The buzz in barelas: A 500-year-old Albuquerque neighborhood, after years of neglect, has returned. And how

New Mexico Business Journal, Nov, 2001 by Shawn Shepherd

THE ALBUQUERQUE NEIGHBORHOOD the Feds once called a "pocket of poverty" has become a pocketbook full of opportunity Not since the early part of this century has the South Valley's Barelas been making good news as a thriving part of the city. And the group of leaders that are calling the neighborhood their business home are counting on things to get even better.

With a mother and father both raised in Barelas, Gene V. Hurley is one of those leaders coming home. Hurley is the deputy director of the State of New Mexico's Office of Cultural Affairs at the new National Hispanic Cultural Center of New Mexico, a cornerstone for the Barelas redevelopment efforts.

"Barelas is a very special part of this city," said Hurley "There are so many people in this city, state, region and nation who don't know where they come from. And the old saying is true that 'if you don't know where you come from, you can't know where you re going.'" The history of the central Rio Grande region started at and expanded from Barelas. It is the oldest neighborhood in Albuquerque, formally established as a ranching settlement by Don Pedro Valera in the late 1600s. But the landing at Barelas had been the crossing point of the Rio Grande a full century before; Coronado crossed there in 1540 and Juan de Onate followed the same path in 1598. Governor Diego de Penalosa formally established the settlement in 1662 - nearly 50 years before Old Town would make the map.

"The neighborhood has a tremendous history and when you look at the cultural makeup of Barelas it is one of the very few neighborhoods that has managed to stay intact while there has been so much change around it," said Loretta Armenta, president of the Hispano Chamber of Commerce, one of the city's leaders reclaiming Barelas as a center of commerce and economic development.

Barelas' place in the early history of Albuquerque's commerce was assured by the passing of the Camino Real, the royal road to Mexico City, and Route 66, the Mother Road, right through the neighborhood. The Santa Fe Railroads steam engine repair shops, operating fully from 1914 through the early 1960s, further ensured the neighborhood as an economic engine to the region.

But the last half of this century has been another story. The 1937 re-routing of Route 66 to Central was the first hit. In the 1950s, the city headquartered its sewer operations in Barelas, making an unbearable stench commonplace until it was closed as a result of residents' legal complaints in 1981. In 1970 the railroad repair shops closed, leaving vacant the vast tract of land and buildings that edged the rail lines to downtown's east side. And the real economic hits came with the shopping mall developments of the 1960s and 1970s. By the 1970s, the city began razing properties in the 500-year-old neighborhood.

The first wave of redevelopment in Barelas came in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The active merchants and neighborhood associations had had enough and they were committed to taking back Barelas, according to printed histories of the neighborhood. With the government's Facade Improvement Program, 4th Street businesses got a face lift - the Barelas Coffee House, Red Ball Cafe, Martin Pena's Barber Shop and B. Ruppe Drugs were among those getting an updated look.

Another effort to spruce up Barelas included the mosaics and murals created in the Barelas Revitalization Project. This effort was an outcropping of the neighborhood's designation as a historic district and the accompanying tax credits developers have realized since 1998.

"This is about bringing pride back into the neighborhood," said Jim Chavez, the one-time general contractor who now makes some of the region's best-known green chile cheeseburgers at the Red Ball Cafe, "lately, we've been seeing a lot of changes in the neighborhood- and all of them are good."

The location of the National Hispanic Cultural Center of New Mexico was the first major project to come to Barelas. "We believe that situating the Center here is entirely appropriate given the history of the region and the state," said Michael F. Hurley, public relations counsel for the Center, adding that it serves as a perfect bookend to the Barelas neighborhood. "If the anchor for a community doesn't include that group's culture, then it's an exercise in refurbishing rather than creating community."

The Center opened in October 2000 and boasts a unique approach to educating visitors about Hispanic people. "This is much more than a museum -it is a true cultural center," said Hurley. Echoing the perspective is Reeve Love, the Center's director of performing arts. "This is not just a place to preserve the culture, but also a place to present the living Hispanic art, history and culture," she said, adding that the planned addition of a 68,500 sq. ft. performing arts center -breaking ground this fall will provide even greater opportunities to celebrate the culturally diverse Hispanic communities of the world.

"For the Barelas neighborhood, this Center is an economic development shot in the arm," said the Office of Cultural Affairs' Henley, "it's a $50 million anchor to the one of the ends of the community and celebrates the things this community was built on." In addition to the cultural centerpiece the Center serves as, an economic impact analysis conducted by Arts Development Associates, Inc. of Minneapolis projected the Center will bring more than 650,000 visitors to Barelas, as many as 29 percent of them from out of state, resulting in a total impact of sales of goods and services of $219 million.