Capitol complex officials clamoring for more office space the past 15 years took a step closer towards a solution last week, but the tax is a chunk out of Santa Fe history the size of four tiny casitas.
The last of the tiny homes that once made up a section of the vanished Don Gaspar neighborhood first became vulnerable to demolition in 2012 when plans for a new executive office building first were proposed. What initially was a proposed 56,000-square foot building has grown into a 163,000-square foot complex to house five state agencies linked to the Roundhouse by a walking bridge.
The four casitas in question stand across Don Gaspar from the Roundhouse, their cracked stucco and crumbling paint long a barrier between proponents of the project and local stakeholders that, until last week, didn’t look apt to budge.
However, the Santa Fe’s Historic District Board, known locally as the H-Board, decided four hours into its Dec. 9 hearing to loosen chances for progress to pave over local history.
The H-Board’s 3-2 vote allowing the demolition of the four casitas and several other buildings on Capitol Street was a turnabout from a vote taken last year and triggered a 60-day review period. When the H-Board meets again next month, at least one local group will already be considering an appeal.
“We are completely opposed to this project,” Old Santa Fe Association co-director Edward Archuleta tells SFR. “Little by little by little, we are losing the Santa Fe style. A style that’s founded on small, adobe buildings.”
Archuleta, whose organization has followed this project since it was first proposed, tells SFR they will have 30 days after the next meeting on Jan. 13 to make that appeal.
“The state has been engaged in demolition by neglect (of the casitas),” Archuleta says. “The whole thing is, symbolically, very sad for Santa Fe.”
Provided
A rendering of the proposed building, which would face Capitol Street.
‘Very Desperate Situation’
Sharon Pino, deputy secretary of state, was among the representatives who appeared before the H-Board from the Secretary of State’s Office, State Engineer’s Office and General Services. Each urged approval of the demolition requests, but Pino said her agency, which offices in the North Capitol building, is “out of space and getting kicked out” by the legislature.
“There is absolutely no other space downtown that will accommodate our office at this time,” she told board members. “In fact, they added $100,000 to our budget this past fiscal year to move when we have no place to move, so we are in a very desperate situation for space.”
State Auditor Joseph Maestas welcomes the proposed complex, which his agency would join along with four others.
“Some of the problems that we experience is during the legislative session,” Maestas said via Zoom during the Dec. 9 hearing.
“We have no working space in the Capitol to work. We’re borrowing and stealing, so to speak, during the session. We’re obviously very isolated from the rest of government and so location is an issue.”
Evan Chandler
Jennifer Jenkins from JenkinsGavin speaks to the public about designs for a proposed executive business complex across the street from the Roundhouse.
The proposed complex would occupy 2.49 acres of state-owned property with a design—from local project management firm JenkinsGavin—mandated to maintain the Territorial Revival style architecture present at the Bataan Memorial Building and the Roundhouse. The building, as proposed, would accommodate 531 workers and include a public plaza area north of the building, and a plaza courtyard to the south for occupants.
The proposed three-story structure is slightly lower height than surrounding buildings and would have a subterranean parking lot.
The earliest iterations of the project in 2012 proposed a 56,000 square-foot building that grew to 193,000 when the state took up the project again in 2022. Public outcry and meetings with stakeholders who voiced concerns about the size in meetings since helped shrink the design to its present 163,000 square feet.
Cost estimates for the proposal range between $184 and $200 million.
Last Vestiges of Don Gaspar
The four aging bungalows are in the Downtown and Eastside Historic District. So when the H-Board named them as “contributing” structures to preserving local history in the 1980s, the distinction carried certain protections.
Matt Grubs
State casitas, backside
"Before the state Capitol complex expanded, this was just a residential area like you'd see on the other side of Paseo de Peralta," former head of Santa Fe’s Historic Preservation Division David Rasch told SFR in 2022. "The casitas are remnants of what used to be here. So they embody the story to be told about this neighborhood."
When the state first announced plans in 2012 to build an executive office building on the site, it asked for another review from the H-Board. The answer this time was that three of the houses and one garage couldn't be altered at all, and the other three structures were still contributing.
For seven years, the executive office complex proposal went into hibernation. Its appearance in the state’s 2021 master plan, triggered the long and winding process that landed in the laps of H-Board members last week.
Before hearing from the public, Jennifer Jenkins and staff from JenkinsGavins presented the H-Board with design plans.
Jenkins made it clear from the outset of last week’s hearing “that there was a preference for considering demolition in the context of a final design, not in the context of a concept” from city staff and board members.
Jenkins and staff presented a three-dimensional model of the proposed new complex, which targets more than casitas. The Concha Ortiz y Pino building, designed by Roundhouse architect Willard Kruger, has stood since 1961. That construction started the degradation of the historic Don Gaspar neighborhood the four remaining casitas belonged to. If state officials have their way, Kruger’s building will be bulldozed, too.
However, one current resident of that building spoke in favor of its demise.
Deputy State Engineer Tanya Trujillo, said she supports the new project because her staff is currently scattered between the Ortiz y Pino Building and the Bataan Memorial across the street. She said her work history there began in 1993 and has been spent between the two buildings.
“Our agency very much supports the demolition of our current building and of the casitas in order to construct a new modern and functional state office building.”
Provided
At Last, Go Time
Last year, the H-board approved the demolition of the Concha Ortiz y Pino building along with a motor pool and garage building to make room for the new complex, but not the four casitas.
That initiated assembly of the state’s first-ever joint State-Local Government Historic Review Board. It gathered in June of 2024 ostensibly to take the matter of the casitas up. However, the state removed itself from the process 11 minutes into the one and only meeting, sending the proposal back to design phase.
Fast forward one year and five months to last Tuesday when the H-Board reversed its previous recommendation of the state’s request to demolish the downtown casitas, paving the way for the complex.
Before members voted, they invited members of the public to speak. Local developer Marc Bertram was among those who spoke to the board via Zoom.
“I am typically pro-development, however, this proposed building is so egregious that I feel a need to share my thoughts,” he said.
Bertram called the project “completely out of scale with the existing streetscape and surrounding neighborhoods.” He reminded members of the H-Board of his involvement with several projects that required their approval.
“The development of those properties would have been much easier, faster and more profitable if we could have simply ignored the historic district regulation and just torn down the buildings to make for a more developable site; that’s exactly what the state is trying to do,” Bertram said. “We would have never thought of proposing such a deviation from the intent of the historic district because we would be laughed out of the meeting.”
Most of those who spoke, whether in person or via Zoom, spoke against demolition, but the project had passionate backers like Jordan Young, who told the board via Zoom she lives and works in the South Capitol neighborhood.
“I find it incredibly embarrassing to live in a city that continually blocks daily business from being conducted due to its snobbish valuing of status quo over actual people that can benefit from development.”
Maestas, a former Santa Fe city councilor, said the proposed design aligns “very well” with not only the historic character of the neighborhood but surrounding structures.
“I understand the need to balance historic preservation, but I truly believe in this case that this proposed building would be an asset to the community and, quite frankly, a benefit not only to the city but to the county as well,” he said.
As the five present board members prepared to vote, each justified their vote.
“As sweet as the area, the former neighborhood, may have been, the casitas are just remnants of a neighborhood that no longer exists,” board member Jennifer Biedscheid said just before voting for demolition. “State government exists here. We can’t contradict that fact, and its ability to function needs to be a serious concern.”
Board members Madeleine Aguilar Medrano and Mary Ellen Degnan voted against the proposal. Medrano took several minutes to explain she didn’t think she had heard or seen anything worth changing the previous vote to decline demolition.
“That’s all I’m going to say for now,” she said before the vote was taken. “This board has already spent a lot of time on this case, and I think a decision was already made.”
