Editorial Reposted from the Las Cruces Sun-News
Originally posted 01/05/2015 01:19:12 PM MST

Movers and Shakers: Russ Smith brings new life to downtown Las Cruces

LAS CRUCES >> He’s a community arts advocate and leader, a musician, an artist, and a vendor at the Las Cruces Farmers & Crafts Market.

Russ Smith also makes a killer green chile hamburger. And he’s helped bring new life and flavor to downtown Las Cruces.

As chairman and board member of Project MainStreet, he’s been a guiding force behind downtown activities, including themed events that have included everything from movie screenings at La Placita to salsa dance lessons and an ice cream social (after an outdoor showing of “The Music Man”).

He helped coordinate and plan the 2014 New Year’s Eve Chile Drop, publicizing the event and creating an artist’s rendering of the scene, featuring a 15-foot lighted chile suspended from a 90-foot crane. He also serves on a planning committee for Salsa Fest.

“He is bringing a great amount of energy and excitement and is always looking for solutions. For Russ, the answer is always , ‘Yes,’ and he has a huge commitment to the community,” Andy Hume, coordinator of downtown development, said.

As an active vendor and marketing committee member of the Las Cruces Farmers & Craft Market, Smith brainstorms and supports special activities and new programs, including night markets and periodic food truck “roundup” events.

His own food service business, Happy Dog, is a familiar sight and the source of tantalizing aromas, as he grills hot dogs, hamburgers and chicken sandwiches on market days.
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“One idea that is standing pretty tall is an upscale nighttime food service event when food trucks could come together and really go white glove. My feeling is that if we can put the food out there at events, they will come,” said Smith, who is brimming with concepts he’d like to see implemented.

“We’re bringing together groups that have all the wherewithal and all the energy to really roll up their sleeves and make things happen. I look forward to replicating again and matching the kinds of things we’ve done in 2014 and going beyond that. There’s no shortage of fresh ideas here,” Smith said.

For his eclectic efforts, he was honored with the Doña Ana Arts Council 2014 Community Arts Award.

In his acceptance speech, Smith said that growing up in a small town in Oregon gave him “an appreciation of community and a Huckleberry Finn lifestyle.”

He said he felt that same sense of small town community when he and his wife Mercy and son Mac moved to Las Cruces in 2005. (His son Jason lives in Texas.)

“Roseburg [Ore.] was smaller, about 25,000 people, and of course we’re in the sun zone here, but in my mind, the emotion is still the same here as in that small town. There’s a very great kind of community here, a sense of being able to associate with the community and make something of living that’s precious to me. I went to Oregon State and majored in business, hotel and restaurant management and that’s what I’ve done most of my life. I worked in real estate management when we first moved to Las Cruces, but that was pulling me to move and my wife wanted to stay here and so did I.”

Serving the community is fun, said Smith, who has found ways to incorporate his diverse talents and skills in planning events. He’s helped put together musical groups for several events, sometimes joining in himself. He regularly plays drums in the Mesilla Valley Swing Band.

He’s like to see more themed activities and nighttime markets in 2015 and feels the sky’s the limit for potential downtown activities.

“I am all atwitter —and you can quote me on this — waiting for the downtown civic plaza thing to get done. It’s going to be a mainstay, bringing to the community things not even imagined yet,” Smith said.

Russ Smith, 62

Project MainStreet chairman, owner of Happy Dog, event committees for Salsa Fest, Las Cruces Farmers & Crafts Market.

Downtown activities he’d like to see include upscale food truck roundup, more themed activities, nighttime markets, continued annual New Year’s Eve Chile Drop events, and imaginative events for the new Las Cruces downtown civic plaza.

By S. Derrickson Moore
Originally Posted on the Las Cruces Sun-News: 12/21/2014 01:00:00 AM MST

LAS CRUCES >> It’s a short stretch of road that encompasses a lot of our town’s history.

Las Cruces Ave. stretches from North Hermosa St. to North Mesilla St., and in about 1.5 miles, runs from the new (the city’s Meerscheidt Recreation Center and a complex that includes a skate park, playing fields and the ultra-modern Las Cruces Aquatic Center) to the old. In fact, the renovated Santa Fe Railroad depot, now the Las Cruces Railroad Museum, is the route’s raison d’etre, its very reason for being.

It was once called Depot Street. It was our first paved street, according to the city museums’ historical website, and it led new arrivals into town from the territory’s first railroad station.

After then-bustling Mesilla refused the opportunity, fledgling Las Cruces stepped up to donate land to the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad for a depot. After the first train pulled into the station in April, 1881, Las Cruces quickly became the fastest growing and most prosperous town in the territory.

You can see echoes of that heydey in the residential neighborhood as you head east from the depot past grand old homes, including some on state historic registries that surround Pioneer Women’s park.

Perhaps the grandest of the group is the Frenger-Schlothauer adobe mansion that was the obsession of Clara Frenger, an artistic soul who transformed a classic Victorian home, built on four city lots in 1887. Inspired by old adobes on Santa Fe’s Canyon Road, she recruited generations of craftsmen from Mexico and the Borderlands, and spent decades realizing her visions to create what came to be known as “La Fantacia,” at the corner of Las Cruces Ave. and Alameda Ave.

Right across Alameda is another new addition, the two-story Las Cruces Sun-News building, built after a 2011 fire destroyed the sprawling old brick behemoth that was the newspaper’s home for decades, taking over from an old grocery store.

Stroll by Central Elementary School, offices, and the Las Cruces Convention & Visitor’s Bureau, and you’ll pass the beginnings of two of the most interesting blocks on what was once the Downtown Mall: on the south, you’ll find Bank of the West, the St. Genevieve’s monument, the Rio Grande Theatre and the Southwest Environmental Center.

The block to the north houses two more theaters (Black Box and Las Cruces Community Theatre) and Coas Bookstore, Main Street Gallery and Patina Home, among other interesting emporiums.

Head east, and you’ll pass Rosie’s Café, the post office, the picturesque El Calvario Methodist Church and an adobe strip that houses everything from a barbershop and tattoo parlor to art galleries.

The old Las Cruces City Hall seems a bit forlorn without its stone lions, which have moved to the city’s new governmental headquarters nearby.

“It’s interesting that after almost 12 years there, I’m not as attached to that building as I was to the older city hall before it, at that same location,” said former Las Cruces Mayor Ruben Smith.

“I have a photo of myself when I was about 3 in front of the old, old city hall, when everything was in one area: government, the police and fire departments. I think some of us have stronger sentiments about other buildings we’ve worked to preserve: the Branigan Cultural Center, the W.I.A. Building, Court Junior High, Central Elementary and the old railroad station,” Smith said.

Before reaching the avenue’s next major thoroughfare, Solano Drive, you’ll walk through a motley residential area that includes some of the town’s historic original townsite areas, including the Mesquite Historic District and what was once El Camino Real, the royal route that colonists and conquistadors followed from Mexico City to Santa Fe.

It’s a street where you can go to school, to church, shop at a variety of stores, exercise and play games, enjoy fellowship and community events at St. Genevieve’s Parish Hall, and maybe even pay respects to a dear departed friend or ancestor at San José and St. Joseph cemeteries.

Old-timers and their descendants will recognize and have tales to tell about the streets Las Cruces Avenue intersects: Campo, San Pedro, Mesquite, Tornillo, Manzanita, Esperanza, Almendra, Espina, Martinez, Virginia, Santa Fe. There are vivid family stories embedded in local consciousness. Just ask.

And it’s clear that love has been lavished on residential homes in the area. Look carefully and you’ll see a lot of creativity: a rose-trimmed, bright-pink adobe; pretty landscaped courtyards; old growth trees and interesting doors and gates.

It’s a walk through our city’s history that also illustrates what is in many ways a graceful juxtaposition between the old and the new. Across the street from the Railroad Museum, now decorated for a Victorian-era holiday celebration, you’ll find a renovated adobe that houses SunTech, a solar energy firm.

“We need to preserve it as much as we can with what we have right now, without doing any more destruction,” said Smith, who feels that the downtown area is looking better these days.

“A lot has been done but in some ways, the work is just beginning,” Smith said.

LCCP is so excited to be part of making Las Cruces a better place to live. Here is the latest news on our partnership with the City of Las Cruces to develop the new civic plaza downtown.

By Diana Alba Soular
POSTED on The Las Cruces Sun News:   10/11/2014 01:18:19 PM MDT

LAS CRUCES >> Work is being done to prep for a multiparty deal that would leave the city of Las Cruces with a chunk of downtown land for a civic plaza.

And a real-estate closing on the downtown Las Cruces property, now owned by Bank of the West, is expected to happen toward the middle or end of December, said city Manager Robert Garza.

“We remain optimistic that we’re on track and that this will become a reality soon,” Garza said last week.

A group of developers, Las Cruces Community Partners, is acting as a go-between with the city and the bank, but also will be responsible for building the plaza, expected to start in 2015, city officials have said.

Meanwhile, the city council may have to look at new options for funding the plaza project after an initial budget was cut short, officials said. That’s thanks to legal restrictions on spending from a downtown Tax Increment Development District, a special taxing district set up for downtown revitalization, according Garza.

The TIDD board will meet Tuesday to hear updates about the project, according to the city.

Up in the air

City councilors in June approved spending up to $5.4 million in TIDD funds on the plaza project — part of a pool of money collected for years from certain portions of property and sales tax within the taxing district’s boundaries.

Still, the exact costs of the proposed land purchase and subsequent plaza construction haven’t been nailed down because of some variables up in the air, Garza said.

A key aspect of the land purchase is getting appraisals done, Garza said. Those will factor into the price paid by the city for the parcel.

“That’s in process,” he said. “We’ve got to make sure everything we pay is proper and fair market value.”

Also, the plan for the plaza construction — the second major aspect of the city’s deal with LCCP — hasn’t been finalized, officials said.

The details of the plan — the number of trees, for instance, that LCCP would be required to plant or even whether trees will be called for — will all determine that cost, Garza said. Others specifics could entail how many benches will be placed and how much decorative concrete will be poured.

“The final scope of work will be defined on or before the closing on the property,” he said. “That degree of final negotiation is taking place.”

In the broad picture, the new plaza and surrounding improvements — such as the reopening of a closed street, Organ Avenue — will follow the color scheme and material types used in nearby Main Street revitalization projects that already have been built, said Andy Hume, city downtown planning and development coordinator. Also, a report produced for the city that stemmed from a series of fall 2013 public meetings will serve as a basis, he said.

But the city will take more feedback, likely in the form of two more public meetings, before the construction plan is finalized by the city council, Hume said. The aim would be to get specific information from residents, including from the Las Cruces Farmers and Crafts Market, which would use the plaza on Wednesdays to avoid blocking Main Street, as currently happens, Hume said.

For instance, “we want to make sure that where we provide the electricity works for the farmers market,” he said. “But we also have to make sure the electricity works for a concert.”

Another theme, Hume said, is that the city plans to keep the plaza “simple,” and not pack it with monuments. The space should be kept open for activities.

“It’s going to be a plaza for the people,” he said.

Lines redrawn

In addition to appraisals, other prep work for the land purchase includes surveying, since three property lots must be redrawn as part of the sale, Hume said. One lot contains the city’s municipal court building, another holds the Bank of the West building and drive-through and another small lot is home to a memorial in honor of the historic St. Genevieve church.

Hume said an administrative approval of the shifting boundaries is being sought. He said it’s not an action before the city’s planning and zoning commission because there are no new lots being created.

A right-of-way will be added to re-establish Organ Avenue, which borders the proposed plaza to the north.

The land with the drive-through is what’s slated to become the civic “plaza proper,” an area of about 57,600 square feet, or 1.3 acres, Hume said. But a plan calls for parts of Main Street and Organ Street be used as an expansion to the plaza at times, which would add about a 1/2-acre to its size.

“When it’s all said and done, you’re talking about over 2 acres of opportunity, right in the heart of Las Cruces,” Hume said.

Plaza budget cuts

In all, some $8.6 million has been collected by the TIDD from sales and property taxes, according to Garza.

More than half of that stems from a share of taxes that otherwise would’ve been claimed by the state, if there was no TIDD. For the city to access that money for the plaza, a state approval had to be given.

Garza said a recent legal opinion will keep the city from using the state’s share — some $4.8 million — for the civic plaza. He said the problem is that the city, when pursuing the TIDD from the state, didn’t identify a plaza as a possible use for the funds.

So now, the city has just $3.8 million — a share of TIDD revenues that stems from city and county taxes — for the plaza, less than the original budget.

“That could conceivably require us to scale back some of the amenities for the first phase,” he said.

Whether it does — along with the extent of cutbacks — depends upon a decision by the city council.

Garza said options include that the city could build what’s possible with the $3.8 million and wait for more TIDD revenues to pay for future phases, or it could loan itself money from the city general fund, which also would be repaid with future TIDD dollars, to fill in the budget gap for the plaza.

At the real-estate closing, the city will pay money, via an escrow service, to LCCP for the plaza land purchase, Garza said. Other dollars meant for construction of the plaza will be kept in escrow until the LCCP builds the plaza, he said.

Change of course

Tuesday, the TIDD board will consider authorizing a bond sale for up to $4.8 million for road reconfigurations and improvements downtown, Garza said. Part of those plans entail converting Church and Water streets, both one-way routes, into two-way routes. Because of a state law, the state’s share of TIDD money can only be used to repay bonds.

Part of the board’s action in June had authorized a bond sale to pay for the civic plaza. But since a different use has been proposed for the state share of TIDD dollars – the downtown street reconfigurations – a revised vote will be required. That vote will take place at Tuesday’s meeting.

The city must build the projects by 2018 or lose the dollars, Garza said.

For the pool of $3.8 million that stems from the city and county, those dollars can spend those dollars outright with no bond sale needed, Garza said.

Time line

City officials said, after the closing, they estimate the first demolition work for the plaza is expected to start in January 2015.

Hume said the bank drive-through will be torn down, and there’s a lot of utility work that has to be done.

Construction on the plaza and the new Organ Avenue will start in mid-spring 2015, Hume said.

“From that point, it’s going to be about 12 months — probably April 2016 for a ribbon-cutting,” he said.

The meeting starts at 1 p.m. Tuesday; a city council work session follows. The TIDD board is made up of six city councilors, the mayor and a non-voting county commissioner.

One sign of greatness is the ability to learn from the mistakes of the past. The history of Downtown Las Cruces is checkered with mistakes but the City of Las Cruces has worked hard to come up with a plan to restore some of the damage inflicted during the “Urban Renewal” movement of the 1960’s without losing the history of the area. This article provides a great history of downtown. Downtown Las Cruces before Urban Renewal was a thriving public center. Las Cruces has come a long way to returning downtown to its original glory.

LCCP is privileged to be part of restoring Downtown Las Cruces to it’s former greatness. The improvements being made downtown honor the greatness of the past while providing innovations for the future.