LAS CRUCES – When I saw the Organ Mountains, I knew I was
home. When I saw their mysterious, craggy peaks from the crumbling ruins of
what was then the Downtown Mall, I wondered what I’d gotten into.
Even at high noon on a weekday, it could be a little scary
to navigate the downtown urban blight. When I worked very early or very late,
as I often did in the 1990s, I did my best to scoot in and out of the Sun-News
parking lot as quickly as possible.
But even then, there were echoes of what was once the
corazon of Las Cruces. Our heart, through broken, had potential. I loved the
Las Cruces Farmers & Crafts Market and even spent a few months peddling my
own strange creations there and getting to know the market venders and the
Downtown Mall.
We shared ideas: painting the ugly arches adobe colors and
festooning them with Mimbres or petroglyph designs, or painting all the old
buildings adobe white to match the Branigan Cultural Center. Other exotic
colors were discussed. Perhaps we could achieve fame as the only lapis blue or
purple adobe mall in the world? We thought it would be cool with the yellow
brick road, which most of us liked.
From my first Las Cruces Style column in 1994, I pitched
renovation ideas. Several readers expressed enthusiasm for changes, and there
were offers of government support. I heard from Steve Newby, the torch carrier
through it all, and then-Mayor Rubén Smith suggested we meet with city planners.
The Las Cruces Community Theatre offered a space for meetings. Artists,
including the late, great Alice Peden, got involved.
It was tough going. There were studies and evaluations and
blue ribbon committees. Things fizzled. Strides were made.
Street lights and architectural accents were added along
with monuments: a skeletal homage to beloved St. Genevieve’s Church, Tony Pennock’s
“La Entrada,” a beautiful historical piece with columns and murals. Both were
eventually removed for the reconstruction of Main Street and the new plaza.
One of my Sun-News colleagues, whose name now escapes me,
referred to our downtown as “the graveyard of high hopes.” Bob Diven came up
with a design for a giant Billy the Kid downtown building, with a revolving
restaurant in Billy’s sombrero and a kiva fireplace in the outlaw’s derriere.
Alice Peden kept sweetly but firmly bugging people about
sprucing up our querencia. I wrote an April Fool’s Day fantasy column “reporting”
that Ted Turner and his then-wife Jane Fonda had committed millions to
transform the mall and Heather Pollard, who had left her post as head of the
Doña Ana Arts Council, had decided to come out of retirement to save and
beautify the mall. Ted and Jane never weighed in, but Heather did, in fact, decide
to eschew retirement to lead the Las Cruces Downtown Partnership. Her efforts
led to several transformative efforts, from renovation of the Rio Grande Theatre
to several cooperative efforts like involvement in Project Main Street.
Rubén and subsequent mayors Bill Mattiace and Ken
Miyagishima kept plugging. The street reopened. We drove down it and cheered.
The farmers market got bigger and better and was named tops in the state and
then the nation in online polls. The Downtown Ramble the first Friday of each
month demonstrated what our city could be: a delight.
It dawned on us that we had pretty streets, three theaters
staging entertaining productions, two lovely new museums, some fun galleries
and restaurants, one of the best bookstores in the west, (in those early years,
Coas was one of the few reasons many of us came downtown on non-market days) and
other promising activities and enterprises.
And now, finally, we have what so many of us had been
missing for so long, that central corazon that we loved in so many New Mexico
communities from Taos and Santa Fe to Tularosa and Mesilla: Our very own plaza.
S. Derrickson Moore may be
reached at 575-541-5450, dmoore@lcsun-news.com or @derricksonmoore on Twitter.
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