Editor’s note: To read the first in our series — A visitors center with no visitors: When will the taxpayer-funded project open? — click here.
There’s still no opening date for the decades-in-the-making West Central Route 66 Visitors Center, though construction was completed years ago. Even so, one former city councilor thinks the long delay might be the least of the city’s worries at the shiny 21,000-square-foot facility with pristine views of the Sandia Mountains.
Albuquerque city councilors are scheduled to talk about it Monday when they meet for the first time since a summer break. On the agenda for a vote is legislation filed by Councilor Klarissa Peña that would create a visitors center commission.
The interior of the two-story facility features a Route 66-themed museum, banquet/event hall, gift shop and a taproom/brewery with a high-end commercial kitchen. The exterior has a large amphitheater and a neon sign park.
But the prospect of a visitors center that serves alcohol in a remote area of the city — it’s located at 12300 Central Ave. NW about 10 miles west of Downtown — has raised concerns. Securing a liquor license has also proved difficult.
“As a member of the City Council and someone in love with the city, it seemed to me to be a bit dangerous and stupid to serve alcohol in a way out place,” former City Councilor Trudy Jones said. “First of all, it’s a visitors center — one designed to attract people going by on I-40. How would you like it if we over-served a tourist who went out on the interstate in the wrong direction and got killed and killed a whole family?”
Jones is newly retired from the City Council and was one of its longest-serving members at 16 years. She’s been critical of the visitors center from the start.
“The maintenance is horrific. I mean, there’s nobody there, nobody takes care of it,” she said. “They have to pay someone to clean it. They have to pay for the utilities. There’s nothing positive.”
Peña, who’s been a main force behind the project, describes such criticism as finger pointing by naysayers.
“Most people embrace it or are waiting for it or longing for it — but sometimes people from outside like to point fingers and say lots of different things,” she said. “The visitors center is nothing but a beautiful, beautiful story that someday, I hope, gets told about the community banding together to create change.”
The city became the sole manager of the visitors center earlier this year when Bernalillo County officials voted to transfer ownership and responsibility of the $13.7 million facility. It had previously been under a city-county intergovernmental agreement.
The county’s transfer to the city was, at least in part, due to complications obtaining a proper liquor license.
“The county doesn’t do government liquor licenses, which is required as part of the facility. [It’s] incorporated into it to have an event center and a taproom,” Peña said.
However, Jones thinks county officials saw the writing on the wall.
“[The county] didn’t want to take all that money out of their coffers to keep that monstrosity open,” she said. “It’s a boondoggle and a money pit. Everything about it was a special interest project. Now the city’s budget is being thrown at this building just to keep it alive and keep it from falling down.”
‘Top dollar facility’
Randy and Denise Baker, the owners of Rio Bravo Brewing Co., previously showed interest in operating the taproom/brewery — to give it a local flavor — but those plans never panned out. Still, the longtime South Valley residents think the idea has merit.
“The facility is amazing and is top dollar in all aspects,” Denise Baker said. “If they ever actually open, it will provide an excellent option for events and concerts. Hopefully, it will open one day.”
“The South Valley and the Westside are limited on venues — unless you go to Route 66 Casino [Hotel],” Randy Baker said. “So we like the idea, but they just couldn’t figure out how they were going to run it. There’s a lot of things that they could do to make that a very intriguing and receptive place.”
Peña hopes her proposed commission will help connect the missing pieces and expedite an opening date.
“The idea is to form a commission to help so that [the visitors center] operates like an Explora, like the Albuquerque Museum — where you have people who are invested,” she said.
Peña said she’s been invested for 30 years and is likely the project’s biggest supporter. Her involvement, and that of her husband Johnny Peña, started before she was first elected to City Council in 2013. Johnny Peña is a longtime board member of the West Central Community Development Group (WCCDG), the nonprofit that once held a contract to manage the visitors center.
“He started this journey with me many years ago. We were young parents trying to raise our kids and trying to make a difference in our community and create change,” Peña said. “He has been serving as a volunteer for as long as I have, and he actually deserves the most credit of all the volunteers who have been serving their community all these years.”
The WCCDG was previously awarded a $500,000 contract, but Peña said her husband never personally profited from it. She expects the WCCDG to remain involved, however.
Her proposed commission would consist of seven voting members and two non-voting advisory members to be confirmed by the City Council. It would include Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller, two city councilors, four representatives designated by the WCCDG, and advisory members from Visit Albuquerque and the Albuquerque Hispano Chamber of Commerce.
Expenses mount
Officials say there’s still a long list of tasks to be completed before the visitors center can open. Now under the purview of the city’s Arts & Culture Department, the facility needs audio/visual equipment, short-term exhibit upgrades, phone and networking systems, parking lot lighting, elevator repairs and outdoor signage.
Contracts need to be secured for landscaping, cleaning and security. A two-year plan needs to be developed for exhibits, and staff positions need to be created and filled.
“Most fire safety requirements have now been met,” Arts & Culture spokesperson Tanya Lenti said. “This week, department leadership will be meeting with a landscape architect to gain valuable insights on the planned [neon] sign park.”
In the meantime, the visitors center has hosted neighborhood association meetings and an occasional tour and special event. Lenti said the Route 66 Centennial Coordination Group and its stakeholders took a tour in June, and collaboration is underway with the coordinators of the Route 66 WestFest for a September event.
“With the appropriate level of resources and financial support, we expect to be fully operational by 2025,” she said. “We are committed to ensuring that the facility is well operated, sufficiently staffed, and an engaging cultural asset for our communities.”
Economic benefits, too?
Hopes have been high in Peña’s District 3 since the idea of a visitors center first germinated among community members in the neighborhoods of West Central in the early 1990s. It was touted as a project that would bring new development to the area and be an economic boon to the city at large.
But years after its construction, there’s no sign of those hopes coming to fruition. There are also concerns that so many years later, the draw of a visitors center has diminished as tourists book hotels, find out about events, and get restaurant recommendations online.
Peña isn’t worried.
“It’s something community members see as an avenue to bring visitors from across the city, from across the nation and from across the world — to take in the entire stretch of the historic Route 66,” she said. “We see it as an economic engine to spur economic development as a gateway into our wonderful city.”
Peña expects that the visitors center will highlight city attractions like the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta and the National Hispanic Cultural Center. It would recommend places to stay, visit and learn about the city.
“We also wanted, especially, to create a place for us,” Peña said. “If you look at District 3, there are no museums. There’s no real large cultural asset. We don’t have the Balloon Fiesta, we don’t have [New Mexico] United [soccer], we don’t have [Albuquerque] Isotopes [baseball].”
The facility would also host weddings and other private events.
“There is nothing out there to revitalize,” Jones said. “It’s sitting in the middle of a freaking desert with an arroyo running through it. There’s no business. There are very few homes.”
Peña argues that the critical focus on the facility’s delayed opening is overblown.
“It’s really interesting, because people forget that we had a pandemic,” she said. “When we finally got the money to actually break ground, we had a pandemic and as a result we had escalating costs, we had delays, we had complete stoppage of building it.”
She said that scheduling a ribbon-cutting event, which took place in September 2022, still made sense even though the facility wasn’t ready to open.
“Because we knew how excited the community was about the building,” Peña said. “We wanted to show people the progress we’d made. We still have a few things that need to be addressed before we can fully open.”
Meanwhile, Jones thinks the best-case scenario for the city is to give the facility to a nonprofit.
“It’s just expensive. It was designed for this idea that people are just going to kind of wander off I-40 and run into it,” she said. “There’s nothing there. They don’t even have a sign on the interstate. It is one of the most blatant and expensive examples of politics.”
I have passed by the Mountain Lodge many times and asked myself what was going on,…bureacrats! That is the problem,…bureacrats. If they would involve business people, the place would be open and making money. I read the ex council person’s criticism of selling alcohol and patrons leaving drunk and driving back on the interstate; sounds like a church going person who does not like alcohol nor cannabis, but is OK with MDs prescrbiing their patients fentanyl for a minor ache.
Any business person will tell you that place is a money maker; not a BOODDOGLE. I am 71 and I passed through here over 45 years ago when I graduated form college; I drove from Norfolk, VA to Los Angeles, CA,…Route 66; I remember the TV show. Route 66 was the way West before I-10 and I-40. I recently relocated/retired from Chicago to Albuquerque and I did not realize I was on Route 66 until I started seeing the signs in Oklahoma.
Pena is just another politician trying to gaslight all of us into not seeing what is plainly obvious!