Archives for March 2016

Supporters hope it’s a transportation development that will ultimately bring more jobs to the city and the state.

The Mid-Region Council of Governments (MRCOG) and the city of Albuquerque announced Tuesday the selection of a consultant to spearhead an extensive transportation and logistics hub study for the area. The study is to focus on evaluating the metro area’s real assets for becoming the country’s next big transloading center.

“Albuquerque is not only well positioned from a national perspective, [but] we must also consider that we sit at the intersection of two of the nation’s longest interstates. By: Kate Leigh 
Officials awarded Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Cambridge Systematics at $100,000 contract to complete a feasibility study over the next six months. The company specializes in the development and implementation of policy, planning, analysis, and technology applications in the transportation sector.
It’s all part of an effort that MRCOG and the city have been promoting in an attempt to help offset the region’s employment slide in the manufacturing, mining, transportation, and warehousing sectors. The city’s aviation department has been working to expand the boundaries of a roughly 70-acre Foreign Trade Zone just west of the Albuquerque International Sunport. Since its inception in 1984, the FTZ has been a scarcely used tax incentive development area for transloading and manufacturing operations. The zone is within a 90-minute drive of all of MRCOG’s territory — Bernalillo, Sandoval, Valencia and Torrance counties — as well as the communities of Santa Fe, Socorro and Los Alamos.

The city is funding the study in conjunction with Bernalillo, Torrance, Sandoval and Valencia counties, as well as Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad (BNSF) and the McCune Foundation. Project leaders hope the study will identify gaps and targeted investment opportunities to attract more private development of international trade related manufacturing and logistics, and that it can be used to strengthen and leverage the region’s policies, incentives and infrastructure to become a significant transportation, warehousing and manufacturing hub.

“Albuquerque is not only well positioned from a national perspective, [but] we must also consider that we sit at the intersection of two of the nation’s longest interstates, connecting Mexico to Canada and the East Coast to the West Coast, all just a four-hour drive from New Mexico’s rapidly growing commercial port-of-entry with Mexico. The possibilities are endless,” said Dewey Cave, executive director of MRCOG.

Meanwhile, the Albuquerque City Council voted Monday night to authorize the aviation department to submit an application with the Foreign Trade Zones Board to extend the district’s boundaries in a 60-mile radius around its current designation, expanding it further.

By: Blake Driver (Albuquerque Business First)

Click here to view source article.

The word “boondoggle” came up more than once.
But a noisy four-hour debate late Monday didn’t soften City Council support for the plan to transform Central Avenue into a rapid transit corridor with a nine-mile network of bus-only lanes and canopy-covered bus stations.
City councilors voted 7-2 in favor of Albuquerque Rapid Transit, a priority of Mayor Richard Berry, who hopes to see service start by September next year. The council resolution authorizes the acceptance of nearly $70 million in federal money for the project.
“Of course, it’s going to cause some disruption and make people fearful of change,” said Councilor Don Harris, who described it as a tough decision. But “this is a rare opportunity. I think we need to take it.”
Berry called ART a “catalytic project” that will help inject new life into Central Avenue.
“It’s great for transit,” he said in an interview. “It’s great for economic opportunity. … We’re going to have a more thriving Main Street because of it.”
Councilors Dan Lewis and Klarissa Peña voted “no.”
Peña said she fears the project won’t help people in her West Side-based district and that it should go before voters.
“I really believe this ART project is going to slow down traffic,” she said.

Residents who signed up to address the council Monday generally blasted the $119 million proposal for one reason or another and opponents cheered them on. Supporters were in the minority.
Council President Lewis threatened several times to stop the meeting, if necessary, to restore order, but it never came to that.
Security officers evicted two people who displayed an upside-down American flag and argued with Lewis about taking it down. Larger banners aren’t permitted in the council chambers.
The council vote, in any case, adopted a resolution that’s critical to carrying out the project – acceptance of a $70 million “Small Starts” grant from the Federal Transit Administration.
The grant hasn’t actually been approved yet, but city executives are confident they will get the money because President Barack Obama included it in his budget recommendation. No project in a similar situation, city officials say, has ever failed to be offered the money eventually.
The city says it has another $31 million in federal money it can tap for ART, in addition to about $18 million in city funding.
The Berry administration says it won’t launch construction until the federal government issues a letter authorizing the start of work. Crews could begin the project as soon as May.
But the project has faced intense opposition – primarily because there would be fewer lanes for regular traffic, a necessity to make way for the new bus-only lanes. Business owners also say they fear going under, either during construction of the project or afterward if traffic congestion scares people away from Central.
“This fixation on tearing up the middle of Central – I don’t think this is the answer,” said Keif Henley, co-owner of the Guild Cinema in the heart of Nob Hill.
Charles Hickam, who owns a home three blocks from a proposed ART station, called the project a “utopian boondoggle” that won’t result in the benefits promised by the mayor.
Some critics said they liked the idea in general, but not the design of running the bus down the middle of the street, which limits the ability of other drivers to make left turns from Central.
Supporters have made economic development a key part of their argument. Mayor Berry and others say the new bus system would link major employers and attractions along the old Route 66 and spur denser development.
They also say the project will bring wider sidewalks and new landscaping to much of Central Avenue, making the area more friendly to pedestrians.
A faster, more reliable bus system is, of course, the heart of the project. The dedicated lanes would allow the buses to bypass most traffic congestion and the buses would communicate with traffic signals to coordinate their travel, supporters say.
City Councilor Isaac Benton, right addresses Former Albuquerque mayoral candidate Pete Dinelli, after the Central Avenue business owner expressed his opposition to the ART Project during the City Council meeting. At left is City Councilor Don Harris. Adolphe Pierre-Louis/JOURNAL
Councilor Isaac Benton won approval late Monday for an amendment that calls for the city to narrow the width of some lanes between the Rio Grande and Downtown to make it easier to add landscaping and wider sidewalks.
“We’ve built streets in Albuquerque for speed,” Benton said. “… We’ve really got to start building streets for multimodality.”
The Berry administration resisted the amendment at first, but later agreed to accept it.
The ART vote didn’t fall along partisan lines. Democrats Ken Sanchez, Isaac Benton, Pat Davis and Diane Gibson joined Republicans Brad Winter, Trudy Jones and Harris in support.
The resolution was co-sponsored by Sanchez and Harris.
Opposed were Lewis, a Republican, and Peña, a Democrat.
Berry is a Republican.
By: Dan McKay (Albuquerque Journal)
Click here to view source article.

Some Nob Hill business owners and residents have raised concerns about how the city’s plans for a rapid transit bus system on Central Avenue will affect parking. They say the neighborhood is already crowded, and while the latest tallies from the city show that current designs for Albuquerque Rapid Transit (ART) would add 18 parking spaces in the corridor, Nob Hill’s new representative on the City Council says a parking garage should still be considered.
“We can do this a lot more quickly now because we already have a study done showing we need it,” said Pat Davis, the District 6 Albuquerque City Councilor who recently was elected to the seat formerly filled by Rey Garduño.
Nob Hill is often a busy place. This is a picture of a previous Summerfest event.

Davis said when he took over for Garduño, who represented Nob Hill for about eight years, he came across a 2010 planning study showing that parking in Nob Hill fills to 80 percent capacity on normal days, and is overfull during festivals and special events. Davis said it means that a motorist must pass about 12 parking spaces before finding an available one.

“Business people have said this is turning customers away,” he said. “As the ART discussions progressed, the need for more parking kept coming up, and it reminded me of language in this study.”

Davis dusted the cobwebs off the report and set aside money from his district’s discretionary fund to start implementing some of its findings. About $10,000 so far are being deployed for an appraiser to check out two potential properties the city could purchase for the project, which would either be a lot or a garage. To preserve Nob Hill’s aesthetic character, Davis said he naturally favors a structure instead of a half-acre lake of asphalt. He said plans are too preliminary to know how many spaces a structure or lot would add to the area.

Davis said he’s hopeful the appraiser’s findings will be ready in about 60 days, before construction on the ART line is set to begin. That’s also his preferred timeline for an additional ART station stop he’s having designers study near the intersection of Central and San Pedro Drive.

“So that when all this is done, we’ll have all the pieces in place to make Nob Hill and the International District as vibrant as possible, so we don’t have to keep coming back and disrupting businesses to do everything we want the first time,” he said.

Davis said his discretionary funds are also funding the study for the additional ART station — which would raise the number of stops on the line to 21, and that while the station’s construction would also raise ART’s $119 million bottom line, the extra budget item can be paid for with bond money already issued for street improvements.

By: Blake Driver (Albuquerque Business First)

Click here to view source article.

SANTA FE – Presbyterian Healthcare Services announced Wednesday it is planning a $135 million medical center in Santa Fe that could be open in less than two years. It also has begun work on an expansion of its clinic on St. Michael’s Drive.
Helen Brooks, Presbyterian’s newly hired Santa Fe-area administrator, confirmed that the health care system is in the initial planning stages for the new 277,000-square-foot medical center in Las Soleras near Cerrillos Road and Interstate 25. The number of inpatient beds and staffing levels haven’t been determined.
Funding plans also are pending, but Brooks said she believes some of the cost for the proposed 277,000-square-foot facility will be addressed from philanthropy.
“We are embarking on an innovative health care model in Santa Fe,” said Brooks, who recently handled the approval and planning process of a $400 million hospital for her previous employer, a northwestern Illinois health care system.
“It’s exciting to be at the intersection of operations, facility planning, provider capabilities, design and execution,” said Brooks.
The proposed medical center would include outpatient clinical services, an Emergency Department and inpatient beds. Presbyterian expects to submit a formal proposal to the city in April. If approved, the first phase could open in early 2018, said Brooks.
Presbyterian, New Mexico’s largest private employer with 11,000 workers, eventually will create a medical campus that also will include other community health care providers.
But don’t expect a tower. The design scheme, still on the drawing board, and scale of the structure will be emblematic of the connection of “body, mind and spirit,” that will resonate with Santa Fe residents, said Brooks.
“The new medical center, which could potentially serve some of Presbyterian Health Plan’s 66,000 members in Santa Fe, Rio Arriba, San Miguel, and Taos counties, will focus on the needs of patients today – better-coordinated care in the outpatient settings where most care already occurs,” said Brooks. “Our goal is to complement existing services to improve the quality, experience and lower the total cost of care for our community.”
Presbyterian also has begun work on a 4,000-square-foot expansion of its clinic on St. Michael’s Drive, adding 13 patient exam rooms and more services. Work is expected to be complete by fall.
In addition to five primary care providers, a pharmacist clinician, and a psychologist, the clinic offers an urgent care clinic, a TriCore Reference Lab and radiology services. Specialty services include OB/GYN, neurology, endocrinology, cardiology, and orthopedics. Additional internal medicine providers will be added this year.
Brooks said Presbyterian expects to continue working with Christus St. Vincent Medical Center, which now is the only hospital in Santa Fe with 268 beds. She said Presbyterian Health Plan members would still use Christus St. Vincent for services such as heart surgeries and other procedures that require a long hospitalization or complex care.
“We anticipate that the partnership, which has been long-standing, will continue,” Brooks said.
Christus St. Vincent in September 2015 said it would no longer accept Presbyterian Medicare Advantage plan insurance for non-emergency treatment beginning this past January, a move that affected about 2,000 seniors. Patients in that plan who need non-emergency treatment must come to Presbyterian hospitals in Albuquerque, Española or Los Alamos.
Christus President and CEO Pat Carrier was traveling and unavailable for an interview but provided a statement saying, “We welcome any changes in the local health care landscape that serve to improve the health and wellness of our community.
“Our hope is that additional health care providers in our community will lead to expanded access to care, especially for those that cannot afford to access to preventative or ongoing care.”
Carrier said Christus St. Vincent has 130 physicians and other providers in more than 34 specialties and is the only Level III Trauma Center between Santa Fe and the Colorado border. It has 32 clinics and health centers.
“We are – and will remain – Santa Fe’s premier hospital,” Carrier said in the statement. “We have a clearly defined role of providing access and services for more than 300,000 residents of Northern New Mexico.”
Christus has plans of its own in the coming year – spending up to $45 million on a retrofit of its patient rooms and adding services.
Mayor Javier Gonzales welcomed Presbyterian’s announcement.
“More health care choices mean positive things for Santa Fe, particularly in this very quickly-growing area of our community,” he said. “Both St. Vincent’s potential expansion and Presbyterian’s announcement today mean a stronger health care system and an economic boost in high-paying jobs in a sector of critical need for Santa Fe.”
By: Steve Sinovic (Albuquerque Journal)
Click here to view source article.