Master Developer for Midtown Campus Builds Entirely Local Team
Teya Vitu
Santa Fe New Mexican
The firm negotiating with the city of Santa Fe to redevelop the midtown campus is based in Dallas, but there’s New Mexico flavor galore.
And in fact, it may have been a loose-knit but heavily local push that reeled in KDC Real Estate Development & Investment/Cienda Partners to take on the massive project in an alliance that will include 17 different New Mexico partners.
The City Council last week selected the Texas firm as master developer of the city-owned, 64-acre property on St. Michael’s Drive. The city and KDC/Cienda will now enter into exclusive negotiations that could last as long as 16 months, followed by at least 10 years of construction.
After the council vote May 4, the firm outlined its vision for the onetime college campus, a proposal that includes housing, health care, education, film production and other components.
“I would say our vision is 90 percent from our” Santa Fe team, said Bill Guthrey, KDC’s senior vice president of land development. “We help each of our partners realize their vision.”
Some of the team members hoping for a significant presence on the property are the University of New Mexico, Santa Fe Community College and the Higher Education Center; Santa Fe youth job-training and advocacy group YouthWorks; Christus St. Vincent Regional Medical Center; Santa Fe-based housing nonprofit Homewise; Albuquerque nonprofit Yes Housing; and Pacifica Ventures, a film production firm that plans to add four to six sound studios on the campus.
Late last summer, a group of Santa Fe organizations, including many working on the project now, was searching for a potential master developer to lead their development proposal before submissions were due to the city in October.
Actor-director Justin Golding and Sage Morris-Greene, general manager of the Santa Fe business brokerage Sam Goldenberg & Associate, brought the team together, and Jay Grab, an associate broker at Phase One Realty, called a commercial broker friend in Dallas seeking suggestions for a firm with the ability to make the project happen.
The friend suggested KDC.
“When we talked to [KDC], they got very excited,” Grab said. “They were out here within two days to take a look at the site. … We needed to find someone who had the capability to pull off a project of this magnitude in this city.”
Other members of the team reached out to Cienda Partners, said James Feild, senior vice president of Cienda. “We were getting calls,” he said.
KDC and Cienda quickly became 50/50 partners.
Developers rarely see ready-made teams approach them at the beginning, Guthrey and Feild said.
“It’s extremely unique,” Guthrey said. “It’s what made it so compelling. To start with medical, education, film studios and a range of housing is remarkable. Each of the partners has a very specific idea from the outset what their requirements are. We have pieces and parts and are able to drop them into a conceptual plan.”
KDC and Cienda Partners both have prior connections in Santa Fe.
Cienda Partners owns La Fonda on the Plaza, where it has spent more than $14 million in renovations since 2014. It also owned, remodeled and sold the El Rey Court to a partner and is the developer of Las Campanas.
Guthrey, KDC’s point man for the midtown campus, owns a home in Santa Fe, grew up in El Paso, and his father grew up in Silver City and graduated from UNM.
At this stage, Feild said, Cienda is scoping out which buildings will remain on the midtown campus. It also is focusing on housing development and the public-private partnership with the city.
KDC is taking charge of infrastructure and commercial development.
“My goal is to get the film school up and running as fast as possible,” in collaboration with UNM, SFCC and the Higher Education Center, Feild said. “… We have infrastructure that is 60 years old.”
Affordable housing could be an early player, too.
“We don’t really know what the mix needs to be, but we got the clear message we need affordable housing,” Feild said. “Our approach is to work with the community. What and how much does the mix need to be? … There’s not a magic bullet.”
He added, “We want a cool place where you can minimize the car. We want a combination of local and regional productions at the [Greer] Garson Theater. We want to make sure to broaden out the Fogelson Library to the public library system. We want to turn that into a state-of-the-art library.
“I don’t know where I’m going with this,” he added, “but the arts have got to be important.”
“We’re talking about something that has longevity and resilience,” Guthrey said. “That’s what everybody is signing into: the bigger picture.”
KDC/Cienda is getting started on the project in an uncertain time, as the economic effects of the novel coronavirus pandemic take aim at a range of businesses.
“These are unprecedented times,” Guthrey said. “We are going into this with eyes wide open.”
Especially with the pandemic-related shutdown and its economic toll, Feild said, “everything is up in the air” in terms of the projected costs for the redevelopment and the time line for construction.
“What I can say is we are looking at this as a career capper for most of us,” he said. “I think it’s a 10- to 15-year build-out. Several hundred million [dollars] is not out of the question.”
