By Rodd Cayton
A proposed apartment development in Bernalillo has been touted as key to the town’s future prosperity, and derided as a source of more traffic congestion and a stressor of water availability. The Town Council Monday formally introduced Ordinance 373 establishing a master plan for the roughly 15 acres in the Venada Plaza subdivision where the apartments would be built.
Trula Howe, vice president of Modulus Architects and Land Use Planning, spoke on behalf of developer Dominium. “Tonight is about much more than approving an apartment community,” she said. “It is about whether Bernalillo will continue implementing the vision this town has already spent years creating.”
Howe said the 258-unit complex would provide needed quality housing for working families and help local businesses bring in workers, who would shop locally and enroll their children in the town’s schools. She said the project aligns with the town’s comprehensive plan, housing plan, future land-use map and applicable development standards. And that the traffic impacts it would create would be “substantially lower than alternate development scenarios previously evaluated for this property.”
In 2022, Howe said, after an extensive public process, Bernalillo adopted its comprehensive plan and future land-use map, which identified high-density residential development as the use for the “That designation was not accidental,” she said.”It was the result of careful study, community discussion, infrastructure evaluation, housing needs analysis, and a deliberate decision about where future residential growth should occur.”
Among the concerns residents raised were depletion of local aquifers, more congestion on Sheriff’s Posse Road and the project’s placement near a previously approved apartment development. Opponents requested that the council either reject the plan outright or postpone and reevaluate the project, with updated traffic and hydrological impact reviews conducted in the interim.
“We recognize the need for additional housing, but this large-scale, high-density project risks significant negative impacts on our community,” Bosque Encantado resident Ed Auerbach said. “Experience shows that units labeled as workforce housing frequently attract groups of workers who pool rents. A three or four bedroom unit could easily house six to eight or more adults, especially with rotating shifts. This scenario is incompatible with the low-intensity, owner-occupied character of our neighborhood.”
Mayor Jack Torres said final consideration of Ordinance 373 is scheduled for the Aug. 11 regular council meeting.