Reimagining Albuquerque

For years, critics of the Albuquerque Rapid Transit (ART) project have pointed to empty storefronts and quiet sidewalks in Nob Hill as evidence that the city’s marquee transit investment “killed Central.” But that narrative misses the mark. If anything, ART is the most future-oriented piece of infrastructure the corridor has seen in decades. What’s holding Nob Hill back isn’t the BRT—it’s the absence of people.

Despite common claims, vacancy rates in Nob Hill have remained relatively steady before and after ART construction, and is recovering from the throes of the Pandemic, undermining the popular idea that the project triggered a mass retail exodus. The problem is more subtle and structural. Since 2010, Nob Hill and the UNM area have lost more than a thousand residents alone, aging homeowners are staying put, and household sizes overall are shrinking. And unlike in past generations, younger people aren’t moving in at the same rate—because they can’t. The neighborhood’s zoning makes it difficult to build the kind of housing students, recent grads, or young professionals can afford: smaller apartments, micro-units, and mixed-use buildings with shops below and homes above. It also makes it hard for those aging-in-place that want to remain in the neighborhood to downsize, which would open up their current homes to new families. The result is a neighborhood stuck in demographic limbo, with beautiful bones and vibrant potential, but fewer feet on the ground to keep it alive.

And Nob Hill isn’t alone. From the fairgrounds to Downtown, much of Central Avenue faces the same slow bleed. In some areas, that decline is masked by occasional nightlife or destination retail. In others, it’s more visible: long-vacant strip malls, boarded-up shops, and entire blocks where the sidewalk feels optional. The specifics differ block by block—Nob Hill’s challenge is zoning; East Central’s is outdated retail infrastructure and lack of investment; Downtown’s is speculative vacancy, and West Central struggles from suburbanized development patterns. But the through-line is the same: Central Albuquerque is trying to function as the city’s spine without enough people living along it. We have come a long way, and there is still work to be done, but the problem is simply more complicated than construction and rapid transit.

Debunking the ART Myth

The Albuquerque Rapid Transit (ART) line has taken more than its fair share of blame. Ever since construction began, critics have framed it as the reason for Central Avenue’s economic struggles—pointing to traffic disruptions, closed driveways, and a new streetscape that some businesses weren’t prepared for. Years later, the myth persists: that ART “killed” Nob Hill and dragged Central down with it.

But the numbers tell a different story.

Since ART launched, the corridor has attracted more than $800 million in new development permits—more than three times the amount seen in any other part of the city, and also despite the harsh effects of the Pandemic, which remain. Despite early turbulence—lawsuits, faulty buses, political backlash—ART is now one of the busiest and most successful bus rapid transit (BRT) systems for a city of Albuquerque’s size, having recently surpassed 10 million rides.

Far from being an anchor dragging the city down, ART is one of the few forward-looking investments Albuquerque has made in its urban core. It provides a high-capacity, dedicated transit spine connecting Downtown, UNM, Nob Hill, and the International District—precisely the kind of infrastructure cities across the country are trying desperately to build today. If anything, ART hasn’t failed. We’ve just failed to build the kind of city around it that would allow it to succeed.

Transit doesn’t thrive in a vacuum. It thrives where there’s density, housing, walkability, connections, and destinations. ART gave us the bones. It’s up to us to add the flesh.

The Real Crisis: People Have Left

While ART has become an easy scapegoat, the deeper issue along Central—especially in Nob Hill and the UNM area—is demographic decline. Since 2010, these neighborhoods have quietly lost population. It’s not because people are fleeing crime or traffic. It’s because no one new is moving in. Outside of UNM and Nob Hill, this story is true along much of the Central Corridor—population has stagnated or declined.

The story is familiar in many middle-class central neighborhoods across the country. Aging homeowners stay put, and as household sizes shrink, the number of residents per home drops. Young people—especially students and recent graduates—want to live nearby, but can’t find housing that matches their needs or budgets. The result is a slow, invisible drain: fewer residents, fewer customers, fewer dollars, and fewer eyes on the street.

What makes this even more frustrating is that the UNM area is partially zoned for higher-density development—but only in narrow slivers. Much of the surrounding neighborhood remains locked in low- and medium-density residential zoning, with minimal allowances for mixed-use or multifamily housing. Walk one block off Central and you’ll find a patchwork of restrictions that make it nearly impossible to add new apartments or student housing—despite sitting next to the state’s flagship university and a BRT line.

Higher density isn’t just a good idea here—it’s logical. It’s how you harness the energy of a major institutional anchor like UNM. Yet instead of supporting that gravitational pull, the surrounding land use pattern repels it, making it harder for students, faculty, and young professionals to live nearby. In a city already struggling with retention and brain drain, this is a self-inflicted wound.

Even where zoning allows more density, another silent barrier remains: mandatory parking minimums. These rules, relics of car-centric planning, require developers to build expensive off-street parking for every new unit—even in walkable, transit-rich neighborhoods like those surrounding UNM. That means fewer units, higher costs, and projects that often don’t pencil out. Removing parking minimums along ART and near UNM would be one of the most impactful, no-cost policy changes the city could make to unlock Central’s potential. With high transit ridership, direct BRT access, and a built-in student population, this is exactly the kind of place where walkable, car-light housing should flourish.

The corridor isn’t failing because ART disrupted the status quo. It’s failing because the status quo is hollowing out, and we’ve refused to let anything new take its place.

Melrose Avenue: A Cautionary Tale

Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles was once a symbol of cultural vibrancy—a pedestrian-friendly corridor teeming with vintage shops, streetwear boutiques, indie bookstores, and diners that anchored generations of youth subculture so notable they ended up on television. Like Nob Hill, it was sidewalk fronting shops and walkability in a city known for cars and strip malls. But over the last two decades, the district has also hollowed out. Vacancies have piled up. Retail turnover is high or at least prohibitive. And the crowds that once spilled onto the sidewalk have thinned.

The decline wasn’t inevitable—it was political. Melrose resisted zoning reform for years. As longtime residents aged and new housing was blocked, the surrounding population shrank. Without a reliable residential base to support them, everyday retail services began to disappear. Bookstores, hardware stores, and grocers gave way to more precarious tenants: destination dining, boutique retail, and bars—businesses that rely on visitors, not locals. Resistance to change made the neighborhood less resilient, too. If it was already tenuous before 2019, the arrival of the pandemic, then social strife in the 2020s, made a bounce-back all the harder.

The area’s leaders doubled down on preservation, resisting not just land use change, but basic transportation upgrades. In 2023, a long-overdue “Complete Streets” plan to improve pedestrian safety and transit access was gutted by intense local opposition and NIMBYism, fueled by fears of change and parking loss. Despite Melrose’s walkable history and its dire need for reinvestment, neighborhood activists succeeded in keeping the corridor locked in car-centric limbo.

The parallel to Nob Hill is hard to ignore. Like Melrose, it’s a historic corridor celebrated for its independent spirit. And like Melrose, it has seen resistance to change—both in terms of zoning reform and transportation investment. The ART project was met with loud, often vitriolic opposition from a vocal contingent of residents and business owners, many of whom claim to support transit and walkability—just not in their immediate backyard. Meanwhile, Nob Hill’s commercial mix has quietly tilted toward nightlife and restaurants, while the basics—grocery, clothing, hardware, bookstores—become harder to find.

If Melrose teaches us anything, it’s that retail corridors can’t be sustained by vibes and legacy alone. They need people—residents—living nearby and spending money daily. And that only happens when we legalize the kind of housing that brings people back.

Why Housing = Foot Traffic = Retail

If there’s one thing local businesses need more than anything else, it’s people. Not just occasional visitors or weekend diners, but consistent, nearby customers who stop in after work, walk over for a coffee, or pick up groceries on foot. That kind of reliable foot traffic only comes from having people living nearby—lots of them.

This is where housing and retail are inextricably linked. When neighborhoods lose population, they lose spending power. It happens slowly at first—one household moves out, another is split by divorce or aging, and a three-bedroom house that once held a family of four now holds one retiree on a fixed income. Fewer people per unit, fewer units overall, and no legal path to build more. That’s the math behind empty storefronts.

Retail corridors like Central Avenue rely not just on destination traffic, but on what economists call daily demand—the consistent churn of local needs: groceries, hardware, haircuts, takeout. Those businesses thrive in places where people live close by, not where they have to drive in. Without a critical mass of nearby residents, even the best-designed streetscapes can’t keep businesses afloat.

This isn’t just about vibes—it’s about economic productivity. Denser, mixed-use neighborhoods generate more spending per acre, more tax revenue, and more opportunities for local entrepreneurship. When population declines, so does vibrancy. So does innovation. And so does the city’s capacity to invest in its own future.

Rebuilding a strong Central corridor means recognizing this basic equation: more people = more customers = more stability for local businesses. Until we allow more housing, we’re asking our retail corridors to perform without an audience.

East Central: A Corridor Without Tools

If Nob Hill represents a neighborhood stalled by restrictive zoning and fearful NIMBYism, East Central represents a different challenge: one of underinvestment, outdated land use, and structural neglect. Once lined with thriving strip malls and small businesses serving the nearby military base, immigrant communities, and working-class families, East Central today is marked by aging buildings, wide setbacks, and single-use zoning that no longer matches the needs—or the opportunities—of the corridor.

It’s also a classic example of what Strong Towns founder Chuck Marohn calls the “Growth Ponzi Scheme“: a cycle where cities rapidly expand infrastructure and suburban-style development without long-term financial sustainability. For decades, East Central delivered short-term gains—federal and state road funding, strip malls, cheap land for commercial growth—but now the bills are coming due. The tax base hasn’t kept pace with the infrastructure liabilities. Maintenance costs mount. Buildings age out. And with zoning that prohibits reinvestment in more productive, mixed-use forms, the corridor sinks deeper into decline. It’s not that the neighborhood has failed—it’s that the model does not work.

While proposals have circulated to implement vacancy fees or inventory tracking—as seen in parts of Downtown—these ideas miss the mark here. Vacancy taxes work best in speculative environments, where land is being held in anticipation of rising values. That sounds like Downtown, but it does not sound like East Central. The problem isn’t hoarding—it’s that the land is no longer legally usable for what the community needs. In many cases, the buildings themselves are too old, too car-dependent, or too inflexible to house anything new without zoning reform. We’re not dealing with empty investments—we’re dealing with obsolete ones.

But there’s a glimmer of hope: the fairgrounds. Located at the intersection of Central and Louisiana, this massive, state-owned site could become a catalytic anchor—an engine for reinvestment and renewal in the International District. If approached thoughtfully, the fairgrounds redevelopment could be Albuquerque’s answer to what UCSF did in San Francisco’s Mission Bay: a public-serving anchor that spurs new housing, economic activity, and better land use around it. Just as UCSF’s research and medical campus helped reimagine a formerly industrial zone, the fairgrounds—through education, health, housing, or civic partnerships—could jumpstart East Central’s future.

We’ve seen it work elsewhere. Closer to home, In Tempe, Arizona, the Culdesac development replaced outmoded developments and gravel lots with a vibrant, car-free neighborhood centered around light rail. It embraced a modern urban form: apartments, co-working spaces, restaurants, retail, and even a small grocery—all within walking distance of transit. Not coincidentally, Valley Metro’s light rail system—anchoring places like Culdesac and Downtown Phoenix—has catalyzed billions in transit-oriented development since its launch. Density followed rail. Retail followed residents. And new, mixed use structures replaced outdated, mid-century strip malls.

We already have our spine: ART. What we need now is the muscle and connective tissue—flexible zoning, streamlined redevelopment tools, and a commitment to letting underused commercial space evolve into something livable and lasting. That may mean letting go of the outdated idea that these corridors must stay primarily retail-focused. In many cases, it’s housing—especially dense, mixed-use housing—that will bring back foot traffic and daily economic activity. Retail can still exist, but it should follow people, not precede them.

The International District deserves the same level of imagination we’ve seen in other cities. The land is there. The transit is there. The opportunity is waiting.

The Fix: Legalize Density, Embrace Youth

If there’s a single demographic that could help Central Albuquerque thrive again, it’s the one we’re currently pushing out: young people. Students, recent graduates, and early-career professionals want to live near the University of New Mexico, along ART, and in walkable neighborhoods with cafes, bookstores, transit, and energy. But most can’t afford to live there—and not because the market won’t support it. It’s because our land use laws won’t allow it.

Throughout much of Nob Hill and the UNM area, zoning still favors large-lot homes, low-rise multifamily, or overly narrow mixed-use districts that limit what can be built and where. Despite sitting adjacent to a university with more than 25,000 students, housing options like micro-units, car-free apartments, and co-living spaces are almost entirely absent. Where they do exist, they’re the exception—often requiring costly variances, conditional use approvals, or risky appeals.

This isn’t just a missed opportunity for the neighborhood—it’s a liability for UNM. The university’s student enrollment, too, has declined since 2010, and attracting new students, faculty, and researchers depends in part on whether they can afford to live nearby. Our Opportunity Scholarship has helped stabilize the patient, but more work needs to be done. If East Central needs an anchor at the fairgrounds, Nob Hill already has one in UNM. The key is to leverage that anchor more effectively—by legalizing housing and mixed-use development that can meet demand, drive foot traffic, and reinvest in the corridor.

Done right, this creates a positive feedback loop: more housing means more students and faculty living nearby, which strengthens the university’s academic and financial standing. A healthier university brings more energy, more public investment, and more spending to the corridor. And that, in turn, benefits the neighborhood—and the state as a whole.

If we want to bring people back to the corridor, we have to legalize the types of housing they can actually afford to live in. That means:

• Eliminating or relaxing height and density limits along transit corridors.
• Legalizing micro-units and car-light housing, especially within walking distance of UNM and ART.
• Removing restrictions on small lots, townhomes, and courtyard-style apartments. Smaller households will need more options to choose from.
• Abolishing parking minimums, so developers can build for people—not cars.

One promising step in that direction is R-167, a city-wide housing resolution on the horizon that we’ll explore in more depth in a future article. Among its key recommendations is legalizing the option for commercial properties along corridors like Central to become mixed-use—a powerful tool for unlocking new housing, especially in East and West Central where vacant retail space outpaces demand. Just as importantly, R-167 supports allowing more density in neighborhoods like Nob Hill and the UNM area—offering a path to reverse the very demographic and economic stagnation this article explores.

This isn’t radical—it’s survival. The cities that are thriving today are the ones that welcomed new residents and adapted to new needs, not the ones that clung to nostalgic versions of what their neighborhoods used to be. In Minneapolis, Austin, Portland, and even Salt Lake City, zoning reforms have unlocked a wave of gentle infill and mixed-use housing that gives young people and families a foothold in the urban core. Albuquerque can do the same—if we choose to.

And the stakes go beyond housing. When we drive young people away, we don’t just lose future tenants—we lose future entrepreneurs, future customers, future community leaders. The businesses that keep Central alive—record stores, galleries, vintage shops, neighborhood bars—don’t thrive without a new generation living nearby, walking the sidewalks, and shaping what comes next.

Legalizing density isn’t just a planning reform. It’s a way of saying we believe this corridor still has a future. And that we’re willing to build it.

A Turning Point for Central Albuquerque

ART has proven itself. The narrative arc has shifted from skepticism and cynicism to a growing recognition of its value. Ridership is strong and development is rising, even if slower than we would like. And more and more people are ready to imagine a city less dependent on the car. Still, certain groups remain stuck in reverse, clinging to outdated talking points fueled by headlines and political theatrics.

Now, that old narrative is being dusted off and paraded back into public view. This Thursday, Councilor Louie Sanchez—one of ART’s most vocal opponents—is hosting a town hall that appears designed to reframe the project as a failure and rally opposition to its continued support. Sanchez has already floated the idea that federal funding rules should be changed to prevent projects like ART in the future. It’s the same story we’ve heard before: ignore the data, disregard the investment, and blame the bus for everything.

But let’s be honest: this isn’t really about transit. It’s politics. As Sanchez campaigns for his mayoral run, he’s using his council platform—and now this town hall—to posture, distract, and double down on a narrative that no longer holds up. It’s a cynical play, one that prioritizes campaign optics over community vision. Rather than confronting the real causes of Central’s stagnation—housing scarcity, demographic shifts, outdated land use—he’s trying to revive a culture war over the curb lane.

Meanwhile, the evidence speaks for itself: ART is working. It has surpassed 10 million rides. It has attracted more than $800 million in new development—three times more than any other corridor in the city. It connects Albuquerque’s largest employment, education, and cultural centers. It’s not a failure. It’s a foundation to grow upon.

Blaming ART for Central’s struggles is like blaming the foundation of a house for the fact that the roof leaks. ART isn’t the problem—it’s the most future-oriented infrastructure investment Albuquerque has made in decades. What’s missing is the structure around it: housing, people, density, and the mix of uses that make transit work.

The good news? We can still get it right. ART is working where we’ve let it connect to real places—Downtown, UNM, Nob Hill. If we follow through with smart policy like R-167, fix our zoning, and reinvest in catalytic sites like the fairgrounds, ART could become the backbone of a city ready to grow again—smarter, denser, and more inclusive. And, hopefully, connected to future ART corridors as well.

This is a turning point for Central Albuquerque. We can keep recycling bad-faith arguments about the bus lane. Or we can build the kind of city that bus lane was always meant to serve.

If you believe in that future, show up this Thursday night (July 10th), 5:30pm, at the Central and Unser Library. Don’t let fear and nostalgia define the conversation. Remind Councilor Sanchez—and the city—that Central doesn’t need a scapegoat. It needs housing. It needs people. It needs vision. And it needs investment.