A big project seeing the development of both new residential and commercial space in Los Ranchos has been hit with a legal challenge.
The officially named Village of Los Ranchos de Albuquerque and the company Palindrome Communities inked a development agreement four years ago for a 12-acre site located at the intersection of 4th Street and Osuna Road NW.
What is being called the Village Center Project had been in the planning stage for well over a decade, with village leaders trying to find a new combined residential house, commercial, and retail use for a mostly undeveloped site.
In 2018, the Portland, Oregon-based Palindrome Communities submitted a successful response to a Request for Proposals issued by the Village, and in the process proposed such amenities as a center for business development, micro-retail space, and a community garden for the site.
Central to the project: the building of 204 affordable housing units.
Demolition of existing structures on the site began in 2022, with construction work on the roughly $50 million project beginning shortly thereafter.
But now New Mexico District Court Judge Denise Barela Shepard has issued a ruling that the Village of Los Ranchos violated the state’s Open Meetings Act requiring public meetings on any development project entered into by a government entity.
The project has been controversial from the start. Opponents appeared at its November 2022 groundbreaking bearing signs that read: “Not Approved By Residents” and “Los Ranchos Trustees Illegally Nix Ordinances,” among other messages.
The ruling comes nearly a year after a group called the Friends of Los Ranchos raised the question of the process for the project contravening the Open Meetings Act rules.
In an interview with the Albuquerque Journal, Matthew Beck, an attorney representing the group, said the ruling “makes clear that attempting to delegate away behind closed doors what would otherwise have to happen out in the open violates the Open Meetings Act.”
It has been suggested that one way forward for the project may see the Village going back to secure the approval of the site development plans as presented by Palindrome, only in accordance with the Opening Meetings Act regulations.
By Garry Boulard