• City may designate the Central river crossing as historic landmark, but it's the concept that counts
• Old Town studio fits customers with 'permanent jewelry,' for the sake of carefree wear and sturdy commitment
• Updates on Motel 21, Monterey Place, Imperial Inn projects

At an informal question and answer session last week, planners unveiled a proposal to give the river crossing at Central Avenue the status of an official city historic landmark. But in a twist, the designation would not actually apply to the bridge people use to make that crossing.

The Central bridge, which is used by some 32,000 vehicles on a normal weekday, was built in 1983 - not exactly historic. But people have been driving over the river there since long before that, and that concept is what the landmark status would commemorate, city planner Leslie Naji said at the meeting.

"We are honoring the crossing of the river rather than the particular bridge that is there," Naji said. Most likely, she added, putting up a plaque at the bridge and noting the crossing's landmark status on city websites would be the only tangible results of the designation.

Officially marking the crossing's place in history would most likely not affect any future bridge renovations, Naji said, "partly because the bridge itself is not a historic structure."

"Should traffic patterns change," she said, "we wouldn't want to interfere with that."

The Landmarks Commission would weigh in only if the city someday proposed to have no crossing at all - a nearly unthinkable scenario in which the bridge would be torn down and not replaced, Naji said.

No opposition to landmark designation surfaced at the meeting from the four neighborhood representatives in attendance.

Construction of the original two-lane Central bridge began in 1930. In 1953, A second two-lane span was added alongside the original to double the capacity of the crossing. In the early 1980s, the current bridge replaced the two older ones.

The crossing's history is intricately tied up with the rerouting of Route 66 to Central, which itself was part of a larger effort to cut about 100 miles off the highway's run through New Mexico. Previously, the highway had run along Fourth Street, and its new placement helped redirect growth toward the Westside and away from streets paralleling the railroad tracks. (Though perhaps a victory for efficiency, the move did hurt the commercial sector on Fourth in neighborhoods like Barelas.)

The proposal for landmark status originated with local historian Roger Zimmerman, who also encouraged the city to give the Central underpass the same official recognition (DAN 1/23/23). The city dropped that effort in favor of informally putting up a marker describing how the underpass separated auto and train traffic - another key step that cleared the way for rerouting the highway.

While president of the Albuquerque Historical Society, Zimmerman researched the Route 66 rerouting project across the state and said he considers its impact on New Mexico and the city well worth commemorating. 

"Do we treasure our history or not?" he said. "It's nice to know where you have been as you anticipate where you are going."

Next in the city's process, a planner will evaluate how the crossing proposal fits with city historical landmark criteria, and staff will submit it to the Landmarks Commission, likely at its March 8 meeting.

—By David Lee

• Monterey Place, the apartment complex just east of El Vado (DAN, 4/27/21), should finish up around April and begin leasing by September.
• The property just north of Monterey Place, which was formerly home to Motel 21 (DAN, 6/7/22), looks set to finally exit its dormant period this year. Rennaker said he will be sending a proposal for what to do with it to the city's Metropolitan Redevelopment Agency as part of its recent call for ideas backed by $3 million in potential subsidies. Details of what that would look like are not yet public, but the city has specified that the projects must add at least 50 housing units to the market.
•  The Imperial Inn project, a renovation of the notorious East Downtown motel into a boutique operation, should be done by August.