St. Catherine property is a gem, decaying day by day
Property developers who lead with hearts instead of heads don’t last, which is why Ed Romero, longtime executive director of the Santa Fe Civic Housing Authority, has been so successful developing, building and managing several hundred low-income apartments in Santa Fe.
But on one project he led with his heart, and it’s being broken, one crumbling piece at a time.
Fortunately, the head-led projects are successful enough to subsidize the one that’s heartbreaking. So successful, in fact, the authority is entering a phase of growth and opportunity.
The New Mexico Mortgage Finance Authority recently rewarded two of Romero’s projects in the same funding cycle, which is unheard of. MFA grant and tax credit deals are extremely competitive and foundational for getting low-income rental projects financed. But they also require recipients to find the balance of capital and invest organizational skin in the game. Meaning cash.
No problem, but at the same time the authority is about to close a deal with Santa Fe Community Housing Trust to take over three properties developed by the trust — Stagecoach Inn, Village Sage Apartments and Soleras Station Apartments. That’s another big chunk of change.
Some MFA funds will go for extensive rehabilitation of the 60-year-old Country Club Apartments near Cerrillos and Airport roads. One building is so bad it’ll be torn down and a new one built, while others will get a full gut remodel. The other MFA funds will help develop 84 units on Ocate Road.
Unlike virtually all other authority projects serving very low-income renters, the Ocate project will reserve 24 units for “workforce housing” rentals — meaning people and families earning 60% to 110% of area median income.
The heartbreaker is the defunct St. Catherine Indian School — 17 acres of super-prime real estate overlooking downtown that’s worth practically nothing. In fact, less
than nothing since anyone desiring development will have to spend an estimated $70 million rehabilitating 19 derelict structures deemed historical.
The most noteworthy is the hulking red schoolhouse rising above Santa Fe National Cemetery. It is the iconic feature of the school that closed in 1998, 18 years before the authority’s board authorized Romero to pick it up at a 2016 courthouse auction for $2 million.
Honestly, it may be the only building worth saving, but even that is a race against time. Twenty-six years of abandonment is causing a slow death to the adobe structure, though the authority spends hundreds of thousands of dollars to keep it standing.
One might believe inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places would be a point of pride for a community, but unintended consequences may be its death knell. Romero has tried to convince city officials only a handful of structures are worth saving.
When the roof of the school’s gymnasium collapsed, Romero spent big to have it rebuilt. The next challenge is underpinning sagging foundations with injected concrete. Romero recently discovered that while most of the student-built adobe walls behind thick concrete stucco are sound, in some areas near the ground, adobe bricks have melted away and only stucco and plaster are holding things together. Time is running out.
The authority can never rehabilitate existing buildings or build new structures there for affordable housing. Romero’s dream is to get zoning entitlements allowing a mixture of uses to entice purchase by developers or possibly a consortium of pueblos. The city could help by relaxing some rules and allowing limited demolition. It’s the only way to save the big red schoolhouse on the hill.