Our Mission
Protect the Covenants
The Elena Gallegos Open Space is protected from development by clear restrictions enshrined in the Deed to the land. The City’s proposed building is unequivocally prohibited by these restrictions.
Our community is working with a real estate lawyer who has confirmed for us that should the City forge ahead with this building, they establish a precedent for buildings in the Open Space and render the restrictions in the Deed unenforceable by any outside party. The full implications are terrifying: with no enforceable restrictions on the land, future City administrations will be free to develop the Elena Gallegos however they want.
In recent Zoom Town Halls (hosted by the High Desert Homeowners Association in March and April 2022), Parks and Recreation Director Dave Simon repeatedly referenced the Rio Grande Nature Center, on Albuquerque’s west side, as a model for what he wants to do in the Elena Gallegos. The Rio Grande Nature Center is a state park, and its management plans are published online. Please read through the 2010 Management Plan to see how Mr. Simon has managed this park:
Read the 2010 Management Plan for Albuquerque’s Rio Grande Nature Center State Park
The Rio Grande Nature Center started with a single “Visitor Center” building in 1982 and has expanded to a complex of twelve separate buildings and structures over the last forty years. In this 2010 Management Plan, Dave Simon requests funding for a brand new “Education Center,” separate from the “Visitor Center” that already exists, because the “Visitor Center” is “too small to accommodate both boisterous school groups and more contemplative park visitors” (page 56). This Management Plan also explains that Parks and Rec has had to build an artificial pond on the park grounds because visitation was damaging the center’s main observation pond (page 21).
What will stop a similar pattern from occurring in the Elena Gallegos Open Space? In five years time, will the City argue that their “Visitor Center” is too small, and a second building is needed? Will the City want to install an artificial ecosystem when they realize their tourists are destroying the natural one?
Our point being — the tide of government is to continuously expand, and the City’s plans for the Elena Gallegos will not stop at one building. Soon they will want a second building, and a third, and a fourth — and there will be no legal path for a third party to stop them.
As we invite you to join our community’s cause, please understand that we are talking about more than just a single building. We’re talking about the future of all 640 acres of the Elena Gallegos over the next 50 to 100 years. We must take action now to protect the covenants and protect the Elena Gallegos from development in perpetuity.
Protect Wildlife
The Elena Gallegos Open Space is home to an incredible array of wild animals — coyotes, deer, bobcats, snakes, even bears, just to name a few. One of the greatest gifts offered by the EGOS is the opportunity to observe these wild animals in their native habitat. Visit the EGOS on almost any Saturday morning, and you are bound to meet a group of kids, on a hike with their parents or troop leader, who are giddy with excitement because they’ve just seen a skunk or a tarantula!
But the EGOS also constitutes Albuquerque’s most fragile ecosystem, and many of its majestic animal species are highly vulnerable to human impact. The City’s proposed building would constitute a massive disruption to their otherwise undisturbed habitat, and thus far the City has done NOTHING, in all their months of planning, to evaluate how serious this impact would be.
The EGOS is almost entirely “pristine” land, which is a specific term used by environmental groups to designate land which has not been implemented with utilities. For instance, currently the water supply at the EGOS is limited to a single 2” PVC pipe supplying water to a water fountain at the Pino Trailhead.
This is not enough water for a “Visitor Center,” so the City will have to aggressively expand water lines to the area. They’ll have to do the same with gas and electric lines, which will require ripping up untold hundreds of acres of dirt. High desert topsoil and native plants are notoriously delicate, and can take DECADES to revegetate, or may never revegetate at all.
Add to this the sustained, everyday impact a building will bring with it — Wi-Fi/EMF radiation; blue light pollution; noise pollution; continuous ground vibration — and the human smells, sounds, and garbage that will come with a surge in human visitation, especially on the City’s planned big event days, when the massive parking lot is filled up with tour buses — and we cannot imagine that this building will not drive away the area’s beautiful wild animals.
Protection of wildlife is one of many reasons that the Deed prohibits ALL buildings of ANY kind in the Open Space. We must preserve the EGOS as wilderness, so that children won’t have to go inside a government building to learn about wild animals from dioramas — they’ll be able to encounter them naturally on the trails.
Preserve Open Space for Humans, Especially Children
The magic of the Elena Gallegos is that it does not have a building on it!
Truly, the Elena Gallegos is the ONLY remaining large City park that does not have a government building on it. Hikers and bikers can escape into the magic of pure wilderness and experience the Albuquerque of Elena Gallegos herself, as it was five hundred years ago.
Science shows that the human parasympathetic nervous system needs regular connection to undisturbed nature to recover from stress and from the constant stimulation of modern life. We need havens that are free from screens, Wi-Fi/EMF radiation, and crowds, where we can cast our gaze over sweeping vistas. In fact, Albuquerque’s Open Space Division states that one of their guiding principles is to provide “visual relief” from looking at urban buildings (page 7)!
The City’s building will destroy the experience of the thousands of hikers, bikers, and picnickers who visit the EGOS every year to “get away from it all,” because there will always be a large government building within eyesight and earshot.
Burqueños of 1982 fought to save the Elena Gallegos from development. They purchased the land with their own tax money to preserve it as open space, so that future generations would always have access to untrammeled wilderness. Now it is our turn do the same, for the children of Albuquerque and for all future generations of Burqueños.
Don’t let the City pave paradise to put up a parking lot!
Frequently Asked Questions
1. Aren’t we talking about a single small building in a giant 640-acre tract of land?
No. Firstly, 4,800 square feet isn’t a small building; that’s larger than most residential houses in Albuquerque.
Add to it the wrap-around deck, adjoining playground, and adjoining massive parking lot for buses, and we’re talking about a substantially bigger footprint than 4,800 square feet. Then add in the hundreds of acres of vegetation that will need to be torn up to expand gas, water, and electric lines. Then add in continuous Wi-Fi/EMF radiation, blue light pollution, and noise pollution, as well as a surge in human visitation for big City-hosted events and festivals, and we’re no longer talking about a single small building — we’re talking about a serious imposition on an otherwise peaceful and undisturbed open space, with major detrimental effects to the area’s wildlife.
Furthermore, the entire Elena Gallegos Open Space may be 640 acres, but only a small percentage of this acreage, and only a handful of trails, are open to the public. The City wants to build on either the Pino Trailhead or the Cottonwood Springs Trailhead, which are the two most popular trails in the EGOS. The land itself is a gorgeous, open, sweeping vista, with few tall trees, built on an incline. Combine all these factors and a 4,800 square foot building will be visible from MILES away. For the vast majority of visitors to the EGOS, this government building will always be within eyesight and earshot, which will completely change the experience of the space.
2. But what about the children????
The City conceived of this building as a “Visitor Center” whose target demographic would be tourists:
Only later did they switch to calling the building an “Education Center,” and to claiming that its target demographic would be schoolchildren on field trips.
This is a transparent PR tactic. No reasonable person wants to feel like they’re opposing education, especially the education of children. Sociologists even have a name for this tactic: they call it a “Helen Lovejoy Defense,” after the swooning, melodramatic character from “The Simpsons” who pleads “won’t somebody PLEASE think of the children!”
We are thinking about children. We are fighting to preserve this precious, beautiful, undeveloped land for them.
The Elena Gallegos already hosts scores of schoolchildren on field trips every year. A building is not and has never been necessary to do so. In fact, talk to the parents of the kids who have attended these trips, and they’ll tell you that their kids were excited to be out of a classroom and out in nature. It turns out, wilderness education is more fun and effective when it takes place in the actual wilderness!
We don’t think that the true purpose of this building is the education of children. But even if it were… Do we really want to bus kids up to the Open Space, only to funnel them back indoors and have them stare at screens? Are we really planning to teach them about the importance of nature, and how we’re stewards charged with caring for it, by building over one of the last slices of undeveloped land in all of Albuquerque?
Please think of the children. They deserve to inherit an earth that still has wilderness. They need more open space, not more government buildings.