BACA RAILYARD ADVERTISEMENT
ART AND DESIGN CENTER
With the trail linkage under Saint Francis nearing completion, landscape architect Solange Serquis—who worked on the Railyard Master Plan—saw a perfect opportunity to offer retail refreshment near the trail entrance to Baca Railyard. The teahouse Opuntia Café, part of an office-lodging complex, is being designed around the concept of a glass house and gardens lush with plants, and is set to open on Shoofly Street this summer 2017. “I’m excited about the teahouse—it will bring more people,” notes Gabe Rippel, a fabricator of steel furniture and coowner of Santa Fe Modern, in the back of which he recently opened a showroom in response to growing foot traffic. Now the “cool little furniture row,” as he calls it, is starting to gain an awareness of itself that has spawned talk of branding it as Santa Fe’s first design center. 178 TREND Summer 2017
“The ‘design’ keyword I’ve had in my mind for a few years,” says Siso, one of several business owners taking credit for the push. “If you research design districts, they’re in cities that are growing. A design district is hip, cutting edge, with fresh ideas.” The labeling gets a nod from the nonprofit Santa Fe Railyard Community Corp. (SFCC), which leases and manages Railyard land, although they had not targeted any specific type of development other than local and mixed use. “The project has grown organically over time, based on the location’s attributes that led to a different kind of feel than the North Railyard,” says Richard Czoski, SFCC executive director. With lower-priced leases and smaller parcels—and the mandate to get a mix of local businesses—Baca has grown slowly and relationally by word of mouth. Home building has naturally followed. One of the
few remaining parcels is being developed into a four-unit residential complex by Devendra Contractor of DNCA Architects, a designer of galleries in the North Railyard. The detached homes with small gardens, which he has dubbed Shoofly Pie, metaphorically complete the neighborhood’s linkage to the North Railyard, as Contractor is also moving his offices to Baca. “It’s a wonderful opportunity for me now, as a developer, to further the aesthetic and artistic balance that I started in the North Railyard,” he says, adding that he has always been “a huge believer” in the project, north and south, in the face of early skepticism. As an architect who also worked on the Master Plan—which explicitly prohibits buildings in Pueblo Revival style—he and other believers are glimpsing in the nascent “Baca Railyard Design Center” a long-awaited reinterpretation of Santa Fe style.
DANIEL QUAT (4)
Clockwise from top left: Rippel Metal and Santa Fe Modern interior with table by Rippel Metal; Circle Antiques exterior; Molecule interior; exterior of Santa Fe Modern.