By Steve Knight \/ Journal Staff Writer
\nPublished: Friday, September 21st, 2018<\/p>\n
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. \u2014 City officials are giving more than 50 local artists access to the Albuquerque Rail Yards this weekend with their supplies and equipment to document the historic site before redevelopment begins.
\nDuring a Friday news conference, Mayor Tim Keller spoke of the \u201cArtists Days\u201d project, an effort to preserve and archive the current state of the property, which began Friday and continues today. He also outlined plans on proposed improvements to the site that was once a major maintenance facility for the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway.
\nThe city is taking over efforts to remediate and revitalize the Rail Yards after breaking ties with Samitaur Constructs, a California-based contractor hired in 2012 to redevelop the property.
\nThe city\u2019s next steps include increasing security with 24-hour protection, cleaning the site and improving access, repairing roofs and installing utilities and preparing for demolition of small buildings not historically significant.
\nPlanning Department Director David Campbell used the saying, \u201cIf you don\u2019t know where you\u2019ve been, you can\u2019t know where you\u2019re going\u201d in both English and Spanish to explain the purpose of Artists Days.
\n\u201cThis is the city\u2019s opportunity to take the \u2018before\u2019 pictures,\u201d Campbell said. \u201cSomeday very soon, we hope, we will be able to celebrate the \u2018after\u2019 pictures \u2013 the ones that tell us how this place has been transformed. We are so fortunate to have not only the Rail Yards, but to have artists and photographers to document this.\u201d
\nKeller earlier in the week said the city would stick to a previously approved \u201cmaster vision\u201d for the 27.3 acre property and break that plan into phases.
\nThe first priority after extensive environmental remediation will be to \u201cactivate\u201d the building adjacent to the already-updated blacksmith shop, which is home to the weekly market.
\nA second updated building will mean additional event space and market expansion.
\nKeller said he plans to ask for help from the City Council, the Legislature and the governor. He estimated remediation would cost around $8 million and rehabbing the second building would be another \u201ccouple of million dollars.\u201d
\nHe said the city is also switching management of the facility over to SMG, the company contracted to run the Albuquerque Convention Center, in hopes of increasing its use.
\nThe rail yards are just south of Downtown, between the Barelas and South Broadway neighborhoods. The city bought the site in 2007 for about $8.5 million, with a commitment that redevelopment would include some mixed-income housing and a permanent place for the Wheels Museum. The site consists of 18 surviving buildings erected between 1915 and 1925.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Steve Knight \/ Journal Staff Writer Published: Friday, September 21st, 2018 ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. \u2014 City officials are giving more than 50 local artists access to the Albuquerque Rail Yards this weekend with their supplies and equipment to document the historic site before redevelopment begins. During a Friday news conference, Mayor Tim Keller spoke of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-events"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wheelsmuseum.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wheelsmuseum.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wheelsmuseum.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wheelsmuseum.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wheelsmuseum.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=383"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wheelsmuseum.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":384,"href":"https:\/\/wheelsmuseum.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383\/revisions\/384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wheelsmuseum.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wheelsmuseum.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wheelsmuseum.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}