Briefing: Monterey Place construction begins / Monthly crime stats roundup shows things are still relatively quiet

Briefing:

Monterey Place construction is underway; will include West Park alley work this fall
Castle Coffee will move to EDo
Our monthly roundup of crime stats

Monterey Place construction is underway; will include West Park alley work this fall

The project will be located just east of the recently-finished Monterey Motel.

Monterey Place, a future 42-unit apartment complex near El Vado, finally kicked off construction this month following a long pandemic-related financing delay. The project, which will include some groundfloor retail space, is slated to take one year, according to Ryan Whitt, the construction director at PacifiCap.

Besides the new housing, the project will include paving an alley that runs between the apartments and the Monterey Motel before veering east to Clayton. Besides giving a smoother ride to future tenants who might want to avoid Central, developer Chad Rennaker told DAN the goal is to more efficiently deal with stormwater, which sometimes pools in the alley.

The alley work is slated to begin in November and finish in January, Whitt said.

Rennaker is the developer of El Vado and expects to begin construction of a project at the old Motel 21 property across Central in 2022. He is also behind the forthcoming overhaul of the Imperial Inn, near Central and I-25.

Castle Coffee will move to EDo
Castle Coffee, which opened at 8th and Tijeras in the summer of 2019, will move to a larger space in EDo in the next 12-18 months, owner Joshua Castleberry said in a video posted to Facebook.

The new location, a 1908 historic building at the southeast corner of Tijeras and Arno, will afford extra space for a parking lot, a patio, and occasional food trucks.

"I think it's going to be an amazing community hub for east Downtown and for all of the Albuquerque area," Castleberry said.

The March crime stats report

March proved to be another fairly quiet month on the crime front as the pandemic that emptied out the Downtown core continues to keep numbers down. Citywide, violent crime is up, but we're not really seeing it in the city center, nor are we seeing a noticeable spike in the less-grave incidents that we track (vehicle break-in, larceny, burglary, etc.), even as things start to open up.

More minor disturbing the peace incidents continue to be lower than in the Before Times, even trending downward a bit since the fall.

Law enforcement aircraft continued with the new lower pace set in February. March saw about one-fourth of the aerial surveillance activity that we saw last July.

Homicides are up significantly across the city, according to a tracker maintained by The Journal and this APD report from Friday. (They're up across the country as well.) But so far greater Downtown is on pace for a number roughly similar to 2019 or 2020.

For a map of individual neighborhoods, click here. For sources and methods, click here.

Downtown Albuquerque News covers greater Downtown, which we generally define as the area created by I-40, the Rio Grande, and the railroad tracks. We publish weekdays except for federal holidays. If someone forwarded DAN to you, please consider subscribing. To subscribe, contact us, submit a letter to the editor, or learn more about what we do, click here. If you ever run into technical trouble receiving DAN, click here.