Several Albuquerque city councilors want $1.5 million to hire extra police officers and pay for marketing to boost Central Avenue, aka Route 66, after the ill-conceived Albuquerque Rapid Transit project decimated the corridor.
The four councilors expect the money from a new internet sales tax that will generate an estimated $6 million a year.
The Albuquerque Journal reported:
“We as city councilors sat down with the budget staff and mayor’s office to see how we could take money that was being pulled out of our small businesses and reinvest it back in to places like Central,” Davis said, referring to the internet sales tax. […]
Jay Rembe, who’s developing the mixed-use Country Club Plaza along Central near San Pasquale, said he is pleased with the potential investment.
“We all realize Route 66 is the Mother Road of Albuquerque. It’s not only an Albuquerque treasure, it’s a national treasure and we need to protect it just like you would your own mother,” he said during a news conference Thursday at the development site.
Mayor Tim Keller and the council are evaluating the plan and probably will vote on it during their budget meeting May 20.
KOAT-TV also reported:
[C]ity councilors said there have been more than 240 new business licenses issued since construction finished on the much-maligned Albuquerque Rapid Transit project.
“I think our businesses are feeling that we’re going to see some change,” developer Jay Rembe said.
With wider sidewalks, new bikes lanes and more than 500 parking spots, Central Avenue has all the makings of a shopper’s delight, except a working bus line.
The station reported the city wants to hire 10 more police officers on bicycles for the Route 66 corridor.
Despite good news about new businesses coming to Central, both reports didn’t mention earlier mayor Richard Berry, who shepherded the troubled $120 million ART project through the city council that prompted the need for all of this. Berry said the city needed ART to attract high-tech businesses and millennial residents there.
The wake of Berry’s vision came with longtime businesses failing during ART construction, reconfigured intersections that confused drivers, motorists that avoided Central because of fewer traffic lanes, and mass-transit buses that were so poorly designed, the city fired the supplier and hired a new one that won’t deliver new vehicles until 2020.
(Image of Central Avenue in downtown Albuquerque by IIP Photo Archive via Flickr)