districts throughout the city and beyond. With TPL’s
help, a new Railyard Park Stewards group has been
formed to care for the park and provide enhanced programming.
Many dimensions of Santa Fe converge here:
history, water use, local agriculture, transportation,
education, arts and culture, and community. Gathered
in proximity are the park and the Alameda, four buildings full of nonprofit offices, private businesses, the
bike path, and a publicly owned commuter line.
“No private developer in his right mind would have
done this, ever,” Railyard Corporation board chair
Steve Robinson proudly proclaims.
The railyard redevelopment has spanned 15 years,
forging ahead through what sometimes seemed like
insurmountable obstacles, including a real estate bubble,
soaring construction costs, wavering public opinion,
conflicting claims by innumerable stakeholders, and
finally a national financial meltdown. TPL remained a
guiding presence and prime mover throughout.
Last September’s grand opening of the park and
plaza attracted an estimated 20,000 people. “I had
never before seen such a true cross-section of the
community,” says Carmella Padilla, who grew up in
Santa Fe and worked on the park project as both a
volunteer and a TPL contractor. In the months since,
citizens’ engagement with the park has continued to
grow. Requests are pouring in to use it for a graduation, arts and crafts markets, walkathon, 5K race,
film festival, concerts, Santa Fe’s annual fiesta celebration, and the 400th anniversary observance of the
Spanish settlement.
It is Padilla who reminds me of a final piece of
railyard history when we meet for coffee at the Station
Café, located in the restored 1914 Gross Kelly Almacén
Warehouse—the most distinguished adobe-style
building on the railyard. “You know,” she says, “the
Santuario de Guadalupe, just up the street, was the
Santa Fe terminus of the Camino Real.” The “royal
road” from Mexico City was Santa Fe’s founding artery
almost 400 years ago. How fitting that it runs through
the heart of the city’s new nexus, which is restoring old
connections and setting new ones in place.
ANDREWNEIGHBOUR
Once the terminus of the historic Camino Real from Mexico, the
Santuario de Guadalupe is a much-loved building in the railyard
neighborhood.
Stanley Crawford is the author of seven books, including
Mayordomo: Chronicle of an Acequia in Northern New
Mexico, which won of the 1988 Western States Book Award for
Creative Nonfiction. He lives in Dixon, New Mexico, where he
raises garlic that he sells at the Santa Fe Farmers Market. He
served as a representative of the farmers market during planning
for the Railyard Park and Plaza, the market’s new home.
