Save the Views of Albuquerque's West Mesa

Albuquerque, New Mexico is located in one of the scenic rift valleys on Earth, straddling the Rio Grande between the Sandia Mountains on the East and a chain of scenic sacred volcanoes on the West Mesa. The people of Albuquerque, including neighborhoods throughout the City and the Pueblos and Tribes in the state, have long worked to protect the West Mesa’s treasured views, major public open spaces, and visual aesthetics from the sprawl of generic urban development. A crucial feature is the Petroglyph National Monument, a cultural treasure of prehistoric art carved into the geology of a natural southwestern desert landscape. But the beautiful West Mesa area faces unrelenting developer pressure, and the Albuquerque city government has been yielding to developer pressure by revising zoning to allow higher densities, ignoring open space protection, and approving intense new projects.

The recent development decision by the City to approve the Jubilee Apartments, a proposed three-story, 238-unit apartment project at Rosa Parks and Kimmick NW in Albuquerque, located diagonally adjacent to the recently expanded La Cuentista Open Space, highlights the issues and threats from intense development and inadequate City oversight in the West Mesa area. The developer and the City dropped the ball by failing to identify timely the La Cuentista Open Space as proximate to the proposed development, and the design of the project does not take into account this elemental consideration. The City nonetheless rushed ahead to approve the project over neighbor objections.

We are neighbors who live near this proposed development and support the Westside Coalition of Neighborhood Associations and a resident’s appeal to Bernalillo County District Court of the City’s AC-23-1 decision. But we need your help. The appellants have engaged an experienced land use attorney for the appeal. The appeal process will likely be lengthy, difficult, and require substantial resources. The substantive and procedural issues at play are significant. Without neighbor and public support in the zoning decision trenches such as appeal of the City’s AC-23-1 decision, the City will fold over and over to development pressures, and our great public resources, the Petroglyph National Monument area, related major public open spaces, views, and resident quality of life will be eroded decision by decision. We insist on a fair public hearing, with an impartial tribunal and all relevant information, for decisions authorizing intense new development on the West Mesa.

Please contact us if you will join in defense of the area or have questions about our circumstances, and any contributions you can make are greatly appreciated.

Thank you!