Abq Mayor Gets Developer's Applause

Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller brought his enthusiastic self today to NAIOP, the commercial real estate developers group meeting at the Uptown Marriott. If spontaneous applause is the measure, he scored some points.
He started with the New Mexico United professional soccer team, citing the team’s support as “a tremendous example of how we can be united.” Keller related the problems in getting the team situated. His orientation was ‘getting it done” rather than worrying about the difficulties. His showed a photo of the Civic Plaza watch parties which have struck as a great example of a creative and obvious use of the forlorn plaza.
There are a lot of ideas out there, he said, let’s just pick one. “Quit selling ourselves short.”
Crime was topic two. “For the first time in a decade, all our crime stats are down,” he said. Of course, he also said, crime remains high.
There is a new multi-agency involvement in crime. “We have got to take responsibility for what we as individuals can do.” Not sure what that means in the crime context, but it sounds good.
In economic development, Keller, like the governor, has doubled down on movies. He cited some great statistics—2,200 jobs from recent announcements—but of course didn’t mention that movie jobs are project work, three months here, six months there. A new movie real estate infrastructure is developing from people renting to movie production personnel. The rental rates are great, owners tell me, and more than offset the vacant periods.
Then there are the homeless who are “not going away without major investment by our city, Keller said. He plans to put $14 million in the fall bond package for a homeless shelter. NO mention of the ACLU recently blowing away the city’s attempt at regulating panhandling from road medians.
Keller closed on an up note, city the recent national senior games as a united (there’s that word again) effort that was hugely successful—20,000 people in town spending money and 8,000 volunteers.
He referred a number of times to the “One Albuquerque” umbrella program. If you can get past the progressive gobbledygook at the website (https://www.cabq.gov/one-albuquerque) probably is worthy.
The fall bond measures got a big pitch at the end. The ART project mention was an inverse to the bonds