Local business may be forced to make way for the county.
It's barely 1 pm on a Friday and the Blue Monkey hair salon is buzzing. On one side a stylist twists her customer's hair with a comb and scissors. On the other, a colleague works her hands through a client's locks with viscous gobs of product. Waiting customers chat cheerfully with each other and an employee who sports a closely cropped, pink crew cut.
Hair salons traditionally have been a place both to get a new 'do and to socialize. Blue Monkey maintains this tradition with its lively atmosphere while at the same time becoming known as ***image2***one of the city's most cutting-edge businesses with its trademark color treatments and extensions.
The shop's popularity and success have been a labor of love for the owners. Over the past three years, couple and salon owners Nicole Carter and Joel Hobbie have spent $30,000 to remodel their rented shop space at 225 Montezuma Street and opened up their own salon school in the process. Hopeful about additional revenue from the school, Carter and Hobbie were able to sink approximately $70,000 toward work on their own home.
It was a local business success story until Santa Fe County ***image1***purchased the neighboring Paramount Lounge and Night Club last summer for approximately $2 million in order to proceed with its plan to expand office space and build a new courthouse.
Shortly thereafter Hobbie and Carter learned their building was next. John Barker, their property manager, told the couple the county wanted to buy the 5,000-square-foot building. Worse, Barker told the couple that even though the Barker family-which owns the building-didn't want to sell, they might have no choice because the county had threatened to condemn the building if he put up a fight.
"Our reaction was 'Oh crap!'" Hobbie says. "We'd just sunk all this money into our business, our home, and we don't have the resources to move!"
Blue Monkey's departure would be the latest in a series of private businesses in the Guadalupe area that will become government offices. In addition to the Paramount purchase, the state has announced its plans to take over the nearby Jean Cocteau Theater, located on Montezuma Avenue [Outtakes, March 15:
]. The Blue Monkey space, however, is the first instance in which the property owners and tenants might be given little choice in the matter.
According to Hobbie, he's spoken with county officials about the deal in meetings over the past three months and they've told him the county will indeed condemn the building if it's not sold willingly and will eventually level the property.
Deputy County Manager Roman Abeyta tells SFR the issue of condemnation "was raised as an option" in the meetings and referred further questions to County Attorney Stephen Ross.
Ross says the county can condemn a building through the power of eminent domain if the takeover of a particular property advances the public good.
"It's controversial, there's no question," Ross says. "But it's a fairly common power afforded to local governments."
County Commissioner Jack Sullivan says Blue Monkey is the last piece missing in the county's quest for a new courthouse; the current district courthouse on Catron Street is outdated, too small and security is an ongoing issue, Sullivan says.
The case to purchase the Blue Monkey can be made, Sullivan notes, because the county already owns the old Paramount building and two other buildings that sit adjacent to the salon.
"There has been a strong desire to keep our district court facility downtown as opposed to moving it away from the city," Sullivan says. "Based on studies, this is really the only parcel we could see doing this because we already own some of that surrounding land."
Local business owner Sarah Wilhelm of the nearby Aztec Café, who has watched both the Paramount and now Blue Monkey face tough times, thinks the concept of eminent domain is unfair.
"I hate the fact that the government can do that, that they can just kick somebody out," she says. "Obviously, [the courthouse] will bring some business down here, but I wish they didn't have to use eminent domain."
As for Barker, Hobbie and Carter, the entire process is hard to fathom.
"It doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but it's my understanding that we couldn't say no," Barker says. "It makes me feel terrible. Joel and Nicole are both really creative and hardworking people, and they've been great tenants."
Barker says he's in the process of appraising the building and the final sale has yet to be inked.
Now resigned to the inevitable move, Hobbie and Carter hope the county compensates them for a switch in locales, a prospect Stephen Ross says the county is indeed discussing. The couple currently pay $5,750 a month and their lease runs out in two years.
"It seems to me that if they're going to displace us, they should pay for it," Hobbie says. "We're not trying to be greedy, but we've worked hard to stay downtown. And now, all this work, has been such a waste."
