A day in the life of Santa Fe's most critical road.
Cerrillos Road has come to represent everything right and wrong about Santa Fe. It's a four-lane homage to economic prosperity and a seven-mile reminder that the City Different really isn't that different after all. It's a land bridge between an endearingly impractical past of crumbling adobe, dangling ristras and cobblestone streets and a reluctantly pragmatic present of modern apartment buildings, glittering super-stores and Interstate 25. But the future of the city does not rest on the flanks of Cerrillos.
Santa Fe's manifest destiny has instead been diverted from that swollen traffic flow onto a relatively uncultivated stream of asphalt where land prospectors are already panning the city's next development gold rush.
Airport Road is a mere pebble in the avalanche of travel books and romantic essays that fawn over the city's distinct beauty. But the road nonetheless represents the real Santa Fe. A place where residents have been shoved into the desert by soaring real estate prices, where the working class is relegated to concentrated encampments on the south side of town.
Airport Road runs less than four miles from Cerrillos to Highway 599 before it morphs into Paseo Real and disappears into the sand and sagebrush on the western edge of the city. In its wake, the road leaves a string of congested apartment complexes, gas stations, self-storage units and tracts of land biding time until the bulldozers come. And they will. In fact, they already have.
But the feverish dash to develop Airport Road from the inside out has been tempered by a litany of problems compounded by the fact it's a jurisdictional quagmire straddling City and County domain. There is a lack of water. Surplus of traffic. Soaring cost of living. Plummeting cultural identity. Schools popping at the seams, escalating crime and the prospective ghettoization of the only truly affordable area left to live in Santa Fe.
The City has consciously tried to hold Airport Road on a relatively short leash. But as more transplants pour into the city and real estate prices hover somewhere between astronomic and are-you-freaking-kidding-me?, residents are resigned to the inevitability of development.
In the last decade alone, one out of every three homes built in Santa Fe has been a part of the City-initiated Tierra Contenta community south of Airport Road. Thus far, 1,777 units have been built or permitted for construction in Tierra Contenta, well short of the maximum capacity of 1,400 acres and 5,800 units. According to the City's Planning and Land Use Department's Santa Fe Trends 2005 report, Tierra Contenta will "absorb much of the city's growth during the next 10 to 20 years."
But Tierra Contenta is merely another piece of a pie that private companies are scrambling to get a slice of. And while the City Council and developers squabble over leasing rights, the people who live on and off of Airport Road merely try to keep their heads above the surface. They live outside the cropped edges of a postcard, their voices barely audible over the din caused by the machinations of progress. Which is why we ventured to spend a day on Airport Road peering into the future that awaits residents of everyday Santa Fe.
9:48 am, Santa Fe Municipal Airport
A visitor landing in Santa Fe on a Saturday morning would find no indication that the city has changed in 50 years. The main terminal-who are we kidding, the only terminal-is all but deserted. The ticketing counter for the only carrier
that services Santa Fe-Great Lakes Airlines-is vacant. The security checkpoint is idle. The waiting room is waiting for someone, anyone to wait in it. Most of the cars in the faded gravel parking lot belong to Avis and Hertz. The circling radar atop the control tower scours aimlessly for action in the vacant skies.
A person could easily stroll through the security doors and onto the tarmac. Not that it would make much difference. No planes are coming or going, save the hum and drone of the occasional puddle-jumper. The airport services a fair share of private planes catering to the money-clip crowd, but virtually everyone else drives to Albuquerque for their aviation needs.
Santa Fe Municipal hasn't seen any commuter planes today since the 7:50 am departed for Denver and it won't see any more until the 12:23 pm returns from the Mile High City.
"There are only three flights a day now,"
Ramon Montoya explains. "We get our action in little rushes. But when the rush comes in it's a little too much for one person to handle by myself if I'm not prepared."
Luckily, the 29-year-old Montoya-a one-man Avis rental counter-has plenty of time to prepare. He has worked at the airport intermittently for 12 years. Driving shuttles, washing cars, fueling planes and working for Mesa Airlines back when this wasn't a one-Pegasus town. The airport has contracted while the city it serves expands exponentially, but Montoya expects the two will eventually have to grow together.
"This is a little slower than I'd like but the reason I took this job is because eventually I can see the airport going towards expansion," Montoya says. "The City has to let more airplanes in here. If Santa Fe's economy depends on tourism, the City needs to make it easier for people to get here. People want to come here. And there are airlines just waiting to take them."
10:39 am, Airport Auto Acres Inc.
This is where the ghosts of Santa Fe past come to die. A vast graveyard of rusting cars, mangled metal and smoldering tires. Hundreds of carcasses waiting out the remainder of their days in a sprawling salvage lot until vehicle vultures come to pick them clean.
Signs posted in the parking lot bear warnings like "Children are not allowed in the yard," and "Beware of rattlesnakes." Inside the dusty, oil-stained office, Pat Rael is futilely attempting to wipe grease from his hands before greeting a visitor. But it isn't the only thing he's washing his hands of.
"I'll always love Santa Fe," the 50-year-old Rael says, "but I can't wait to leave. Santa Fe is not our town anymore. There is only one sure thing around here and that's change. I don't like change. I don't want change."
Rael grew up in a neighborhood on West Alameda called Torreon. The community has long since been swallowed whole by Santa Fe, its once unencumbered view to the mountains replaced by a sea of rooftops.
"When I was a kid, my dad and mom
would take us to the Plaza and everybody knew everybody," Rael says. "I don't know anybody there anymore. It used to be that people cared about one another. Now nobody cares about anybody but themselves. I don't even go to the Fiesta anymore because it's no longer ours. It
belongs to the tourists. If you want to have a Fiesta, you have it in your own home."
Rael has watched helplessly as the city's expansion creeps closer and closer to his business on the outskirts of town. And while he's quick to welcome outsiders to Santa Fe-and the ramifications that has on his business-Rael says the city's growth spurt has been too big, too fast while attempts to salvage the remnants of its identity will be too little, too late.
"It's unbelievable," Rael says of the growth. "The last 10 years has been really crazy. And this is nothing. I don't want to be here for the real explosion-whether it's good or bad. I know people who were born here that can't afford to live here anymore. That isn't right. But there's nothing to stop it. There's nothing we can do."
11:35 am, Riverside de Santa Fe Mobile Home Community
Riverside is coming to life in the sizzle of a warm Saturday morning. Men's legs stick out from beneath cars in various states of repair. Women walk into their trailers with armfuls of groceries. Unfettered kids patrol the streets aboard bicycles. Two clean-cut young men in matching outfits make house calls in the heart of the complex. They walk from trailer to trailer, knock once, twice, then trudge onward when they aren't welcomed by an open door. A small, unleashed dog monitors the boys' progress with shrill, heckling yips. Cujo apparently isn't a big fan of Mormons.
This communal labyrinth is one of the most affordable in Santa Fe, thanks in part to its isolation on the edge of town. But it won't be isolated for long. A large empty lot for lease across the street will make sure of that. The $490 residents pay a month here is as affordable a rent as one is liable to find in Santa Fe but the taming of Airport Road is already edging prices higher. A mere 1/4 mile east, Cedar Creek Apartments ask $750 for a two-bedroom.
Jimmy Romero stands outside the trailer in Riverside de Santa Fe where he lives with his family. Check that. Lived. After seven years, the 56-year-old is moving on up to the east side after purchasing a home on the other side of Cerrillos.
"The trailer park, it's…" Romero says before trailing off with a shake of his head and a vigorous thumb's down sign. "It's more affordable on this side. But this isn't the best area to live in."
Romero fully supports Airport Road's
expansion at the hands of developers like Mike, Dennis and Jeff Branch. Then again, Romero works for Mike Branch doing building maintenance. But he is nonetheless adamant that the benefits of development far outweigh the problems.
"I think what the Branches are doing is for the community not against the community," Romero says. "Santa Fe is growing. All the businesses are coming out this way. It's a matter of convenience. If you have a Smiths or an Albertson's on this side of town…you don't have to go to the Shell station to buy a can of tomatoes."
12:20 pm, Santa Fe Country Club
The sign above the clubhouse entrance is misleading. It says "Members Only," but the Santa Fe Country Club is decidedly egalitarian for a city where the median price for a home is $340,000. Lexus is
represented well in the parking lot, but so is Saturn. The general public is welcome on the golf course, though it's rather pedestrian by world-class standards.
Then again, this is northern New Mexico and hydrating an 18-hole course isn't easy. Water is
worth its weight in Land Rovers here and the Santa Fe Country Club undoubtedly rations enough to open its own dealership. The club reportedly culls its water from two on-site wells and city waste effluent (though when SFR tried to determine the club's overall usage we were told the paperwork had been misfiled and was unavailable according to the Office of the State Engineer's Water Rights Division).
At any rate, with a playground for the wealthy sharing space with a string of sizable affordable housing communities, the scarcity of H 2 0 has become one of the biggest quandaries regarding the extreme makeover of Airport Road.
Not that anyone at the club is losing
sleep over it. Men in polo shirts pummel driving range balls toward the Cedar Creek Apartments across the road. The club's outdoor tennis courts are overrun by
middle-aged women, some decked out in matching red-and-white outfits. A tournament between women from Santa Fe and their counterparts from Albuquerque is about to get underway. But first Loretta King needs to set the table.
The 51-year-old drapes a pink cloth over a
patio table before arranging an assortment of chips, vegetables and confections dusted with powdered sugar on top. As a born-and-raised Santa Fean, King has had a front-row seat for watching friends and family squeezed out of the city by the exorbitant cost of living.
"It used to be all family where I grew up on the north side of town," King says. "Now they're all gone. I have three daughters and they'll never come back here because the cost of living
is so high."
King says the property her family owns was the primary reason she has been able to stay in Santa Fe, even though she is resigned to the realization that the close-knit community she once knew is all but lost.
"I like change but I've seen an awful lot," King says. "I wish my family could experience what I did growing up. The unity. The community. Santa Fe was our well-kept secret for a while, but not any more."
1:02 pm, KSK Buddhist Center
All the tools residents need to cope with the Airport Road land grab are available in the Noble Truth Bookstore behind the KSK Buddhist Center. Inside, the walls are covered with silk and canvas paintings of spiritual teachers and deities. Display cases are filled with hand-made jewelry and figurines. There are yoga videos and meditation tapes. Aromatic candles and sticks of Tibetan Pine Needle incense. Shelves of books like The Rabbit Who Overcame Fear and The Cat Who Went to Heaven for the kids and I Ching-The Book of Change and Karma and Chaos for the adults.
Jean Green has dealt with the chaos of Airport Road ever since she began working here in 1989. The 70-year-old has kind eyes, an easy smile and a soft voice that negate the depth of her concerns about the evolution of her neighborhood.
"A lot of what is happening is very ugly," Green says. "This isn't a great environment to live in. Traffic is terrible. It's worse than Cerrillos. We have space but we don't have water. I don't feel safe taking a walk around here. Just the other night I heard somebody screaming for help down the road. And it sounded like they meant it."
Green has lived in Santa Fe for more than 40 years and knows better than anyone that if anything disrupts someone's transcendental pursuit of enlightenment, it's the incessant bedlam manifested in honking horns and wailing sirens blurring down Airport
Road. So what kind of karma awaits the city if the growth continues unabated along with its inherent problems?
"If it goes on long enough, self-destruction is inevitable," Green says. "I don't know why it's not more obvious to those in charge. They're just living for the moment, motivated by greed and power. They should be the ones setting an example."
Green has set an example of sorts by continuing to try to find inner peace living on Airport Road despite her concerns. But it isn't because she hasn't tried to leave. She lives on Airport Road "not by choice. The place I was renting sold so fast that I had to move back here to this side of town. I'm looking to leave as soon as I can."
1:28 pm, Paisano Food Mart
The Paisano Food Mart is one of the only grocery stores on Airport Road, though it doesn't
exactly peddle in typical Albertson's fare. The
store caters to the city's burgeoning immigrant community. Large piñatas hang from the ceiling in the form of sadistic paper maché elephants and bears just asking to be pummeled with a baseball bat. Behind the counter, there is a statue of Jesus for sale. His cross lights up in a dazzling display of neon intended to add a little sparkle to the savior. Churros, dried shrimp in plastic bags, assorted seasonings, condensed milk and various Mexican treats line the shelves. Pigs feet and other unidentifiable meat products rest in a heated display case.
This is what you would call a niche
market. And stores like this-and the clientele it
serves-mean cash in the pocket of Cesar Salinas. The 23-year-old operates a business that supplies food products to stores in Santa Fe, and business is good.
Salinas moved from Texas to Albuquerque six years ago with his girlfriend Melissa Alejandre and the couple's pitbull
Chico. And while the pair says they can empathize with the plight of citizens in overcrowded neighborhoods like theirs in Albuquerque, Salinas' businesses is poised to expand along with his Santa Fe client base.
"There's a lot of room to grow left and right in Santa Fe," Salinas says. "The more it grows, the more jobs there are for people who live here. And the more money businesses like mine can make."
2:21 pm, Capt n' Jacks Shipyard and Chandlery
Gary Basoukas is a pirate. Or at least he looks the part. The 55-year-old sports a large hoop earring in his left ear, a graying goatee and a nest of long hair braided at the ends. His face bears the creases of age and sea-courtesy of having spent several years in the Caribbean. He wears a black hat complete with skull and crossbones. His shorts feature a glowering image of Captain Morgan.
Yar.
It appears Basoukas lacks cabin boys to
swab the deck inside his business on Airport Road. The floor is spattered with paint and piles of debris litter the floor. This is because Basoukas' business is just getting its sea legs under it. After 10 years in the Santa Fe sign business, Basoukas has transformed his operation to handle everything from boat lettering and windsurfing rentals to canoe sales and trailer repairs. (And chandlery, whatever the hell that is).
The Rancho Viejo resident says Airport Road's growing reputation for crime is undeserved and insists there aren't nearly as many unsavory swashbucklers roaming the street as some suggest.
"I think it's a pretty good area," Basoukas says. "It used to have a history of drug problems but I think that's really backed off. I've been on this corner since '95 and the only break-in we've had was by an ex-employee."
Basoukas also has watched as Airport Road has been transformed from a relatively minor side road to a primary artery through which the future of new business in Santa Fe will soon flow. He figures the prospective expansion makes now as good a time as any for a small business like his to plunge into the shifting economic waters.
"Business is good here," Basoukas says. "It's a great spot no matter what you do. I definitely see more growth here. I'm all for growth. If you're in business, I think you have to be for it."
3:01 pm, Airport Road Car Wash
It's going to be a good Saturday night. Or at least a flashy one. The line is two cars deep at most of the wash bays. Soccer moms in PT Cruisers jostle for position with teenagers in jacked-up trucks, both spiffing up for the last real night of the weekend. A party awaits. But sometimes the party is right here.
Jack Curtis says he's seen his share of spurious activity on Airport Road, including people who pull into the car wash with little interest in washing their cars, opting instead for clandestine meetings and suspicious handshakes. Curtis is supervising the wash while his friend-owner Ulrich Klug-is out of town. It's a labor of love that brings him to a side of town he wouldn't frequent otherwise.
"There's good and bad everywhere and Santa Fe has its share of both," Curtis says. "Being down here on Airport Road you can see a lot of the bad. Normally I wouldn't be down here. I have no reason to. If I come into Santa Fe I'll go to the Plaza, but I don't even do that very often."
Curtis was raised in Massachusetts and bounced around the world before landing in the Santa Fe area. But like many residents, he's looking to get out. In the meantime, he's acutely aware of the blistering pace of development on this side of town. It's hard to avoid when the car wash is flanked by tracts of land poised for tenants.
"Development is going to happen-this is
prime land," Curtis says. "Santa Fe has really grown and that's to be expected. For me it's already too big but there's nothing you can really do about that."
Not every viewpoint on Airport Road is dour. The owner of the car wash, for one, just shakes his head when told of his friend's pessimism.
"He overreacts," Klug says. "I've been here 11 years and we haven't really had any problems. We have pretty good customers. We have security cameras and an alarm system. We rarely have problems."
Klug knows a thing or two about running a successful business. The former professional soccer player owns the car wash, the building that houses McDonald's on Airport Road as well as Volkswagen and Mercedes dealerships in upstate New York. To Klug, the expansion of Airport Road is simply good business sense.
"I like the growth," Klug says. "It improves the area and raises the property value."
4:10 pm, Santa Fe Laundry
Chimnaso Center is the kind of all-in-one shopping facility inherent to the kind of urban sprawl that has transformed Cerrillos and is doing the same to Airport Road. Residents can find everything imaginable in a single square block. Barber shop. Subway. Mexican restaurant. Martial arts studio. Clothing store. Loan office. Furniture store. Butcher shop. Video store. Dry cleaners. Loan office. Nail salon. Name it and it's probably there.
Santa Fe Laundry sits on the western corner of the Chimnaso Center. Susan Baca sits inside, sipping on a can of 7-Up, listening to the schmaltzy pop music piped in from above and waiting for her clothes to dry.
Baca has lived in the Santa Fe area all her life. She moved into an apartment on Airport Road nine months ago to ease the burden of commuting into Santa Fe for work from the rural edges south of town where she previously lived. She isn't too concerned with crime in the neighborhood but she hates the traffic. She'll be happy if development brings a grocery store closer to her home.
"In a way, expansion is good," Baca says. "I think it can be good for the economy. But I hate to see it grow this much. As we grow, the more and more expensive it's going to be. A lot of native Santa Feans just won't be able to make it here anymore."
Baca stays put because her three daughters still live in town, but she imagines one day moving to Colorado and buying her own home. Something that isn't possible here. But high real estate prices aren't the only concern tumble-drying in Baca's mind. She laments the death of the embracing community of her childhood and figures it's only a matter of time before Santa Fe finally lets its true identity slip through its fingers.
"Santa Feans have lost a lot of values," Baca says. "People aren't close anymore. It's getting cutthroat. It's sad because Santa Fe is supposed to be different. If it wasn't for my family I'd probably leave."
4:53 pm, Tina's Range Gear
Disgruntled residents are taking up arms on Airport Road. They openly walk the streets with rifles in their hands. At least that would be the impression of anyone watching customers emerge from Tina's Range Gear with firearms in hand.
The first thing to greet visitors inside is a cardboard sign with the instructions, "Stop! Unload all guns" propped up next to a stuffed, feral-looking coyote. The store is a PETA nightmare and a taxidermist's wet dream. The walls contain beheaded trophies of deer,
moose, elk and
bison along with zebra and leopard skins. Racks of camouflage share space with turkey decoys, bird calls, holsters and bullet-proof vests. Books with titles like Kill or Be Killed (by Col. Rex Applegate) and God, Guns and Rock and Roll (by Ted Nugent) sit near a large machine gun that could conceivably down any offending aircraft soaring over Airport Road. But not everybody who lives in this part of town is concerned with the noise created by airplanes and helicopters operating from Santa Fe Municipal.
"If you live next to a golf course you can't get pissed off when you get golf balls in your back yard," Tina Buchen says. "If you live next to an airport you can't get pissed off when you have aircraft flying over you."
The store's 42-year-old owner is armed with curly hair, a ready laugh and a propensity for straight shooting, so to speak. When asked about the development of Airport Road, she answers, point-blank, "I hate it."
"I'm moving as we speak because I hate this area so bad," Buchen continues. "This road has horrible traffic problems. Crime is horrible. There are always sirens going up and down this road every day."
Buchen is moving to a "normal neighborhood that doesn't have meth labs" off of Zia Road. But she isn't about to move her business from its location on Airport Road.
"I have no choice," Buchen says. "I can't afford to buy my own building in Santa Fe. It's too ridiculously expensive for the average person to live here, so they're cramming in all this project-type housing. It'd be fine if they could come up with some reasonably priced housing not on Airport Road."
Crime is another concern of Buchen's despite Santa Fe's reputation for relative safety. It may be hardly surprising that a gun shop owner would be vigilant about such things, but Buchen says her opinion is informed by years of living on Airport Road and from having a large client base in law enforcement.
"I deal with a lot of police officers and I've been told several times that the greatest percentage of crime is in this vicinity," Buchen says. "They don't publish that because there is no crime in Santa Fe. If there was it might affect tourism."
Tina's Range Gear has been vandalized numerous times and Buchen says it's only a matter of time before someone manages to breaks into her business. So how should the City go about cleaning up the neighborhood?
"An AC-130 Gunship flying up and down Airport Road," Buchen laughs. "It's just progressively getting worse. So that's pretty much what it's come to."
9:48 pm, PC's Restaurant and Lounge
Aside from the traffic, most visible signs of life cease on Airport Road by sunset. When night falls, the airport is all but abandoned and most area businesses have posted "Closed" signs in their windows.
A rare exception is PC's. It's the last real oasis of life on Airport Road after dark before a person is swept away by the cars and lights of Cerrillos. Inside, the walls are lined with incongruent kitsch ranging from novelty plates and Coke advertisements to beer signs and posters of old movie stars. The restaurant is a family affair that is shuttered by 9 pm but the lounge continues on well into the night.
A handful of patrons are bellied up to the bar as the Rockets and Mavericks duel it out on the big screen television. Theresa Sweeney props up the end of the bar with her elbows. The 45-year-old single mother has a simple assessment of what's happening to Airport Road.
"It sucks," Sweeney says. "The more growth, the more people. It's already too congested. There are people living right on top of each other."
Sweeney has spent the last 12 years living in the Sierra Vista trailer park off Airport Road. Her rent has shot up more than 50 percent (from $292 a month to $457) while she has watched the infrastructure around her squeezed tight.
"A single mother cannot get ahead on this side of town," Sweeney says. "Maybe if I had eight or nine people living with me. But it's just my daughter and me. I just can't pick up my trailer and move. If you live in a trailer park, you're basically screwed."
If you're a child on the rapidly growing southwest side, you're basically squished. The area's three elementary schools, one junior high and one high school hover near capacity.
"I think that it's good that they're putting in more affordable housing," Sweeney says. "But you have to expand with the growth. We really need another grade school, maybe another junior high. The more people come here the more these schools are packed."
According to Santa Fe Trends 2005, the median age in the communities on either side of Airport Road is the youngest in the city at 27, while the median age for residents living near the Plaza is 74. Sweeney believes the large population of adolescents-coupled
with a lack of extracurricular resources for children-makes kids susceptible to becoming victims or perpetrators of crime on Airport Road.
"There are no parks for the kids so they're playing in the street," Sweeney says. "They don't really have anywhere else to go. And crime is crazy on this side of town. Just check the police blotter. These trailer parks are full of drugs, murders, you name it. It's getting to the point where I'd be afraid to be a young woman walking around here by myself at night."
She says she has stayed primarily because she can't afford to live anywhere else. But with a constant influx of new residents arriving every day, Sweeney is eager to escape what she says has become a ghetto of the Santa Fe working class.
"People are stacked on top of each other," Sweeney says. "You can't afford to live here anymore. You're either going to get pushed out by the Mexicanos or you're going to get pushed out by the rich people."
Ironically, Sweeney will ultimately be pushed
in
by rich people. She cleans houses for a prominent local contractor and through her connections at work will soon move into an affordable home in Hyde Park. It's her best-and only-chance, she says, of escaping Airport Road.
"It's a hard road to live on," Sweeney says. "And it's only going to get harder."
