***image7***Downtown construction causes headaches.
Ah, Santa Fe in August.
The smell of sizzling fajitas wafting from the Plaza. The sound of Texans tittering over turquoise jewelry in front of the Palace of the Governors. The picturesque sight of an adobe wonderland framed by an azure sky.
Or not.
In recent weeks, the air has instead been filled with the smell of hot asphalt, the persistent rat-tat-tat-tat of
power drills and jackhammers and the sight of scarred streets and road cones.
That's because the city is in the throes of an extensive array of public works projects coinciding with the
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apex of the summer tourist season. As a result, the maintenance work has transformed downtown from a postcard into one big "Road Work Ahead" sign. At least four projects are in various stages of completion from the Paseo de Peralta loop into downtown, causing a mixture of headaches and eyesores for tourists and locals alike.
"I know this isn't the most ideal
time," says Robert Romero, director of the city's Public Works Department. "We hate to do work between Memorial Day and Labor Day, especially in the
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downtown area, but in this case there's not much that we can do."
That's because the crews repaving downtown streets like Paseo, Sandoval, Palace and Alameda are hired through a "state price agreement" with the New Mexico Department of Transportation. The benefit, Romero says, is a lower price tag. The downside
is the availability of the work crews, which are contracted to do maintenance throughout the state.
"We're kind of at the contractor's mercy as to when they can come and do the work here," Romero
says. "We're competing with every municipality in the state to get our
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paving done and while we don't want to be downtown during the summer months, we just can't get around it because of the constraints of the contract."
According to Lawrence Ortiz, director of the city's Streets and Drainage Maintenance Department, the
expansive $2.2 million repaving project-which
began June 20-encompasses 26 streets
throughout the city. The work was
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scheduled to be
completed Aug. 20, but
several delays have pushed the completion date back to around Sept. 14.
"We've fallen a little bit behind," Ortiz admits. "We probably lost a solid week or two because of the weather, equipment
breakdowns and just the logistical problems that come with a project of this complexity and magnitude."
The project has been further complicated by the city's efforts to decrease the impediments to vehicle and pedestrian traffic.
Ortiz and Romero expect to complete downtown construction before the Santa Fe Indian Market opens
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Aug. 19. In the meantime, Alameda Street is gridlocked, stretches of Sandoval are
one big grease stain of asphalt and gravel and Paseo itself is a bumpy, incongruous mixture of old and new pavement.
Romero says he has received multiple calls from city councilors whose constituents have complained about the ill-timed maintenance. Moreover, Santa Fe Chamber of Commerce President Simon Brackley says business owners have expressed
their irritations and
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fear that tourists who came for adobe and were met with asphalt are being shooed away at the most critical time.
"There is always frustration when access is restricted to a particular area or a particular neighborhood," Brackley says. "I think it's particularly frustrating when it happens during the height of our tourist season. It would be nice if these kinds of projects could be scheduled for March and November rather than July and August."
