Cottonwood Corridor Revival Project (Albuquerque, Rio Rancho: apartment complexes, Home Depot, theatre)

[abqpsychlist]

A year or so ago when they were doing construction on Paseo and Coors I mistakenly got my hopes up that they were going to extend the Paseo bike path accross coors and meet up behind the movie theatre.

At one point I even saw a skinny paved road branching off the very bottom of Paradise Blvd that was gated off, only to find out that it was just a drainage ditch. The project has since ended, but unfortunatly, if not only for me, no bike crossing.

So I got to thinking how nice of a project it would be to build a bike bridge(or at least a road crossing) to connect the Paseo trail to paradise hills. Where Paradise starts there's an empty lot that would make a nice park with a great view of the city.

The city of Albuquerque's bike maps shows this trail that goes from that spot north to about Irving. It goes behind those apartments and behind the Hobby Lobby and ends where the Twister's is. I took that trail one day and realized that it has been completely abandoned - it's rideable but you have to steer clear of broken bottles and tumbleweeds and trees. I also got helmet checked a couple times by some low-hanging branches.

I figured this path was at some point part of some master plan trail network, but somehow fell short. There's another curios situation accross coors from Riverpoint. Straight accross from this space in the fence where you can hit coors coming from the paseo path, there's the beggining of a bike path that runs straight into a chan-link fence.

At any rate, whatever it may have been didn't happen. But it did get me thinking about how poorly developed that sector on Coors from Paseo going north into Rio Rancho is. There's Target, Taco Bell, a lot of parking lots, and then a lot of car dealearships (I'd guess about 6?) Cottonwood Mall, Home Depot, Walmart, all surrounded by massive parking lots. On the outer-limits on most sides are cheesy apartment complexes. I would say it's one of the worst cases of what I've heard called an "automobile slum."

It's really a shame how ugly the area is considering how beautiful the surrounding area is. There's Corrales on one side, the bosque on the other, and it's at the bottom of the hill nestled into that little valley. It has one of the best view of the Sandias also.

So here's what I propose they do:

-Consolidate partking lots into 4-story parking structures (They could make these look nice and design them to be frames for buidings later)

-Fill in the previously black topped parking lot space with farms, stores, housing, etc. Kinda similar to the Mesa del Sol or new urbanist design, but even less car-oriented and, hopefully, less cheesy feeling.

-Some bike paths could have shelter above them with solar panels, they could require water recycling with greywater tanks for lawns or gardens. There's all sorts of technology to make this reasonable feasible. The main idea would be minimum eco-impact development that's nice to look at and built to last.

-Possibly divide coors into 2 separate one-way streets and install pedestrian bridges

-Since the land needed to complete project is currently all-commercial, there would be nobody to kick out. Unless the people in the surrounding apartments would be willing to (temporarily) relocate.

-Zoning laws would of course need to be changed, but isn't it common knowledge at this point that single-use zoning on a large scale is a really bad idea??

And who's going to pay for it???

Well, I don't even know if this is possible, but if a group of people committed to the project could pull money together forming a sort of collective, they could pull it off. Say, for example, the price tag on the project is 500 million dollars. If 50,000 people each paid $10,000, they'd have the money. The investment would eventually provide a full return. The space could easily fit at least 3,000 people and probably twice the businesses currently there.

I know this idea is pretty far-fetched, but I can't help but see the potential in the area. They could even plant a few cottonwood trees in the mix, kinda extend the bosque a bit, but in an eco-friendly way, it'd be a nice place. They could rename it cottonwood something, but that could be done later.

But at least in the meantime I wish they would at least connect that bike trail across Coors, and build that little park.

[cubssoxfan]

Here are some potential contacts for cleaning up the existing path or working with to improve connectivity: Committee Members — City of Albuquerque (http://www.cabq.gov/bike/gabac - broken link)
Might make a good public service project for a local cycling club or boy scout troop.