Los Alamos County’s acquisition and demolition of the Los Alamos Apartments has enabled the possibility of creating a desirable street front on the North side of Central Avenue in the center of the downtown. Los Alamos MainStreet has revived a variation of the Bradbury Row concept for this area that had been developed several years ago and was well received. The new concept demonstrates how the property could accommodate both the new municipal building as well as a row of mixed-use commercial condominiums. Several local businesses have already expressed interest in the concept and a willingness to consider locating there in owner occupied space.

Development of the new muni building at the site holds the prospect of creating synergies through shared parking and site infrastructure strategies. Sharing of site infrastructure and parking improves the feasibility of getting such a project done. Without the synergies, the project would be more difficult.

There are several key features to the concept including reserving the majority of the street front land for commercial activity while providing for the County’s stated needs for municipal building space, providing for a decreasing intensity of development from South to North to respect the transition to the adjacent neighborhood, looking beyond the boundary of the parcel to satisfy parking requirements, and enabling an attractive streetfront with a twenty foot wide sidewalk that people will have a reason to use. The concept fully embraces downtown plan goals and concepts. The concept addresses building location, massing, and scale. No attempt was made to address archtectural style although several elevation sketches were developed to illustrate scale and proportion of structures.

The concept was vetted with the MainStreet Futures Committee, the go-to Los Alamos MainStreet committee for ideas and issues relating to downtown development and vitality. The reaction of committee members has been very positive. For this concept to gain any traction, the next step will be to figure out how to engage Los Alamos County in a discussion about the concept and whether they will support it. We would like to hear from you if this concept interests you or if you have interest, questions or ideas about it.

Update: Since this project was initiated by MainStreet in early 2010, the County has completed their site design and advertised for proposals for commercial development of the residual land. LACDC led a group of local small businesses who have collaborated on a proposal to the County to develop a new streetfront along Central of approximately 32,000 square feet of new space. This project allows for local small businesses to own and occupy space that will fulfill their needs. 75% of the available space has already been reserved by the participating businesses and the balance is available to interested retail businesses (contact Kevin Holsapple at 661-4806 for more information). The County is currently evaluating the proposals they have received to determine their interest in moving ahead with any of them.