Construction at Las Soleras stirring up frustrations

July 10--Steve Burns, who lives in the Nava Adé subdivision on Santa Fe's south side, describes the dust coming from the Las Soleras construction site as an unbearable health hazard.

The dust has layered onto vehicles and backyard grills and sifted into garages and garden equipment, he told members of the Santa Fe Planning Commission, displaying enlarged photos of the wind-blown menace on presentation boards.

Nava Adé sits just north of Las Soleras, a development in progress that is bordered by Cerrillos Road, Interstate 25 and Richards Avenue. The images show scenes with zero visibility and dust caked on the inside of vehicles.

"This is our neighborhood and it is completely covered, enveloped, with dust, a lot of our homes are completely enveloped in dust," he said. "It's absolutely unbearable."

Burns was speaking at a public hearing Thursday night on a request by the Pulte Group to proceed with the next phase of its 300-home subdivision within Las Soleras, a 549-acre tract where construction is also underway on the new Presbyterian Medical Center, as well as roads, utilities, restaurants and a senior-living development.

Pulte now has 142 homes and gained approval to move ahead with an additional 77 lots.

But Planning Commission members were adamant that efforts by Pulte and the city to control dust, debris and other construction nuisances have to be serious. The commission approved Pulte's request to move forward with grading of an additional 26 acres with the condition that the Atlanta-based company "maximize efforts to control dust during construction."

Members also asked city inspectors and land-use staff to take every measure necessary to protect adjacent neighborhoods such as Nava Adé from blowing dust and other construction-related hazards.

"Somebody has to have the power to shut things down when things get out of hand," said Planning Commission member Stephen Hochberg.

Commission Chairman Vince Kadlubek said Pulte is not entirely to blame for the dust because other projects are ongoing in Las Soleras. He said it's up to city Land Use Department staff to determine if too much development is going on at the site at one time.

"If we are developing an area too fast, we have to take that seriously," said Kadlubek.

City Land Use Director Lisa Martinez said she and her staff met with Nava Adé residents as well as contractors and developers working in Las Soleras, including Presbyterian Healthcare. She said the city is taking measures to do more enforcement regarding dust, including issuing citations and mandating more use of water to wet down surfaces.

The city can also ask that graded areas be seeded, covered or developed more quickly, she said.

But Martinez said that during a recent site visit to the new hospital she saw that even after water trucks had sprayed an area, a 50 mph wind gust came in and caused problems. "There are going to be circumstances that are out of our control," she said.

Pulte, founded as a family-owned company in Detroit in 1950, has grown into the largest homebuilder in the country. Subsidiaries include Centex and Del Webb, which specializes in senior housing.

The Pulte Group reported home-sales revenue in the first quarter of 2017 at $1.6 billion, up 14 percent over a year earlier. It closed 4,225 sales in the quarter with a 6 percent increase in the sales price to $375,000 companywide, according to the firm's website. The company's stock is up 35 percent year to date.

Pulte originally came into the Santa Fe market with the Centex brand, which is aimed at first-time buyers. The offerings in Las Soleras are priced between $325,000 and $400,000 and aimed at larger families and retirees looking for energy-efficient homes with lower maintenance costs.

The company has gotten some complaints from Santa Fe contractors that its labor pool is almost exclusively from Albuquerque and outside Santa Fe, though that issue did not come up Thursday.

Kevin Patton, director of land planning at Pulte, said the company hears the concerns and is taking the neighborhood complaints seriously.

He told the Planning Commission that Pulte is using a technique successful elsewhere that involves integrating a palming ingredient with its water to change the composition of the soil. "We recognize the issue and we take this very seriously," Patton said. "We think this is going to work."

Land use planner Noah Berke said city inspectors are no longer issuing verbal warnings to builders and contractors in Las Soleras and will now write formal citations, which can carry fines of $100 to $500 a day. Berke added that he lives close to the project and neighbors have his cellphone number if future issues arise.

"No neighbors should have to go through what they're going through," Berke said.

Burns said the neighborhood was offered assurances after it presented the dust complaints to another city committee -- and many of the recent photos were taken after that discussion. "We are looking at four more years of this construction," he said.

Contact Bruce Krasnow at [email protected].

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