ABQjournal: Coronado Puts New Ads on Parking Lot

Stripes By Charlotte Balcomb Lane, Journal Staff Writer

First it was billboards and bus placards. Then it was ads on the

stall doors of public restrooms.

Now Coronado Center is conducting an advertising campaign of a different stripe. The line

markings between 100 parking spaces at the south end of the mall near the JC Penney store have been topped with yellow and blue ads for

Qwest Internet service and digital television. …

[O]n a recent sunny January day, few shoppers seemed to notice as they walked

to and from the mall.

The consumers that did see them thought the parking spaces were blocked off or reserved for handicapped

parking. …

Qwest and General Growth Properties, which is the second largest mall owner in the United States, will decide whether

to stick with the experiment or pull it.

class="mine">There’s a damn scary headline and thought: the sky’s the limit! Enjoy one last look from the Duck Pond or Johnson Field to

the mountains. Where do we put the 10 story Starbuck’s Parking Garage? mjh

PS: Remember when Starbuck’s

crushed a little local coffee vendor named Sam Buck who ran Sambuck’s? I think Herman Melville’s estate, or the creators of BattleStar Galactica,

should sue Starbuck’s.

ABQjournal: Sky’s the

Limit for UNM Buildings; 2 1/2-Story Restriction Tossed by Regents By Olivier Uyttebrouck, Journal Staff Writer

University

of New Mexico regents agreed Tuesday to abandon a 46-year-old restriction that limited the height of new buildings to 2 1/2 stories. …

Regents since 1960 have approved a number of exceptions to the limit, including a four-story Humanities building and a three-

story mechanical engineering building. [mjh: Oh! So there never really was a “limit,” was there?]

One thing

clear from today’s story about Montaño Bridge being too noisy with four lanes: Marty hates anything that gets in his way. OK, who

doesn’t. Still, Montaño has been Marty’s reason-for-being and nothing is going to stop him from getting his way. After all, he

didn’t hesitate to build a 4 lane road when the agreement was for two.

So, is he just going to roll over regarding Paseo? He

found millions for the millionth upgrade of the convention center but can’t find $800,000 for Paseo? That’s about 5% of the projected

costs and just a little icing for NM insatiable road building industry. What’s the real story here? Just preparing the public for some

other tactic? mjh

ABQjournal: 4-Lane Montaño to Be Too Noisy By Andrea Schoellkopf, Journal Staff Writer

A four-lane Montaño Bridge

will exceed noise level requirements for the area, a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers report said Tuesday.

“There’s dumb and

dumber and then there’s dumbest,” was Albuquerque Mayor Martin Chávez’s reaction Tuesday to a report on potential impacts of increasing

the lanes on the bridge. “The notion adding two lanes to a four-lane bridge is going to increase some noise: Of course it’s going to!”

[mjh: he said with a vein throbbing in his forehead and wisps of steam coming out of his ears]

ABQjournal: Paseo Extension Cut to Two Lanes By Andrea

Schoellkopf, Journal Staff Writer

Building a bridge across the arroyo avoids the permit process but adds about $800,000 to the

project’s cost.

Original designs called for a four-lane road divided by a median. Castillo said the scaled-back plan will prepare

the site for four lanes but will only pave the two lanes on one side of the median.

“We’re just building one side at this

time,” Castillo said. “We had to reduce the cost because of the bridge.”

I made an interesting discovery on my bike today. I found a way under

Carlisle at I-40. There’s a paved path with railing along the arroyo on the north side of I-40. Paved, that is, directly under Carlisle,

but gravel before and after. I rode west of Carlisle on the wide gravel path between the Interstate and the arroyo, hoping for a

connection to the bike path that travels under I-40 between Indian School and Menaul (near the tumbleweed snowman barely east of the

Big-I).

Oh, but there

isn’t a connection. Instead, the trail ends at a gate before the confluence of arroyos. The other trail is in sight, but to get to it

would require a steep ride down and out of the arroyo (which had water today, to my surprise).

Obviously, what’s needed here is a

bridge, maybe one of those arching bridges like those that span Tramway, carrying bicyclists and walkers above the level of the

Interstate so we can look down on folks stuck in traffic and they can look at us and think, “maybe I should get out of my car, too.”

A simple bridge there would

probably cost less than re-striping Montaño Bridge or extending Paseo del Norte. It might even cost less then the yet-another damn

billboard going up nearby. (When will we finally outlaw that crap? Never.) mjh