Las Cruces City Council unanimously passed the Amador Proximo community blueprint Monday after months of community planning.
Over 200 people from all over Las Cruces participated in community discussions to create a plan for growth in the Amador community. The blue print provides suggestions for different zonings for residential, business areas, and open space to create a mixed-use community.
Councilor Nathan Small helped guide the project and says this kind of development is what people are looking for in the communities.
“Fundamentally it’s focused on,” Small said. “Creating more jobs. More opportunity for people to live work and play in a urban area close to a lot of different services.”
The Plan encourages private investment by providing fast track incentives for people to develop in the area, and does not hold the city to spending a certain amount in the area.
“It does not set a dollar contribution,” Small said. “For things like the roads, some of the infrastructure, the collaboration with Valley Drive with the state, those will follow later. But fundamentally this creates a much greater level of certainty for investment to flow into the area.”
Some were concerned that there hasn’t been a large desire to develop in the area, but CEO of the Mesilla Valley Economic Development Alliance, Davin Lopez, says having the blueprint makes the area more marketable.
“No companies will ever go to an area where there is not proper zoning in place,” Lopez said. “Or where they know they are going to get some pushback, from whether it be a neighborhood association or whether it be from the city itself. In this case everyone’s on board, we can now go to companies, we can go to the market and talk to them about having viable whether it’s office, commercial, maybe food processing that feeds into the light industrial, agricultural heritage. We’re allowed to now have those conversations because we can identify a willingness and a timeline for those companies to move forward with.”
There were also concerns the plan could deter the downtown revitalization efforts, but Lopez says this plan will help downtown as well.
“Downtown is very unique in it’s own right,” Lopez said. “You’re not going to have larger employers that are going to have 300-500 jobs locating downtown. That’s not the purpose of downtown. In this case you might actually have that, and by having that then your going to have more people living in the area who can access those employment opportunities. More people who live closer to downtown who will then be utilizing the services of downtown as well.”
Councilor Small says there is also an effort to make sure low and mixed income housing is a priority in the community.
