Anson Stevens-Bollen
Cover, Oct. 5 “Election Guide”
Please, Vote
Kudos for your hard work putting together this informative issue!
Ginny Mattingly, via Facebook
Whose Legacy?
It seems that one of the mayor’s enduring legacies will be the atrocious developments blanketing the entire south side of Santa Fe. To give a few examples: By the outlet mall you can get a tiny apartment with a luxury label, a color palette of a burned-out tenement, and the allure of subsidized housing. At the corner of Governor Miles and Cerrillos there is a plague of townhouses, all exactly the same, all jammed in together, row after row, with views into neighbors’ windows and the promise of constant noise. This is happening also along Richards and behind the mall as well as along 599. The Zia development, pushed through by the mayor despite many valid protests, will be another example of visionless waste. No green space, no walking trails, no children’s playgrounds, and most shocking, no solar. There is a lack of future vision and the result is a backward thinking city.
Why? Why has a previously alive city become a model of poor design and sloppy building with no imagination and architectural merit? Why has the city rubber-stamped so much without any thought to livability or quality at a reasonable price? Why are buildings not built to code, but still pass inspection. Why is zoning ignored? It is common knowledge that developers pay off the city to construct these awful buildings and to not include enough affordable housing. Furthermore, when the new apartments start to fall apart, renters have no rights or protection. When tenants go to court about a grievance, most often judges side with landlords. Many of these new buildings will eventually go the way of Tres Santos, havens for crime and drugs. So much for Santa Fe.
Carolyn Lamuniere and Laura Johnson, Santa Fe
CORRECTION
The caption in last week’s theater column incorrectly identified one of the actors as Leslie Dillen. It was actually Lynn Goodwin.
