Realize Las Cruces one step closer to adoption

Las Cruces is just months away from a final vote on a development overhaul that officials hope will balance community character, city growth and housing affordability for decades to come.

The plan named Realize Las Cruces took a big step forward following a work session of the Planning and Zoning Commission on Oct. 29. During the five-hour meeting, the commission reviewed the last draft of Realize Las Cruces, asked questions of the drafters and suggested changes. 

"I think we’re headed in the right direction,” said Planning and Zoning Commissioner Scott Kaiser. “I think there are certainly some things we can discuss tonight and possibly get some last-minute tweaks, but I appreciate all the work that’s gone into it up to this point.”

The plan includes changes to zoning, the zoning map, subdivisions, drainage, signs, outdoor lighting, roads and rights-of-way, landscaping parks, trails, open space, tree preservation, screening and fencing.

Such a comprehensive set of changes has taken years to develop.

The timeline for Realize Las Cruces started after the city approved its latest comprehensive plan, Elevate Las Cruces, in 2020. Like all comprehensive plans, Elevate Las Cruces is meant to guide the city's policy decisions but does not alter the city’s decades-old development code. 

Erica Craycraft, a senior urban planner and project manager with Freese and Nichols, the firm hired to draft Realize Las Cruces, said the first phase started in March 2021 and included reviewing the city’s existing plans, codes and the opinions of staff members and builders. 

Craycraft said the next three years, from September 2021 to May 2024, were spent drafting the plan. 

“Phase two concluded once we had a complete draft and were able to look at everything holistically at one time,” Craycraft said.

With that draft complete, Craycraft said the time between May 2024 and February 2025 is used to make the final touches to the draft before its eventual approval. 

Craycraft said that the process also involved significant community input, including surveys, meetings with developers, community meetings and city council presentations. 

Among the dozens of changes, one of the most significant is the operation of zoning. Zoning is shorthand for a set of rules governing what types of building can be built in a given location. 

According to the plan, Realize Las Cruces creates more flexible zoning districts. That includes character-based zoning, which values the desired character or aesthetic qualities of a neighborhood or district instead of focusing on simple and traditional categories like "residential" or "commercial." The plan keeps some of those legacy zoning types in some areas. 

Realize Las Cruces also aims to streamline the development process by clarifying the roles of the city council, Planning and Zoning Commission and other bottleneck points. The plan also affects historic preservation efforts and tries to promote sustainability by emphasizing low-impact development practices and green infrastructure incentives and introducing drainage and flood control requirements to reduce the impact on the environment. 

A map shows the different zones that would go into effect once Realize Las Cruces came to pass.

Park impact fees

While some of the broader changes like zoning appear to be settled, the five-hour Planning and Zoning meeting showed there were still issues to be worked out. One of them is park impact fees.

To fund the building and maintenance of parks, Las Cruces charges a $2,600 fee on new home construction. That fee was established in 2012 and upheld in 2019 despite calls to increase it. 

“It was not the full recommended amount to maintain the current level of service,” said Steven Bingham, the city Parks and Recreation Director.

The city is planning to review and potentially increase park impact fees next year, but for now Bingham said that Realize Las Cruces would add a new “park dedication” fee to fund smaller neighborhood parks, such as the park being put in at the Metro Verde development. 

However, unlike a park impact fee—which would still exist for bigger parks and recreation projects—the city would not reimburse the home builder for the fee. That means that the cost would pass through to the home buyer. 

“It’s a (funding source) that hasn’t been used here before, but it’s been in effect in the country since the 1960s,” Bingham said. 

Craycraft noted during the meeting that developers don’t have to pay the fee.

Realize Las Cruces would allow the developer to dedicate a portion of the land and build a park as part of the area's development, avoiding the fee altogether. 

“The city would rather have a developer dedicate and build their own park within the subdivision instead of giving a fee in lieu,” Craycraft said. 

Members of the Planning and Zoning Commission were clearly concerned about what they feared could be a cost that would price out some home buyers.

“I think there’s a philosophy difference on this,” said Commissioner Kent Thurston, explaining that he felt this system could balloon housing prices.

Still, Thurston acknowledged it was an argument with reasonable points. He pointed to research showing cities with more parks have better public health and safety outcomes. But he also said that raising the cost of housing by even a few thousand dollars quickly prices out potential homebuyers. 

“There’s still kinks in there about how do we make (Las Cruces’ parks) better without making the cost of housing go up,” he said. 

Thurston, who owns a home-building firm in Las Cruces, acknowledged that other parts of Realize Las Cruces will lower the cost of homes. 

Craycraft said the plan will be presented to the Las Cruces City Council at a work session on Dec. 9. She expects the plan to be ready for a vote in February.