A hearing on the Village of Corrales’ plans to extend Don Julio Road in the Far Northwest Sector out to Highway 528 in Rio Rancho will be held Tuesday, July 31 at the Old Church.
The formal public hearing, required before Village officials can make the final connection for “Access A,” will begin at 6:30 p.m. The topic will be validity and completeness of the environmental assessment (EA, a minor environmental impact statement) conducted for the Village’s project.
Deadline for comments on the EA is August 14. Written comments should be mailed, e-mailed or faxed to Jessica Sebring of Marron and Associates, 7511 Fourth Street NW, Albuquerque 87107.
The e-mail address is
The EA can be reviewed at the Village’s website, www.corrales-nm.org/ notices. Copies of the EA may be reviewed at the Village Office, at Corrales Library or at the Corrales Main Fire Station.
The project under consideration is described as “constructing new roadway with two travel lanes and turn lanes to connect Don Julio Road with the [528] intersection. Right and left turn lanes will also be constructed on NM 528 at the intersection. An existing bike path along Northern Boulevard will be extended south of NM 528 along Don Julio.”
The EA addresses just the last 200 feet of the right of way from the current end of Don Julio out to the 528 intersection.
Village officials were poised to finish the “Access A” link out to Highway 528 and Northern Boulevard months ago. But completion snagged on state requirements for cultural resource clearances, especially from neighboring Pueblo representatives.
When those finally came back presenting no problems, officials in Santa Fe went on to insist that Village officials had to call a public hearing to review and comment on the expected impacts.
Increasingly over the past year, Mayor Phil Gasteyer has expressed exasperation over the repeated delays.
The roadway and link to Highway 528 was called for in Corrales’ 2002 Far Northwest Sector Plan. It was to be a new “gateway” into Corrales leading to a new potential commercial area along Corrales’ boundary with Rio Rancho east of the Rio Rancho Industrial Park. The 70 acres of the sector plan’s designated “neighborhood commercial, office district” (NCOD) was envisioned as a major new source of gross receipts tax revenues for Village government.
Back in the 1990s and earlier, the northwest corner of Corrales had been vacant and barely accessible; it was the last, vast tract of undeveloped territory here. It was essentially cut off from the rest of Corrales by the Montoyas Arroyo, the Lomitas Negras Arroyo and by Rio Rancho’s city limits on the northwest and north.
But the sector plan devised by an appointed citizens’ group called for construction of several access points into the mostly empty territory. The main one was called “Access A” with its road out to Highway 528. To pay for those access projects, including two bridges and the link to the 528-Northern intersection, the Village Council adopted the municipality’s first “development impact fee” program. Developers, builders or homeowners would have to pay a fee at the time they got a building permit.
Of course, with the precipitous drop off in new home starts in Corrales, as elsewhere, those impact fees have not fully materialized. To complete the access projects, Village officials borrowed money from state government, expecting to have “Access A” finished by the end of last year.
That was before the environmental assessment snag. The document prepared by Marron and Associates states, “This EA demonstrates that the proposed action meets the project purpose and need for improving safe and efficient travel in the project area. The project would have no significant adverse social, economic or envisionmental impacts of a level that would warrant an Environmental Impact Statement. Unless significant impacts are identified during the public review, comment and hearing, a “decision document” or “finding of no significant impact will be requested from the N.M. Department of Transportation.”
If the decision is made to proceed, the state’s municipal arterial program (MAP) funding would be released to partially pay for construction.
The EA notes that “excavations for roadway construction and traffic control device installation would be one to 1.5 feet deep. Two drainage ponds less than 18 inches deep would be constructed along the east side of NM 528 and south of the intersection.”
The entire disturbed area would be less than three acres.
So far, commercial developers have shown no interest in any of the lots designated for potential business use in Corrales’ Far Northwest Sector despite nearing completion of “Access A.”
The road dubbed “the gateway to the Far Northwest Sector” a decade ago was meant to open up a new commercial district to generate retail sales taxes desperately needed for municipal services such as police, fire-rescue and road repairs.
The future commercial area identified in the 2002 Northwest Sector Plan adopted by the Village Council was justified by three main factors:
• the planning area’s “Access A” is the community’s only near-access to potentially lucrative traffic on Highway 528 (see the Corrales map in this and every issue of Corrales Comment);
• opening a new commercial area in the relatively isolated Far Northwest Sector might take development pressures off neighborhoods at the south end of Corrales; and
• it would be relatively easier politically to approve plans for commercial ventures in an unpopulated area.
Over the past 40 years, the prospect of commercial encroachments into residential areas has been a primary ongoing political battle. Invariably villagers would say their lifestyles and the community’s rural character would be ruined by allowing new commercial activity.
Having watched that play out again and again, and with officials increasingly concerned about an inadequate economic base to support municipal services due to dwindling sales of new homes as vacant lots became scarce, the idea of creating a new commercial district in an area that had no existing homes had great appeal back in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
So, according to the Far Northwest Sector Plan, an area along the Rio Rancho boundary abutting the industrial park was designated for future commercial and/or office development. And with direct access off Highway 528 (“Access A” in the sector plan), traffic impacts to residential areas would be minimized. People would come into the NCOD from the Highway 528-Northern Boulevard intersection along Don Julio Road, spend money at the shops and offices, and then depart out to the 528-Northern intersection.
Some observers thought it was just a pipe-dream. No one would really want to open a business there behind the Rio Rancho Industrial Park, and if they did, few customers would come.
Developers like Corrales’ Jack Westman told the planners (and then Village officials when they adopted the plan) that demand for homes in the Far Northwest Sector was immensely greater than demand for office or retail space. Westman predicted early on that all the lots in the NCOD would have houses on them long before business started up.
It looked like that would happen, especially as completion of “Access A” languished. Bureaucracy and lack of funding for the tie-in to 528 at Northern plagued the project for a decade. The State Legislature provided money for the road link and then took it back, ostensibly because the project wasn’t moving forward.
But it was stalled because Corrales officials couldn’t get necessary approvals from the City of Rio Rancho, in whose territory the 528-Northern intersection lies. When agreements were finally reached, state requirements kicked into high gear, leaving Village officials stalled once again while various clearances were obtained.
Looking back, it now seems certain that Westman would have been right about all the lots going to residential use rather than commercial were it not for the housing bust of recent years. Land sales and new home construction crashed.
Over the past two and a half years, work on Don Julio Road has given renewed hope for those who wanted “Access A” completed in time to entice commercial development. The south end of Don Julio was completed with a cul-de-sac on the edge of the Montoyas Arroyo and the northern, barricaded stretch of the road advanced another 50 yards or so toward the Northern-528 intersection.
The final link to Highway 528 is now expected by the end of this year.
With “Access A” nearing completion, Corrales Comment contacted three real estate developers who own tracts within the NCOD, Westman Realty, Bruce Caird Realty and Ben Ruiz. All said they’ve had no inquiries about buying the lots with commercial potential.
“We aren’t getting any interest in those lots, and our signage to offer those lots is not completely adequate to take advantage of the opening of ‘Access A’ Ian Caird said earlier this year.
In fact, the sign that Caird had erected along Don Julio Road promoting a future five-acre “Corrales Business Park” is now lying face-down on the ground.
“My next step is to meet with people in the neighborhood to see what they would accept going on those lots,” Caird said. “The Village of Corrales probably has expectations of gross receipts taxes from those lots that aren’t shared by the people who live there now.”
In any event, he added, “We’re not in the middle of a hot market right now.”
Westman Realty expressed the same outlook. They’ve had no expressions of interest in their NCOD lots.
And developer Ben Ruiz, who owns the NCOD lots closest to the Don Julio-528 intersection, said in February he has had no inquiries about those lots recently. Ruiz is also owner of the office developments at the south end of Corrales encompassing the old Valverde Animal Clinic.
Back in June 2007, Jack Westman reported, “We have only three lots left unsold in the commercial area. Eleven of the lots our consortium had within the NCOD have already been sold for residential. We have not sold a single lot for commercial.
“One of the impediments has been that the development impact fees [for commercial] that the Village set were exorbitant.”
Westman warned the mayor and Village Council about setting the impact fees too high years ago. He argued that the purchaser of one of his lots, home builder William Brunner who wanted to set up a woodworking shop in the NCOD, was faced with paying $39,000 in impact fees.
That project soon stalled as Village officials tried to figure out how to lower the fees to attract more businesses to locate in the would-be commercial district.
Back then, Bruce Caird said it hadn’t been just the high impact fees that have deterred business people from opening up shops in the proposed commercial district. The all-important “Access A” out of the NCOD connecting to Highway 528 at Northern Boulevard had not materialized.
As of mid-June 2007, the City of Rio Rancho and the Village of Corrales had not signed a long-pending cooperative agreement whereby Rio Rancho would support the proposed Corrales intersection within its jurisdiction at 528 and Northern.
After his election in March 2006, Mayor Phil Gasteyer succeeded in getting the Rio Rancho City Council to approve an agreement about the intersection, but some provisions, such as diverting traffic from the Rio Rancho Industrial Park into the NCOD, have not been acceptable to the Village Council.
When Corrales citizens worked out a land use plan for the Far Northwest Sector —the last, vast tracts of empty land between the Harvey Jones and Dulcelina Curtis flood control channels in Corrales’ northwest corner— in 2000-2002, they designated more than 70 acres adjacent to the Rio Rancho Industrial Park as a future business district.
The hope was to establish a new commercial area to generate much-needed gross receipts taxes for Village government in a location that would not impact existing residential neighborhoods.
Bruce Caird’s future “Corrales Business Park” suffers from poor planning and execution, the metro area developer complained five years ago. “It’s their own fault” that lots in the NCOD are filling up with houses, Caird said, referring to Village officials.
“I’ve pleaded with them to zone it for what they want to do,” rather than leave all the lots in the Far Northwest Sector zoned for residential use until such time as a property owner applies for commercial zoning.
Caird said the result could be unfortunate if future home buyers don’t realize until it is too late their lot backs up onto —or faces—an industrial setting. “Newcomers to Corrales don’t have the foggiest idea what may be planned across the street from them,” Caird said.
Seeing prospects dimming for a viable business park along the western edge of the Far Northwest Sector, Caird said he was considering other options.
“I’m thinking in terms of an assisted living or elder care facility,” he said June 20, 2007. “But then, I could spend $150,000 making plans for it and then be turned down.”
Neighborhood opposition to extending Don Julio Road in Corrales’ Far Northwest Sector out to Highway 528 in Rio Rancho arose in 2010. (See Corrales Comment Vol.XXIX, No. 18, November 6, 2010 “Riled Residents Hear Reasons for ‘Access A’ Road Extension.”)
Homeowners had come to Village Council meetings that fall to oppose the road extension because it would bring unbearable, unsafe Rio Rancho traffic onto their residential streets. They said they were unaware of the road to Rio Rancho when they bought their home site and moved in with small children who would be at risk from more, higher speed traffic.
With Village Councillors Ennio Garcia-Miera and Gerard Gagliano at his side, Mayor Gasteyer explained the history of the road project at an October 27, 2010 meeting at the fire-rescue substation.
The mayor explained how he was a member of the planning team assembled in 2001 to develop a sector plan for the then almost entirely vacant territory between the Montoyas Arroyo and the Dulcelina Curtis Flood Control Channel.
“I was on the Planning and Zoning Commission at that time and I was delegated by the commission to serve on this planning group,” the mayor recalled. He said at least 44 public meetings were held as the plan was being developed in 2000-2001.
He explained how the Village Council set up a development impact fee program to pay for the bridges, roads and drainage structures in the territory to open it up for development. Having collected impact fees from developers and home builders, the public infrastructure called for in the sector plan, such as the “Access A” road out to Highway 528, had to be completed within seven years or the fees had to be refunded, according to law.
Gasteyer explained how hostilities between Rio Rancho officials and former Corrales Mayor Gary Kanin had delayed completion of Don Julio Road out to the highway, so now time is running out to get the project done by early in 2012 or repay approximately $660,000.
The drop-off in new home construction has meant less impact fees coming in than anticipated so funding to complete “Access A” was tight. Gasteyer said the Village had already borrowed $1,035,000 through the N.M. Department of Finance and Administration for the project and would need to borrow another $700,000. But he noted Corrales has recently obtained $350,000 for the project through the highway department’s municipal arterials program.
Gagliano said he was aware that some homeowners had not known about the road extension when they bought their homes, but that they should have been told by the realtor or builder. “These decisions were made seven years ago and we are bound to carry them out. It will cost us an enormous amount of money if we don’t.”
