Proposed developments along the Central corridor in Nob Hill could transform an area in need of vast improvements.
“If you haven’t been back to Central in a little while, come check out Nob Hill,” Pat Davis, City councilor for the area, told KRQE. “We’ve got huge apartment buildings that are going up now, lots of folks moving into housing. Lots of new restaurants are coming back up and down the Central corridor. It doesn’t look like you think it did a couple of years ago.”
Last week, the Albuquerque Development Commission voted to approve tax breaks for a project on the corner of Jefferson Street and Silver Avenue. A vacant lot will be transformed into five two-story townhomes. There are other projects planned from large developments offering more than a hundred new apartments along Central to a four-story complex on Silver.
“I’ve been kind of jokingly calling it the Hunger Games when you’re renting one of these apartments,” Evan Davis, developer for the project on Jefferson and Silver, told KRQE. “I mean it just gets so much interest and everybody just has this air of almost like desperation because it’s just so hard to find decent places to live these days.”
The project on Jefferson Street will cost $1.6 million and include a parking lot, mural and solar equipment.
Councilor Davis noted that the focus for development has shifted now from big sprawling developments on the outskirts of town back to the heart. He called Central Avenue “the hot new place,” though true revitalization is still years away.
“There’s still a lot to do,” the councilor said. “We dug a big hole during COVID and for years of disinvestment in Central. Like it or not about ART, the fact is those transit investments are encouraging people who don’t want to own a car to get back on the Central corridor and they’re starting to pay off.”
Locals are hopeful the once-downtrodden area will get a positive facelift.
“Hopefully it will clean up stuff around here; the apartments will help kind of bring more attention to like the streets and stuff around here,” Paul Barboa, a taxidermist with American Wild Life Taxidermy, told KRQE.