This week, the Silver Gardens apartment complex opened in Downtown Albuquerque, as reviewed in loving detail by lisa gill on Duke City Fix. I definitely view Silver Gardens as a very positive development; although it's a sign of our times that the only construction going on in Downtown is something subsidized by the government, it's good to see new affordable housing after a period of developers coming in promoting "luxury" lofts and "prime" retail space in order to try to make a killing, which in the wake of the recession turned out to be a very poor long-term investment.
But there's something else that's caught my eye about Silver Gardens, and that is that I think it's Albuquerque's first self-proclaimed "transit oriented development".
Of course, at a certain level almost all development is "transit-oriented" (cars are a mode of transportation, after all), but in planner-speak transit-oriented refers to mass transit. Now, I've seen developments here and there in Albuquerque that mention their proximity to mass transit (100 Gold next door being one of them), but "transit oriented development" implies that the presence of mass transit played a large role in the location of the development than just an extra benefit of being in the neighborhood, which is what makes Silver Gardens unusual here.
Not only are Silver Gardens merely stating that they're a transit oriented development, it's actually an active part of their campaign. Their website boasts about the project's environmental-friendly and affordable nature, and they use their proximity to the Alvarado Transit Center as a key point for both of those claims. It's as if they really took the location of mass transportation as a key component when locating their development site (imagine that!).
This kind of message seems incredibly obvious but it also seems totally alien to Albuquerque. When it comes to the relationship between mass transit and development in Albuquerque, transit follows development, not the other way around.
Can someone pinch me, please?
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