Construction work on the Highway 84/285 renovation project that will add frontage lanes and move street signals near the Dream Catcher Cinema intersection is scheduled to begin Oct. 20 despite the fact that the state Highway Department has yet to acquire all the land it needs for the project.
“Is it finally going to happen,” Arroyo Seco resident Dave Trujillo said. “We’ve been hearing about it for a while.”
Trujillo lives just south of the movie theater in Arroyo Seco. He said he looks forward to the day he can use a frontage road to leave his property and access the highway.
“It sometimes takes 15 minutes to make that turn,” his wife Elaine Trujillo said.
Dave Trujillo said what they are looking forward to most is the safety that the proposed plans will provide. A 2001 traffic study found the stretch of highway between Española and Pojoaque among the most dangerous in the country, with vehicles entering and exiting the road to blame for many of the accidents.
“Our immediate concern is for people’s safety,” he said.
El Prado-based Northern Mountain Constructors received notification Aug. 25 that its bid to complete the project for $8,524,540 had been accepted, according to Ron Trujillo, chief of the Departments Plan’s Specifications and Estimates Bureau. Department spokeswoman Karen Lujan said preliminary construction work should start around this month, but traffic should not be affected until Spring 2009.
“There shouldn’t be an impact on traffic just yet,” she said.
Winter weather may stall the road construction, she said. When construction does start it is likely that traffic will be redirected to one side of the highway, allowing traffic to keep moving, albeit at a slower pace.
This phase of the construction project will go from the intersection of State Roads 106 and 399 (near the Dream Catcher Theater) to about three quarters of a mile south on Highway 84/285 into Arroyo Seco, according to Department North Regional Manager Steve Rodriguez. It will include repaving the highway, realignment of the road, moving the intersection about 1,500 feet south of where it is now and adding frontage roads along the highway that will lead south into Arroyo Seco, eventually toward Pojoaque, he said.
This latest construction phase is part of a larger project to renovate the highway between Pojoaque and Española. Work was completed inside Pojoaque earlier this year.
There are three phases of the project left, Lujan said. Work between the Dream Catcher intersection to Santa Clara Bridge Road is scheduled to go out to bid February 2009; work from the Dream Catcher intersection south to the La Puebla turnoff (Santa Fe County Road 88) is scheduled to go out to bid May 2009; and work from the La Puebla turnoff to the Pojoaque Pueblo boundary is scheduled to go out to bid in November 2009, Lujan said. Those dates may change since most of the project has been repeatedly delayed for years.
Sell Or
Be Condemned
While the work is welcomed by the Trujillo’s some property owners whose land will be taken to make room for the frontage roads have been hesitant to give in to the Department’s offers to purchase land.
Two condemnation processes have been filed by the Department and 19 letters of intent to start the condemnation process have been sent out to property owners, Department spokesman S.U. Mahesh said. Sixteen property owners had signed contracts agreeing to the Department’s terms, he said. The Department has not responded to a public records request asking to inspect the condemnation letters and has previously refused to allow for the inspection of documents related to property acquisition.
Mehesh said the condemnation and notice for condemnation processes are not holding up the start of the current phase of the project. The requests to purchase land are for portions of property, not entire properties, he said.
Attorney Dennis Quintana is one of the property owners to recently receive a letter saying the condemnation process would be starting, he said. Quintana runs his law practice out of an office just off of the highway. He said he rejected the Department’s initial offer to buy a portion of his property because he wanted to see more detailed plans for the project. Quintana would not say how much the offer was for. After he refused the offer he received the notice, he said.
“I guess that’s the way it works,” he said. “They make you an offer and if you don’t accept it they start the condemnation process, but they want to be able to work with you in the meantime.”
Mahesh said the normal procedure is to negotiate a deal for buying a parcel of land and if the offer is rejected a letter of intent to file the condemnation process is sent to the property owner. The owner then has 25 days to respond and come to an agreement, and if an agreement isn’t reached the Department will start the condemnation process, he said. Once the condemnation is filed property owners have 30 to 60 days to provide access to the Department, he said.
Quintana said he is concerned about how close the frontage road will be to his building and if the adobe building can hold up to the vibrations that would come as a result.
Rafael Terrazas owns Automotive Collision Experts, Inc., which is off the highway at 2 Sueno De Vigil in Arroyo Seco. Early on Terrazas said he was concerned about selling off 3,100 feet from the front of his property, just in case he wanted to use it to sell cars. He also said the amount of money he was offered was too low.
But in late September he agreed a new offer by the Department, which was around $1,000 more than had been originally offered, he said.
Miguel Terrazas, his son who is also part owner of the company, said he didn’t feel it was worth it to have to go to court to appeal an order of condemnation.
“There’s not money for that right now,” he said.
He said that he could not disclose how much money they would receive from the Department for their parcel of land, per the Department’s orders.