Understanding Mayor Keller’s big plans for downtown Albuquerque

Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller recently announced some “big plans” for downtown Albuquerque. He’s hardly the first Mayor to put forth a plan to revitalize downtown. His plan involves creating a downtown “tax increment financing” district (in New Mexico they’ve been called TIDD’s) and a “Business Improvement District.”

First, some context. Since March of 2020 RGF has had its offices downtown. The President of RGF sends his children to school downtown. We spend a lot of time downtown and have a pretty firm grasp on what must be done to improve it. A TIF is a subsidy scheme that essentially allows tax revenues to be focused on the target area while sucking those revenues in from the surrounding area. Allowing at TIF for downtown would help downtown, but it will hurt the rest of Albuquerque.

A business improvement district (BID) is a privately managed governance tool whereby property owners vote to agree to pay additional “taxes” in order to have some kind of private sector involvement that does things government can’t or won’t do.

Our take: Downtown Albuquerque struggles for two basic reasons:

1) Crime/homelessness: Can a BID address those issues? It is hard to say, but if I were a property owner I’d want that to be the primary focus. Sadly, it is doubtful that a BID can/will enforce laws that the policy are unwilling/unable to. That is the crux of the issue, however. Mayor Keller COULD get tough on crime downtown and elsewhere, but he has been in office for nearly 8 years and hasn’t done so.

2) Downtown COULD accommodate many more jobs and businesses. It is underutilized. But, office space isn’t in demand like it used to be and businesses are leery of locating downtown due to the crime/homelessness issues. IF those issues were solved or at least addressed in a meaningful way AND the Legislature and Gov. got serious about diversifying our economy, then downtown might be a more likely destination for business and economic activity which would further increase property values and make downtown a destination.