bmx-imageKRQE Channel 13 provided some excellent coverage last night of the neighborhood sitting just 160 feet away from the large open-air Duke City BMX facility at Buena Vista Drive and Avenida Cesar Chavez, SE.

The station visited the track twice, during the American Bicycle Association’s spring national competition as well as on what was supposed to be a quiet day — until a very loud alarm went on inside the facility. The footage shows the size of the facility in relation to the homes, and captures the noise experienced by neighbors.

“There’s just no buffer between those people and this facility,” City Councilor Ike Benton — who represents the neighborhood — told Channel 13 reporter Tim Maestas.

Benton has led an effort at the City Council to identify solutions to the problem, given that the city built the bicycle track on a site other than the one that was approved by the city’s Environmental Planning Commission. The city made the decision to move the facility from the approved location without informing the neighborhood or giving them time to initiate a process opposing the decision.

Maestas spoke with Albuquerque City Planning Director Richard Dineen, who said citing the facility in its current location was the better option for the overall plans for the site, which call for a Velodrome to be built. But, he said, he’d do things different today.

“I think probably what I know today, if I’d known then, I would have, yeah, taken the time to notice them [the neighbors], and try to give them a little more chance to do it,” he said.

Dineen didn’t elaborate on what he knows today, but it might be the fact that the Velodrome doesn’t appear to be in the works any time soon.

KRQE reported on May 20 that the wooden Velodrome structure acquired by a non-profit back in 1999 was improperly stored and has now rotted away. On top of that, the city has spent or “encumbered” the $2 million in bond money approved by voters in 2003 for the Velodrome site.

According to the KRQE report, the city learned the velodrome was unusable shortly after the 2004 election.

The bicycle facility site plan was approved by the EPC in February of 2005, then moved to its current location by the planning department later that year.

A small group of residents sued the city over the switch, but later settled the case for attorney’s fees.

Solutions being discussed now by the City Council range from some sort of buffer built between the facility and the neighborhood to actually moving the structure to it’s originally EPC approved location. Because it’s a pretty basic structure, councilors believe moving it is feasible.

Mark Motsko, spokesperson for the city’s municipal development department, said the city didn’t want to “play the role of the big cold government entity that doesn’t care about its citizens. That is absolutely not the case.”

But the city says it would cost around $6 million to move the track.

“In this current economic situation, we’re not sure that’s the best use of taxpayer money,” said Motsko.

Benton, though, said that’s “all relative.”

“It’s all relative. I think probably if you lived across the street here you’d think it was worth it,” Benton said. “A, it’s move. B, it stays here and we put some serious effort into remedy. It would have made a big difference to put it where it was approved.”