author of this story works for the SouthWest Organizing Project, an organization that opposed the extension of Paseo del Norte through the monument.