New Mexico's Commonweal Conservancy Offers ‘New' Regional Preservation Model

Commonweal Conservancy is a non-profit, conservation-based community-development organization. Why did you pick that form of corporate governance?

A combination of professional and personal interests informed the decision to incorporate Commonweal Conservancy as a non-profit. A non-profit corporate charter ensures that we keep our professional priorities straight. After 18 years in the conservation field, my colleagues and I wanted to make sure that our focus and decision-making process was guided by public priorities rather than by private ambitions. At every point along the way, we want to hold ourselves accountable to the needs of the land and communities we engage.

We also wanted to ensure that the financial results of our work served public interests, rather than private ambitions. As a non-profit, any financial gain that flows from our work goes to support the conservation and community building purposes of the organization.

On a personal level, living our values is critically important to my staff and me. Being held accountable for what we do in the world and how we work with people and the land is part of what the Buddhists call "right living." That's what we aspire to.

What was the organization's mission at the beginning, and how has the Commonweal Conservancy evolved?

When we drafted the business plan for Commonweal Conservancy, my colleagues and I anticipated that the organization would be a transaction facilitation organization, similar to TPL. The main difference was that Commonweal Conservancy would be focused on projects that mixed and matched land conservation with community development-things like affordable housing, schools, and local-serving retail development.

By that approach, Commonweal Conservancy would advise clients on site selection, negotiate bargain-sale land purchases, craft a conservation plan and community development program, and secure public and private financing to facilitate land acquisition and community development activities of nonprofit and public agency clients. We didn't envision ourselves playing the role of developers, per se.

What caused us to veer off from the transaction facilitation and community development "visioning" practice we had envisioned was a challenge by Santa Fe County to help protect a 13,000-acre ranch located 13 miles south of Santa Fe, eventually known as the Galisteo Basin Preserve. It was a property that I had been involved with during my days as regional director for the Trust for Public Land. It was a landscape that I deeply loved and feared was at risk of being lost to a hodge-podge rural subdivision-a pattern that characterizes much of the American West.

After purchasing a 1,500-acre portion of the Preserve in 2001, the county had thrown down something of a gauntlet challenging TPL to view the county's purchase as a "down payment" on a regional conservation and community development initiative-one that would help conserve the larger scenic, cultural, and habitat values of the Galisteo Basin, while simultaneously seeding a new model for mixed-use/mixed-income community building. It was a challenge that the county made to TPL and to me, personally.

For two years, I cajoled TPL to take on the role of a conservation developer for the 13,000-acre property. And while many of TPL's staff and board members had expressed enthusiasm for the idea of integrating environmentally responsible development and open space protection, the financial risks and the development challenge of the Galisteo Basin Preserve were eventually judged inappropriate for TPL's land-saving mission.

Faced with the challenge and opportunity to take up the gauntlet that the county had thrown years before, we did what any naïve, overly optimistic, mission-loving entrepreneur would do...we plunged in.

During the past four years, how has the Galisteo Basin Preserve initiative inspired Commonweal Conservancy to grow and evolve its mission? What is the development vision for this first example of conservation-based community development?

When we started, my colleagues and Commonweal's board of directors anticipated that the organization could negotiate a bargain-sale purchase of the 13,000-acre preserve and craft a "vision statement" for the property's use for community development and conservation purposes. With the vision, values, and development program in place, we thought we would be able to recruit a "real developer" from Santa Fe or another part of the country to take the project forward, perhaps as a joint venture partner.

Toward that end, within a few months of the organization's founding we negotiated a five-phase purchase agreement that allowed Commonweal a period of six years to acquire the 13,000-acre property. The purchase price included a significant land value donation-one that the organization could subsequently leverage in its financing efforts.

Next, we set out to craft a land use program and a preliminary site plan for a mixed-use/mixed-income traditional neighborhood development (TND) that would concentrate development within a small valley in the northeast corner of the larger ranch-an area of about 300 acres. The plan anticipated that a conservation easement would overlay approximately 12,000 acres of the remainder of the property for cultural resource, habitat and open space protection purposes.

Perhaps not surprisingly, when we presented our plans to a number of developers in Santa Fe, New York and Colorado, we were laughed out of the room. The idea that people would want to live in a compact urban environment 13 miles outside of Santa Fe was judged wildly optimistic. According to the realtor community, 2.5-acre and 10-acre ranchettes were the preferred standard of development on nearby properties.

Without a developer partner, the remaining options available to us seemed to be: 1) pack our bags and go home or 2) take on the developer role ourselves. We've wound our way through the Byzantine maze of the real estate development world without getting totally ensnared in the brambles. After two years of community outreach and two additional years of intensive land planning, engineering, environmental studies, architectural design, hydrological analysis, and market studies, we won master plan approval from Santa Fe County in June of 2007.

The proposed community includes: 675 market rate homes, 290 affordable and workforce-serving homes, 100,000 square feet of educational facilities, 30,000 square feet of commercial land uses (e.g., café, village market, artist studios, offices, neighborhood serving retail, spa, hotel), and 20,000 square feet of civic and institutional uses (e.g., post office, nondenominational place of worship, fire station, rail transit station), as well as a "green cemetery" and 12,000 acres of publicly accessible open space.

You won over the Santa Fe County Commission for this project. How did they react to your proposal?

At the master plan public hearing, the defining moment was when the County Commission Chairwoman asked if there was anyone in the 50-person audience who wanted to express opposition to the project. After a few seconds of silence, 15 people came to the podium to voice support for the plan. Rather than the usual bloodbath, the public hearing proved a powerful affirmation of the project vision and our faith and commitment to community engagement.

If all goes according to plan, the first phase of the development will begin in February 2009. Notwithstanding a catastrophic collapse in the local real estate market, the Village development will underwrite the permanent protection and restoration of the open space that surrounds the community. With an annual absorption of 70 market-rate and 30 workforce-housing sites per year, the Galisteo Basin Preserve community sales could be completed in 10 years.

You're anticipating conservation easements for 95 percent of the property in Galisteo Basin. Talk a little bit about the business plan and financing that you're using to support a conservation easement of this size for such a limited development footprint.

In the near term, a loan that will be repaid over time from residential lot sales will finance the acquisition and protection of the Preserve's 12,000 acres of open space. To date, we have acquired approximately 6,000 acres and resold approximately 800 acres to a handful of "conservation buyers" who agreed to limit their development impact to less than 50 acres.

To ensure permanent protection of the preserve's open space, we will be overlaying the property with a conservation easement. To guarantee that the conservation easement is properly managed, we are working with an exceptionally skilled local land trust, known as the Santa Fe Conservation Trust (SFCT). The easement will be a donation to the SFCT concurrent with our phased purchase of preserve lands.

In addition to a land trust, we are beginning to sketch out the form and function of another conservation entity that will be responsible for managing grassland and riparian restoration, environmental education, and the recreational program of the preserve. In contrast to the regulatory responsibilities of a land trust, this Conservation Stewardship Organization will play an active role in guiding the land's renewal and public accessibility. With funding from a real estate transfer assessment on land and home sales, the preserve's Conservation Stewardship Organization will receive approximately $250-300,000 per year to underwrite its conservation program.

Will there be detailed design guidelines or an architectural style associated with the Village?

Borrowing from the work we completed in the first phase conservation neighborhoods, the Village development will be guided by a comprehensive set of design standards and building performance metrics.

To inform the architectural vocabulary of the community, we have engaged a consortium of architects from across the country. The group includes principals from Mithun and Miller/Hull from Seattle, Lake/Flato from San Antonio, and Trey Jordan from Santa Fe. By engaging this collection of designers, we're interested in reinterpreting and re-imagining the form, massing, and texture of the traditional northern New Mexico vernacular.

Inside Commonweal, we've characterized our design ambitions as "northern New Mexico/Japanese/Zen Fusion." Kind of a mouthful, I admit, but it speaks to an aesthetic that includes crisp lines, simple geometry, and raw, basic materials of stone, wood, glass and concrete. It also speaks to an interest in keeping home sizes smaller-leveraging open concept design strategies to ensure livability, rather than encouraging expansive floor plans of 3,000-plus square feet for households with 2-3 occupants. Concurrently with the platting process, we are developing housing prototypes that include a lot of courtyards and second story balconies to facilitate views and outdoor living.

In addition to architectural guidelines, we are also working on an environmentally responsible building program that will ensure that the preserve can meet the energy efficiency and water efficiency standards of Architecture 2030. Toward that end, the preserve is a registered LEED-ND pilot project-an initiative of the USGBC to push large-scale neighborhood development toward meaningful ,environmentally responsible design standards and practices.

Finally, we are working on a green building protocol that will require property owners and builders to maximize the heating and cooling efficiency of homes and commercial buildings, minimize water use, and limit construction waste, among other things. We're also exploring district heating and local renewable energy generation technologies for the community.

What will the governance structure be to assure enforcement and continuity with the original plans and designs?

Community governance will be coordinated by a couple of entities. Working with McGuire Woods of Richmond, Virginia, we are crafting a "community operating agreement" for the Village that assigns responsibility to a nonprofit entity and community operator for facility operations and maintenance and assessments. Architectural review and building performance oversight will be managed in accordance with the design standards and green building performance requirements of the Community Development Guidelines. Plan submittals will be reviewed by a committee comprised of Commonweal representatives, local architects, and property owners.

In addition to the regulatory responsibilities of these groups, we're also focusing on the community-building and place-making needs of the preserve. Community communication (e.g., intranet systems) and neighborhood programming (e.g., cultural events, educational activities, farmer's markets) are two aspects of our community-building effort. For the preserve, we take seriously the notion that real communities are born from people doing real work together. To the degree that the land restoration and educational aspects of the project are "real work," we hope to encourage a deep connection to this remarkable landscape, and foster a quality of ownership and stewardship that is powerful and sustaining.