Albuquerque Development News

[AZian]

I have been to AlbNM more than a few times, I have the drudgery or driving through there on my way to Michigan several times a year!! I hate it, I hate it, I hate it. Every gas-station i go to, I feel like i'm about to get robbed or shot and car-jacked. People say albuquerque has character. Character my ass!! That place is a slum-ridden dump.

BTW, I am seventeen, a 4.0 Senior on a scholarship to University of Michigan Ann Arbor.

If you think albuquerque is a good place, YOU need a fucking life.

[datilguy]

Well good for you on your GPA. Seriously, I know thats a lot of work.

However I AM a student at UNM in Urban Planning and Urban History Minor. I am ALSO a former resident of Phoenix, and let me say, there is no comparing the two! Now, it is your right to think and feel whatever you like. However, to post such negative comments randomly on a thread about Albuquerque shows a lack of respect and the same teenage shitty attitude you have.

So may I suggest you use that huge brain of yours, and get a tampon.

[612bv3]

So...what happened to the pictures...

[ScraperDude]

Yea really dude forget about.. Phoenix is a sprawled out city with a rediculous height limit so it will never have a decent skyline anytime soon......
I want more pics of Albuquerque.

[ABQturkey]

Wow, I need to check this site more often. Well, it's been nearly a month since the last post and the other ABQ guy dropped the ball so I'll attempt to pick pick up the slack. This is the shit hole the Phoenix kid was talking about...the shit hole I love





Clubs and restaurants along Rt 66 in downtown






Some urban housing, the movement is picking up speed around here:






These following pics are from a fellow Querquean, JamesABQ. He has a great set of photos over on virtual tourist.




Phoenix kid probably felt more comfortable in this area, there's less colored people..good thing he's in Ann Arbor


Back downtown


This is the Uptown area, it's got the third largest amount of office space and contains three shopping malls, one of which is an outdoor mall and opens this fall.


This is just one pic of the Nob Hill area..by the far the cities coolest area. There's a significant amount of development going on in the area in the way of shops and urban housing. This is one of the first modern shopping centers ever built.


The best thing about living in the West:




Alright, that's a few. Hope everyone enjoys!

[datilguy]

Hey man! I thought I was the only Burqueno on the site! Good to see ya! .......

Yeh sorry bout the pictures...I got a whole bunch on my comp...but my aunt died...so I've been dealing with some family issues.

I've got some pictures of my own showing the Citadel etc.....so I need to post them.

Also we have to get Journal Center on here.....

Hey the outdoor one...thats not at Louisiana/Indian School is it?

[datilguy]

Just a couple quick ones....taken on a Sunday afternoon a while back. The first is of 100Gold Avenue Lofts.. (to die for)...the second is just a shot of 5th and Central.

[ABQturkey]

Sorry to hear about your aunt. Yes, that outdoor mall is what's going up at Louisianna and Indian School. It's not the greatest example of urban development but it will bring in some nice new retailers. Here's a few renderings of some other projects going up...

ABQ Uptown

ABQUptown residences

UNM School of Architecture building along Central Ave.

New downtown condo building

More new mixed-use downtown

..to fill in the last remaining parcel of land in Nob Hill...

More downtown condos

And probably the most significant development in the city, commuter rail



In the design phase, hopefully to start construction next year, light-rail!

[Front_Range_Guy]

The photo's in this thread are stunning. I'll have to take a trip down I-25 sometime this summer and check it out.

[datilguy]

Hey man nice! ALSO..its gonna be cool...starting May 4th...the Doubletree will be lit blue at night!


Am going to have to get some pics of Belvidere Court up.....all I have seen is the sighnboard though. And I'm wondering.....how big the new Rio Rancho Presbyterian Center will be.........I think the site is off High Resort if I'm not mistaken?

An interesting read today....Rio Rancho is the second smallest of the 11 office submarkets in the metro! I was appalled! Exectuive Center will only add a little over 40,000 square feet to the already 286,000 suare feet of grade-A office space in Rio Rancho. I hope some new office developments get built with RRCC.

[datilguy]

Couple more.......


The Federal Building on Gold Street and the new (now complete) Amy Biehl High School. Amy Biehl was killed in Nyanga, South Africa a ways back......




And the red pyramids of Albuquerque Plaza and the Quest Center above the tops of trees on Fifth Street.

[ComingtoHouston]

I've been through Albuquerque a few times but never really visited the city. Looks like a beautiful city and it seems like its a happening place. Kind of seems similar in size to Colorado Springs.

[datilguy]

Here you can see the crown of the Grand Hyatt Hotel, a small portion of Civic Plaza, And the skyscrapers along 5th Street. This view is looking Northwest.......

[Czas na Żywiec]

I've never been to New Mexico, but Albuquerque is a pleasant suprise! Looks a lot better than I imagined it to be.

[505_SW]

Albuquerque tops, for the first time ever, Forbes magazine's just released 2006 list of Best Places for Business and Careers.

The ranking, which was revealed in a news release on Thursday, judged New Mexico's largest city on categories ranging from the cost of doing business, income growth, cost of living, crime rate, and culture and leisure to its educational attainment. The magazine will publish the list of the nation's top cities for business and careers on May 22.




» Get the latest business news on the go!
Brought to you by Cingular Albuquerque Mayor Martin Chavez says the city has "worked on [becoming No. 1] for decades."

The Duke City, which just celebrated its 300th anniversary last month, ranked fifth overall in last year's Forbes' poll. Chavez says the 2006 ranking is the best birthday present the city could ever receive.

For the cost of doing business, it ranked first among about 200 of the nation's largest metropolitan areas, including Phoenix, Houston and Indianapolis. Forbes especially noted the selection of the city by Tempur-Pedic (NYSE: TPX) and Eclipse Aviation for new manufacturing or start-up operations.

Albuquerque has held onto the top rank for its cost of doing business for the past two years. Where Albuquerque also glowed was in the category of income growth. It helped propel upward the city's ranking from 109th in 2005 to No. 30 in 2006. As well, the city's crime rate ranking improved, falling from 129th in 2005 to 173rd in 2006.

Chavez noted that the city's lower ranking among the big cities for its crime rate will bode well for economic development.

The city's rank for job growth, however, dropped from 38th in 2005 to 60th in 2006. In the category of cost of living, Albuquerque fell from No. 50 in 2005 to 80th in 2006. It also tripped up in educational attainment, having placed 39th in 2005 compared to No. 54 this year, yet still achieving the top quarter percentile among the cities in the rankings.

Despite the latter numbers, the authors of the Forbes study say Albuquerque, as an entire package, is the best place among the nation's largest cities for doing business.

Chavez says the ranking will attract more investments as businesses look for opportunities here to expand or start a business.

[505_SW]

If you think you hear "the hum" the next time you're in Taos, maybe what you're really hearing is Albuquerque from a distance, because few places in the country are humming like this city.

The sound was almost deafening as we put together this issue of the New Mexico Business Weekly, as seemingly everywhere we looked there were signs of growth and prosperity.

Kiplinger's Personal Finance named the city No. 3 in the country in terms of the smartest places to live.

The Wall Street Journal carried a page-and-a-half special New Mexico advertising section that touted the city and state as a great place to live and do business. Yes, it was a paid advertisement, but do you think the Wall Street Journal wastes its time marketing whole sections to slow-growing cities?

Arizona investors put up $17.5 million to buy 34,000 acres of land 40 minutes west of Albuquerque, largely because they see our city growing and with no place to go other than to the west.

Albuquerque Economic Development was begging Downtown businesses to help it find parking spaces for a company it says wants to bring between 300 and 1,100 workers to the Downtown area. Imagine a city's biggest challenge being to find a place for all its new workers to park!

Old Town is already seeing the fruits of keeping its stores open later in the form of increased business from tourists looking for evening entertainment. The district doesn't officially start staying open late until May 13, but some businesses couldn't wait that long and already are seeing their optimism pay off with increased business.

High prices for oil and natural gas mean that the state's coffers have a new and possibly steady stream of income in the form of hundreds of millions of dollars in fees and royalties collected from the oil and gas industries. And don't forget that those industries also drive a myriad of other supporting businesses here and across the state.

Add all of this to the growth and development already underway here -- from Advent Solar and Mesa del Sol to TempurPedic and Eclipse Aviation, to name a few -- and it's hard not to be optimistic about our city's future.

To say that Albuquerque is a success story is starting to sound understated. We're becoming a bonafide phenomenon.

And the end is nowhere in site. There are signs that our growth will not only continue, but accelerate.

Venture Capital continues to flow into the state -- 18 New Mexico companies will be pitching their business plans to investors at the 13th Annual New Mexico Equity Capital Symposium on May 10.

We continue to attract attention from out-of-state real estate investors who believe we are the next Phoenix. Even folks making minimum wage got a boost recently when the city passed its own minimum wage law, one of the first in the country outside of Santa Fe.

Not that we are a city without problems. Most of this week was "Cover the Uninsured Week," which is a campaign meant to heighten our awareness of the number of people who still don't have health insurance.

Unfortunately, we still lead the nation in this and other less-than-desirable statistics. We still have too much poverty, the crime that accompanies it and not enough good schools for our children.

But these are problems that can be addressed far more easily by a growing, successful city and region than by one suffering from decline and economic doldrums. We can, if we put our priorities in order, grow, work and earn our way out of some of these problems.

Now is the time to do just that. If we invest in our schools and society now, while we can afford to do so, it will only pay off in the future with more dividends that we all will enjoy in the form of a better workforce, lower crime rate and a higher overall standard of living for all of our citizens.

Now is the time to be thankful, as well as opportunistic.

Because some day, we might look back on these as "the good old days," and it would be a shame to think we didn't make the most of them.

[milehi]

My sister and her husband were stationed at Kirtland for a few years. He was anyways. I made several trips down to visit them. They lived on the NE side of the city on a street called Eubank I believe. It was near Sandia peak. I enjoyed this side of town, but the south side of town, and the downtown were horrible! I really do not care for the large amounts of stucco (this is common in the SW, not just in ABQ). I did like some of the mexican food we ate their. It reminded me of a more run down Colorado Springs. Just seems like a small little town in the middle of nowhere to me. Seems like the smaller Taos and Santa Fe offer more than ABQ. Not my type of town for sure!

[505_SW]

Hi Milehi,

Your description of my hometown would be a fair description if we are talking about 5-10 years ago. Colorado Springs is a beautiful mid-size city but to claim it is far better than ABQ would be inaccurate. The NE Heights is a nice part of ABQ, and maybe you haven't seen Downtown ABQ in sometime. There are hundreds of new lofts in renovated buildings and some new mid-rise lofts as well. There are also plenty of nice boutique retailers calling Downtown home now. The Journal Center/North I-25 Corridor has really exploded and you can see some beautiful new mid-rise office buildings there as well. Even though the westside consists of your typical western US sprawl, the area is very new and affordable. Most major retailers have set up shop there as well, meaning there is less traffic crossing the river to the east.

Don't get me wrong there are still some eye sores to be seen here, as in any other city. But Nob Hill and the Central Corridor are seeing increased urban building these days and many of these so called eye sores are taking on a whole new light today! It is amazing how much a city can change in so few years when most of the population in this city is behind the new urbanism movement.

[ABQturkey]

"It reminded me of a more run down Colorado Springs"

Ok, maybe a little...but with a far better night life, arts & culture, and better transportation. Oh, and no Focus On the Family....

[forumly_chgoman]

Originally Posted by AZian

I have been to AlbNM more than a few times, I have the drudgery or driving through there on my way to Michigan several times a year!! I hate it, I hate it, I hate it. Every gas-station i go to, I feel like i'm about to get robbed or shot and car-jacked. People say albuquerque has character. Character my ass!! That place is a slum-ridden dump.

BTW, I am seventeen, a 4.0 Senior on a scholarship to University of Michigan Ann Arbor.

If you think albuquerque is a good place, YOU need a fucking life.

And apparently a snotty, stuck up shit to boot.......but thanks for sharing.

Been to ALbq several times, eaten in old town.....Ambrosia, among others.....the last bar/club I was at was called something like the MArtini Bar or something it was ok.......thursday night so low key, but a decent crowd

I like ALbq climate....not too cool in winter, but cool, summers are hot but not ridiculously so like phoenix or vegas


I am a Chicago native, and considered moving to ALBq to work at Sandia Labs, however right now I don't think I will do that....

.....I would miss CHicago too much, ALbq is a nice town and there is more stuff to do than most people realize.....not to mention I love skiing in Taos, also Sandia Peak when there is Snow and SKi Santa Fe.....
....but I would miss the buzz in Chi