Ford's new house under watch.
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When Jessica Simpson came to town, she attracted the paparazzi.
Tom Ford, on the other hand, has drawn the cognoscenti.
Noted science author and journalist George Johnson isn't interested in Ford's fashion or food habits. Instead, he has set his sights on the vacant land where Ford's controversial new home will be built.
Set his sights literally.
Johnson, who lives down the street from Ford's future home near St. John's College, trained one of his Web cameras on the 10-acre property. Now, he's posting the images on his usually politically minded blog,
.
"One day, I saw this huge crane on top of the hill and thought it rather spectacular," Johnson says. "I thought it would be neat to move my camera so that it was looking at the crane, partly because I thought people would be interested in watching the construction."
Six days after the Web cam went live on March 2, Johnson's viewers jumped from a few hits to about 2,000 in 24 hours.
Some of the traffic is likely due to
, a
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high-profile Web site that bills itself as "the source for daily Manhattan media news and gossip." After Johnson mounted his Web cam, Gawker posted a picture from Johnson's blog and a link.
"Courtesy of Santa Fe's finest freaks, we can all enjoy a live Web cam documenting the building of Tom Ford's New Mexico pleasure palace," the Gawker caption reads. "Keep watching; he'll ask the workers to strip down any minute now for Vanity Fair's annual 'Construction Issue.'"
The reaction from Ford's camp, which knows about Johnson's Web-watching but was in the dark about the Gawker posting, is one of amusement.
"We thought it was a little funny," Jennifer Jenkins, Ford's land use planner on the project, says. "What people find interesting these days! If they want to look at a hill, I guess that's fine."
Ford's controversial 14,000-square-foot home was approved Feb. 14 by the city's Historic Design Review Board.
The San Acacio Neighborhood Association has appealed the H-Board's decision and is awaiting a City Council hearing. Construction is pending a final ruling.
"We feel the home will be too high and it's out of proportion with the streetscape," Peter Shoenfeld, a Santa Fe lawyer and president of the San Acacia Neighborhood Association, says. "We hope to hear soon when the City Council will discuss our concerns."
Until then, and perhaps even after, Johnson and his camera will keep watching.
"This is one of the most controversial construction projects in Santa Fe in the last few years," he says. "It's built in a prominent location by a prominent person. My instincts as a journalist is to relate what's going on to the public and let them decide for themselves what to think."
