City Different The
future of business and innovation in Santa Fe
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Cit ydi fferen t
JANE PHIllIPS
ron romero, ddS, looks at emmanuel Lopez’s teeth at the Santa fe children’s Project early Learning center of United Way. classmates wait in line for their turn.
What this is Santa Fe has sensed for 400 years when to split up to get things done and when to come together for the common good. City Different. Common sense. Our community of activists knows that sometimes people draw close around a cause to accomplish great things. They can restore a streambed, encourage an artist and offer friendship to the isolated. At other times, small groups need to find partners in tackling issues that reach across the broader community. It takes community-wide teamwork to create educational opportunities, integrate creative communities and coordinate innovative solutions. Proudly titled City Different magazine, this publication is full of examples — all uniquely Santa Fe stories — that reveal how the intensity of neighborhood action complements the impulse to meet big challenges. How do small, diverse groups pool their talents and resources? What is the blueprint that will make the creative economy and heritage tourism sustainable culturally and commercially? How is United Way working to end poverty by taking the long view? Where do we find success in keeping smart, educated natives in New Mexico to live and work? Where does Santa Fe stand as a wired community of the future? Santa Fe is answering those questions, as it always has. In 1812, Santa Fe rallied around ways to stimulate agriculture and industry and to develop teachers and doctors. In 1844, the cause was livability, and Santa Fe planted cottonwoods on the Plaza and created a park down the street. By 1912, Santa Fe joined the “City Beautiful” movement in urban planning, but soon city leaders gave it a local spin and began promoting Santa Fe not as a “City Beautiful” but as the “City Different,” a lasting point of pride. The City Different is a city of doers, and usually with a unique twist. This publication is for readers who believe in Santa Fe. We hope you find in its pages your call to action. Rob Dean Editor The Santa Fe New Mexican
Your Business Needs the Best-Trained Employees. We prepare our students to step into the workforce, fully trained and ready to succeed.
Prom Queen at 17. Single Mother at 30. Hungry Now.
Hunger is Closer Than You Think Northern New Mexico’s Food Bank (505) 471-1633 www.thefooddepot.org 2013 cit y different 3
Co ver photos Clyde Mueller, Jane philips Co ver design deborah villa on the cover, from the top, Judy espinar, Andy razatos and dianna delling
o wner robin Martin
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publisher ginny sohn editor rob dean editoriAl creative director deborah villa 5059863027 magazine editor bruce Krasnow brucek@sfnewmexican.com copy editors Cynthia Miller, Kristine dunhan Ad ver tising advertising director tamara hand 5059863007 marketing director Monica taylor 5059953888 Ar t depAr tMent manager scott Fowler, dale deforest, elspeth hilbert advertising layout rick Artiaga Ad ver tising sAles Art trujillo, 5059953852 Cristina iverson, 5059953830 Mike Flores, 5059953840 wendy ortega, 5059953892 stephanie green, 5059953825 nationals account manager rob newlin, 5059953841 teChnology technology director Michael Campbell pr oduC tion operations director Al waldron assistant production director tim Cramer prepress manager dan gomez press manager larry Quintana packaging manager brian schultz distribution circulation manager Michael reichard distribution coordinator reggie perez web digital development natalie guillén www.santafenewmexican.com Address office: 202 e. Marcy st. hours: 8 a.m.5 p.m. MondayFriday advertising information: 5059953852 delivery: 5059863010, 8008733372 for copies of this magazine, call 5054287622 or email rperez@sfnewmexican.com
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City Different the future of business anD innovation in santa fe
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What this is, Rob Dean
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That vision thing, Craig Smith
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Twenty-somethings, Chris Quintana
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Our demographic destiny, Bruce Krasnow
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Tomas Rivera’s bicycle dreams, Chris Quintana
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A nonprofit different, Kay Lockridge
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Ortega family enterprises, Dennis Carroll
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Insights from Judy Espinar, Patricia West-Barker
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Brave new information age, Gregory Pleshaw
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All about marcom, Gregory Pleshaw
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Creative Santa Fe, Patricia West-Barker
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Bernice Baca’s Santa Fe, Robert Nott
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Where bioscience lives, Dennis Carroll
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Wired or not, Julie Ann Grimm
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LEaRN MoRE. www.sfcc.edu 505-428-1000
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RemembeR the Vision Community must work together to realize goals, leaders say By Craig Smith There are big ideas in the nonprofit sector these days, and they’re more than just media buzz, slogans or the newest “wave of the future.” They’ve been around for decades, but they are coming together now, and they could offer hope to Santa Fe nonprofits working to recover from the recession. These ideas — call them the Five C’s — coalesced out of recent interviews with celebrated nonprofit leaders, from a think tank CEO to the head of a local foundation, from a fundraising consultant to a director of corporate communication. And all they require is the willingness to work together. 1. Convene groups of like-minded people to discuss needs and opportunities. (The Internet is wonderful; face-to-face meetings are primal.) 2. Cooperate with one another and respect one another’s efforts. (Turf wars hurt everyone.) 3. Communicate with your nonprofit neighbors to brainstorm shared solutions. (Don’t sit on your ideas like a miser.) 4. Collaborate on projects that can jointly fulfill your missions. (Remember: It’s about your constituencies, not you.) 5. Combine your resources prudently. Form a single nonprofit from two or more, if necessary, to keep your missions flourishing. While you’re at it, consult not only with fellow nonprofits, but also with government entities, businesses, educational institutions and community groups. Along the way, you’ll find new partners and fundraising success, and you’ll remember what got you fired up in the first place to go out and make a difference. “We have been really scrambling to raise money the last five years because of the economic downturn,” said international fundraising consultant Kay Sprinkel Grace, who has had many Santa Fe clients. “And as we have struggled, we’ve lost our capacity to dream. “What we’re worried about is making the budget, but you know what? There’s not a big donor in the world who gets excited about helping you meet your budget. I think that we have to dare to dream. To remember the vision.” Rebecca Carrier, who’s in charge of corporate giving at Thornburg Investment Management, agrees: Keep your vision to the fore, she says. When an organization approaches Thornburg for funds, she always hopes that they will “tell the story about one person whose life has been helped — not tell about what you do in the abstract sense. … I want to know who in the community did you serve, what are the services, how many people have benefited,” she said. There are a lot of visions in Santa Fe serving hundreds of needs. The nonprofit tracking organization Guidestar lists 1,776 active nonprofits in Santa Fe, including those focusing on arts, culture and humanities; health and human services; education; environment and animals; religious bodies; and international causes. They’re a mix of groups that work solely in the city, or in the city and county, or all around New Mexico. But they all have presence here, and many share the same problems. It’s estimated that 10 percent of Santa Fe’s workforce is involved in nonprofits, and with a 2012 population in the city of about 85,500, that means more than 8,000 people work with nonprofit organizations. That’s not only a broad picture of needs being met, it’s big business — with big changes coming. “We are in a time of change,” said Dolores Roybal, executive 6
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director of Con Alma Health Foundation and board chairwoman of the New Mexico Association of Grantmakers. “A lot of environmental change, not only economic, but the increase in technology, the changing missions of how foundations are tightening up in what they’re doing. All these are impacting the nonprofit sector hugely.” From that impact comes the need for the multisector approach that the Five C’s suggest. Roybal sees it as at least “a three-legged stool. One being government, one being business and one being the nonprofits, both the givers and askers.” She cited face-to-face communication as a key issue for nonprofits. “People are starving for interpersonal communication,” she said, adding that Con Alma has been organizing meetings for health care providers from all across the state. “You can only get so many documents over the Internet. People will travel a far distance to meet with people.” Nonprofits and funders in the same city can also meet to discuss the community’s needs. Carrier would like to see more of that. “Are we covering the audience for need? It would be great if all these nonprofits could get together and figure out how best to fill those gaps.” That raises an old question: Are there too many nonprofits in Santa Fe? “It seems like this question comes up a lot,” said Fred Nathan, executive director of Think New Mexico. “By contrast, we don’t hear that as much about businesses like art galleries and restaurants. Having a rich diversity of nonprofits benefits Santa Fe, but certainly there are opportunities to consolidate without harming the community.” Recent examples of nonprofit consolidation include the merger of ARTsmart with Fine Arts for Children and Teens, and the Southwest CARE Center’s merger with Women’s Health Services. Other organizations work together on projects. For example, the Santa Fe Concert Association permits other ensembles, such as the Santa Fe Symphony, the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival and Santa Fe Pro Musica, to use its concert grand Steinway piano without charge for events and concerts. In return, SFCA is able to borrow timpani or risers or music stands from its colleagues. Everyone saves money and time, and art is served. Brian Byrnes, the president and CEO of the Santa Fe Community Foundation, said mergers might be an answer in some cases. On the other hand, he doesn’t see a need to cut in half the number of nonprofits in the city. “Diversification is strength,” he said. “We need a rich and diverse nonprofit sector here. We know that communities with a low concentration of nonprofits are really struggling, while communities with high concentrations are generally doing better. What we need to figure out here is how to deliver that [service] in an effective way.” Byrnes said he sees “collaboration going on here all the time. We should stop saying publicly that nonprofits don’t collaborate because they do, and they collaborate in many different ways.” One innovation Brynes thinks would be ideal locally “is something in the arena of consolidating of administrative backshops. I really believe that we need … a rich variety of programs. But do all people need to be running their own accounting systems or HR, or have all different boards?” Grace emphasized that nonprofits must find ways to work together. “Think of being partners, not competitors,” she said. “The problems are just too massive for one sector.”
Georgia O’Keeffe, Ranchos Church No. I, 1929. Oil on canvas, 18 3⁄4 x 24 inches. Collection of the Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, Florida, Purchase the R. H. Norton Trust. © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum
2 1 7 J OH N S ON S t., S a N ta f e , N m 875O1 • 5O5.946.1OOO • OKeeffemU S eU m.O RG OP eN D a I LY 1 O a m – 5 Pm • OPe N L ate , UN tI L 7 Pm, f R ID aY eVeNINGS 2013 city different 7
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LuIS SÁNCHEz SATurNO
Vince Kadlubek, left, and his dad, dennis, talk about the height of the hand rail as dennis builds one of the staircases on the Meow Wolf Due Return at the Center for Contemporary art on Old Pecos trail on april 23, 2011.
Young adults LOOKINg FOr WAYS TO ENgAgE By Chris Quintana Vince Kadlubek, 30, a member of the Meow Wolf artist collective, was born and raised in Santa Fe. Like many young Santa Feans, he initially wanted to get out of the city. He lived in Portland, Ore., for a year or so, and then returned. His reason, he said, was that Portland already had everything it needed, and Santa Fe did not. Kadlubek said he’s in the minority of young people who return to Santa Fe. “Kids aren’t staying, and new kids aren’t coming,” he said. And Kadlubek is right. The younger generation is in short supply in the city. Of about 144,000 people living in Santa Fe County, residents ages 20 to 29 make up only 10.8 percent, according to 2010 census data, while those ranging from 50 to 59 years old account for 16.7 percent of the population. And those numbers aren’t in line with national averages. Of the 308.7 million Americans, 13.8 percent are between the ages of 20 and 29. In Albuquerque, 15.8 percent of the city’s 545,000 residents are 20 to 29; in Las Cruces, with 97,618 residents, 19 percent are 20-somethings. For many young people, Santa Fe presents the challenge of finding a decent job that’s not in the hospitality industry. Most tend to move to other cities with more job opportunities, while some are able to find their niche in the City Different. Elan Colello, 30, and Anthony Montoya, 29, who were aware of Santa Fe’s difficult job market, decided not to wait around for good jobs to come to them. Collelo founded MediaStream, a company that creates virtual tours 8
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for local businesses and helps with search engine optimization. He hired longtime friend Montoya to help him out. Both men have their sights set high, but they’re aware of the challenges they face trying to make it in Santa Fe. “It isn’t a cheap city,” Montoya said. “A lot of people don’t have time to pursue their dream. You have got to be willing to make that sacrifice yourself.” For Montoya, that sacrifice requires waking up at 5 a.m., working on Colello’s project during the day and then pulling a night shift as a restaurant manager. Leisure time, Montoya said, is nonexistent. Colello’s situation is similar. He lives in a small apartment, he works constantly, and his paycheck is usually gone as soon as it comes in. But he says he’s in a much better place than he was two years ago. “I had resigned myself to poverty,” he said. MediaStream has attracted several large investors and may begin offering its services on a national scale. It’s still developing, but Colello and Montoya are confident they can make it work. The duo agree that doing business in the city is difficult — but that challenging climate also means less competition. “There are opportunities here just waiting to be tapped,” Colello said. Kate Noble, a special projects administrator with the city’s Economic Development Division, agrees with Colello. And she said there are plenty of older and well-resourced people in the city who are willing to help the
emerging generation. The question, she said, is how to make those connections. MIX Santa Fe, a monthly networking event, is attempting to get those generations mingling. Noble and MIX members Zane Fischer and Daniel Werwath said it’s hard to gauge the social networking project’s success over the past three and a half years. Still, people continue attending MIX events — and many have reported that they found a job or romantic partner though the monthly gatherings. MIX events draw about 200 attendees, and organizers distribute surveys at the start of each gathering. In March, about 25 percent of those surveyed were in their 20s and 42 percent were in their 30s — a promising sign for those hoping to attract more young people to the city. Kadlubek said he thinks Santa Fe has a culture that allows young people to thrive creatively, and that it could become attractive to more young people. The problem, he said, is that the city is fixated on the cultural identity of the Southwest. “That’s what sells,” he said. “But there’s a cultural opportunity being missed.” Consider former Santa Fe resident Zach Condon, who is known for his band, Beirut. Condon attended Santa Fe High School before dropping out in 2003 at age 17. Since then, he has toured internationally, has released four albums and has created a record label. He recorded his first album at his parent’s home in Santa Fe. What baffles Kadlubek is that more people don’t know Condon’s story. “Never did the city think of marketing that,” he said. Kadlubek’s premise is simple: Youthful energy like Condon’s is still present in the city, but no one from the local government wants to support it. So, young people end up leaving. He said the Meow Wolf art collective started as a way to give young people a reason to stay in Santa Fe. And since then, it’s started producing all manner of art projects, such as the Omega Mart, a fake store filled with fake products created by New Mexico children, and the Due Return, a massive multimedia art installation in the form of a ship. These projects don’t generate a lot of income, but Kadlubek said they give restless youth a way to express themselves with like-minded people. And having that outlet is what keeps some people in Santa Fe. For others, such as Arianna Sullivan, 21, the city’s allure lies in its surroundings and history. Sullivan was born and raised in Santa Fe, but she moved away at the age of 16 to attend the United World College in Wales. She later attended school in New York before returning to Santa Fe to slow down. “It was constant motion,” she said. “And one of the biggest things that keeps me here is how beautiful the West is.” Sullivan studies creative writing at the Santa Fe University of Art and Design, and she’s set to graduate in December 2013. After that, Sullivan said, she might stay in Santa Fe for another six months or so. “I will always be leaving and coming back to Santa Fe,” Sullivan said. “I appreciate it more when I go to other places. It has its own strangeness that’s hard to find anyplace.” Katelyn Peer, 23, accidentally wandered into Santa Fe during the summer of 2010 and decided to attend the Santa Fe University of Art and Design. During her college years, she ventured off the campus and into the community — where she developed long-term connections. Peer worked as an intern at Creative Santa Fe while she was a student, and then she got a job as the nonprofit’s media communications coordinator. Shortly after, she watched her friends leave for other cities. “It’s not necessarily easy to see a lot of talented people leave all the time,” Peer said. She encourages other college students to reach out and get involved in the Santa Fe community. “It may seem right off the bat that it can be a hard place for young people to survive,” she said. “But once I was able to extend myself enough into the community, it was quickly obvious people want you to stay. They want to see people carry on their legacy.” Peer said she’s found it’s the “hardest thing” to make new friends in the city, although she believes there are plenty of bright and interesting people here. The problem, she said, is meeting them. Still, Peer said she loves Santa Fe’s energy and environment. And she said there’s less competition here than in larger cities, which makes it easier to stand out in the crowd. “The big cities have a lot to offer, but it’s easy to get lost in the crowd,” she said. “Honestly, I am heard here. I do have a voice. … That’s a really special gift.”
JANe PHIllIPS
twenty-somethings mingle at Garson Studios on April 18.
SANTA Fe’S creative culture COUlD AT TrAC T MOre 20SOMeTHINgS
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Aging populAtion PRESENTS CHALLENGES FOR CITY, STATE
New and different mix of housing is needed By Bruce Krasnow
Bruce Poster knows more than most about how demographics can transform a community. The former president of Southwest Planning and Marketing, Poster used to be the data guru and consultant to businesses and governments in New Mexico looking for comprehensive planning data. Now semiretired in Santa Fe, Poster, 67, still does consulting work, but he also has started his own business, Retire Your Way, which helps couples approaching retirement plan their later years together. As Poster sees it, the work will be steady as baby boomers age and Santa Fe continues to attract retirees. “Santa Fe already has a larger share of older people than the state or national average,” he said. In fact, the median age in Santa Fe is 44 — seven years older than the United States’ average of 37, according to the 2010 census. And in 2000, some 63 percent of Santa Fe’s residents were younger than age 55, while in 2010 that number was 50 percent, according to a city housing report. The over-80 population in Santa Fe County now stands at 2,060, but that is expected to triple to 6,378 by 2030 and then hit 9,245 by 2040 — a jump of 350 percent, according to data from The University of New Mexico. These trends present an opportunity for those who serve retirees, as well for workers in fields such as health care, education, recreation and leisure. “From a business standpoint, if you sell health or recreation, that will be good,” Poster said. Poster himself is taking a drawing class at Santa Fe Community College and is active in Renesan, a nonprofit committed to adult learning. He’s also playing bridge again. “Now I have time to play,” he said. Poster sees continued opportunity for businesses that nurture opportunities for seniors to reinvent themselves. He also considers art-house movie theaters, venues such as the Lensic Performing Arts Center, and the many nonprofits and organizations in Santa Fe that benefit from volunteer talent and expertise important to seniors. “That’s the good side of more older people — the reservoir of potential volunteers,” he said. “There are a ton of nonprofits here who depend on volunteers for their boards.” But the aging population also presents numerous challenges, and a recent analysis by UNM highlights one. “The graying of the state population also generates new areas of conflict, especially because the various racial and ethnic groups are aging at different rates. The Anglo population will predominate among the elderly, whereas the [Hispanic and Native] population will predominate among the young and the labor force,” according to a study by UNM’s Geospatial and Population Studies Group. “Nursing homes, assisted-living arrangements, high cost of medical care and other issues associated with an aging population will come into direct conflict with the education, child care and employment needs of a young population.” In Santa Fe County, one of the biggest issues will be housing. An older population means less demand for suburban-style single-family homes that have grown in places such as Eldorado and Tierra Contenta, as larger lots may mean yard work or more maintenance. Instead, there will be a need for smaller homes and condos close to the center of town and services such as recreation and health care. “Older people don’t want to live in outlying suburban areas,” Poster said. Alexandra G. Ladd, housing special projects manager with the city of Santa Fe, agrees. The city has just updated its Housing Needs Assessment, and the document reinforces how a new and different mix of housing is urgently needed. “We can no longer be in denial — our demographics are shifting,” Ladd said. “We know it looking around. You go to any event, and everyone has gray hair.” Poster said the report should prompt city officials to look at new residential uses for places such as the vacant St. Catherine Indian School campus and 10
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perhaps the Scottish Rite Center, which is on the market — if either property can be suited for some mixed-use housing. But Poster admits the challenges are huge in Santa Fe because there is not a lot of buildable land, and “residents of Santa Fe don’t want a lot of housing in their backyard.” Ladd said the housing-needs report also points to something not usually discussed: a paucity of quality rental units for those in higher-income brackets. If Santa Fe wants to attract young, creative workers — a group that now constitutes 10 percent of the workforce — many want to live near entertainment and cultural centers. They may not want a charming adobe with a wood stove, but a low-maintenance unit with a garage, spa and workout Population estimates for Santa Fe County room, Ladd said. (with projected annual population growth rates) “Creative workers without 2010: 144,532 children may not want to live 2015: 154,756 (1.37 percent) in Tierra Contenta,” she said. 2020: 164,006 (1.16 percent) “They’re going to want to live 2025: 171,905 (0.94 percent) close to where the action is.” 2030: 178,124 (0.71 percent) She is urging officials to keep an 2035: 182,410 (0.48 percent) eye on the large, underutilized 2040: 184,832 (0.26 percent) commercial stretches along Cerrillos Road and St. Michael’s Population growth estimates for Drive. “Any redevelopment New Mexico Metro Areas 2010-2040 needs to have a housing Albuquerque: 53 percent component,” she said. Las Cruces: 42 percent The report also says that if Farmington: 35 percent there is a renewed demand for Santa Fe: 28 percent larger single-family homes, that Source: UNM Geospatial and Population Studies Group might come from immigrant and Spanish-speaking families, which tend to be larger because of children and extended-family situations. Right now, Ladd said, immigrants gravitate toward housing with friends, relatives and temporary rental units. Though Homewise and other groups are developing these neighborhoods, will that be sufficient? she asked. And no one knows what would happen in Santa Fe if an immigration reform effort passes Congress and becomes law, a measure that at least stopped the fear of deportation for many who are undocumented. Would those families purchase homes or be more comfortable starting businesses in Santa Fe and investing here, instead of sending money back home? “Immigrants are now like a subculture in town,” Ladd said, adding that it will be interesting to see what happens if that changes. She said her office is launching a study of immigrant housing needs with local Spanish speakers that might help answer those questions. One thing Santa Fe may not have to worry about is something akin to the population bursts it saw in the 1980s and ’90s. Population growth and in-migration have slowed since the 2010 census, and Santa Fe County as a whole is growing slower than the rest of New Mexico, according to estimates from UNM, with annual population growth in the county expected to drop below 1 percent in the coming decade. Reed Liming, who watches these trends as director of long-term planning for the city of Santa Fe, agrees with the slower growth scenario and is also preaching the need for a different, more diverse housing stock with townhomes, condos and fewer single-family residences. “But if a major industry were to relocate in Santa Fe, then all bets are off about growth,” Liming said in an email, “but major corporate relocation just hasn’t been Santa Fe’s history thus far.”
MUSEUMS NOURISH THE SOUL
MUSEUM OF INTERNATIONAL FOLK ART New World Cuisine: The Histories of Chocolate, Mate Y Más NEW MEXICO MUSEUM OF ART It’s About Time: 14,000 Years of Art in New Mexico MUSEUM OF INDIAN ARTS & CULTURE What’s New in New: Recent Acquisitions NEW MEXICO HISTORY MUSEUM Cowboys Real and Imagined
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JAne PHIllIPS
Tomas Rivera, executive director of the Chainbreaker Collective.
bReaking The ChainS THAT BInd
new and different mix of housing is needed By chris Quintana
Tomas Rivera, 32, is the executive director of the Chainbreaker Collective, an advocacy group that pushes for alternative transportation. Chainbreaker’s flagship program is a bike resource center, a program that swaps refurbished bikes and the knowledge of how to maintain them for volunteer hours in the bike shop. The organization started in 2004, and has since evolved to push for transportation policy changes in Santa Fe. Rivera has deep ties to the city, where he lives in a 100-year-old house built by his grandparents. He talked with The Santa Fe New Mexican about the future of alternative transportation in Santa Fe. You talk a lot about how cars can keep people poor. Can you explain why? Rivera: It just takes simple math, and I would encourage everyone to sit down and do it themselves. If your main source of transportation is a car, and you’re a low-income person struggling to make ends meet, you don’t really have the ability to jump on a bus because the next stop is a mile away. You live 12 miles away from your work, six miles from your grocery store. You’re going to drive a car in Santa Fe. And the cars that people tend to buy tend to be what they can afford, which are lower-end cars. They don’t get the best gas mileage, and they need a lot of repairs. It winds up being a money pit. On top of which, gas prices skyrocket. … A lot of our members are telling us they spend a third of their income just on transportation costs. And folks feel like, 12
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“We can’t get out of this trap.” So, what are you trying to do to help people out of that trap? Rivera: We’re trying to help expand access to public transportation. That’s sort of the first step of a viable alternative to driving cars. The deeper issue is to try to slow down that sprawl, which is happening. So it’s to curtail that sprawl and really create real sustainable communities, so that’s communities that are walkable. Those are infrastructure problems. Those are systematic issues. So how do you fix those systematic issues? Rivera: There are forward-thinking policies, and that’s a campaign we’re working on now. Once you buy a bike, you can show a receipt that you got it from us or a store, and then you would get an annual bus pass in return. When people think of transportation, they think, “Oh God — let’s try to keep gas prices down.” … But there’s almost very little discussion about changing that dynamic. That said, how do you get people out of the mindset of using cars? Rivera: To us, it’s not about trying to convince people to change their lifestyle. I think people, in the end, do the best they can. To us, Chainbreaker, the organizing work that we do is about changing those circumstances in order to empower people to make healthier and more sustainable choices. Frankly, you’re not going to convince anyone for very long to ride their bike 15 miles to work, one way. The question is, why do they have to travel so far in the first place?
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JANE PHILLIPS
children learn about cascarones, an easter cultural tradition, at Santa Fe children’s Project early Learning center.
LocaL United Way PAVES THE WAy FOR CHILDREN By K ay LocKridge Pajama-clad Annabelle headed straight to the puzzles on a low shelf of the living-room bookcase. At 21 months, she already knew how to match the colorful puzzle pieces to the holes in the boards. Learning to turn and insert the pieces would come next. Melissa, the tot’s mother — who asked that the family’s last name not be published — and Isabel Hageman, a trained home visitor who works with the Santa Fe Children’s Project, applauded the child’s skills, and encouraged her to name the animals on a puzzle. “I know she’s bright,” said Melissa, a dance teacher at the National Dance Institute, “and I felt that the support provided by the home visitor would help open up more opportunities for Annabelle. Sometimes, it’s hard to keep one step ahead of her.” Hageman provides support to the mother and daughter, and information about community resources, during her weekly visits through the United Way-sponsored program for new parents. As Annabelle grows, she can continue to receive support from Children’s Project programs. At age 4, she may be enrolled at the Early Learning Center on La Madera Street — a play-based pre-kindergarten program operated through the Children’s Project. “All play is learning, especially when it is purposeful and guided by skillful teachers,” said Pam Remstein, the center’s director. The demand for early childhood learning centers is high in Santa Fe. “We have 96 youngsters divided into six classes daily,” Remstein said, “each class with two teachers … and there’s a waiting list.” As Annabelle moves from the Early Learning Center to kindergarten, and then to grade school, the Children’s Project will follow her progress through third grade, encouraging her and offering help if she needs it, such as tutoring to boost her literacy skills. When the United Way of Santa Fe County decided almost 10 years ago to abandon its traditional mission — outreach and fundraising for other local nonprofits — and to direct its resources, instead, to its own early childhood initiatives, many nonprofits objected. But other sectors of the community
embraced the new direction; the Children’s Project now receives support from Santa Fe Public Schools, the city of Santa Fe and numerous local businesses. “It took a courageous board to visualize both the current and future needs of the community and then act quickly to begin to meet those needs,” said Katherine Freeman, who was a member of the United Way board in the early 2000s. Freeman, who was working at the time for St. Vincent Hospital — which is now Christus St. Vincent Regional Medical Center — was named CEO of the United Way of Santa Fe County in 2003. The Children’s Project became the organization’s sole mission shortly after, focusing on a variety of child- and family-related programs: First Born, a homevisitation program for first-time parents; pre-K classes; child literacy programs; parent support groups. More than 4,500 children and families have been served since 2005, and the organization’s budget has jumped from $1 million annually to about $3 million, with most of the revenue, 84 percent, going directly to services. For those keeping track of the numbers, 8 percent was spent on fundraising efforts in fiscal year 2011-12, the latest reported year, and another 8 percent on administrative costs. Revenue for 2011-12 came from the group’s annual fundraising campaign (36 percent), federal grants (23 percent), state grants (15 percent), and other grants and income (26 percent). “United Way of Santa Fe County is a robust operation, and people see that we’re more than just a charity that hands out money to a variety of deserving causes,” Freeman said. “We’re making real change in the community by investing in its future, the children. … Are we there yet? No. With early childhood education in place, however, we’ll be on the way.” She said the Children’s Project has become a model for state and national United Way chapters. But the organization couldn’t tackle its mission without the help of the
Children’s project is a model for state and 14
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Santa Fe Community Orchestra Oliver Prezant, Music Director
The award-winning SFCO, established in 1982 is celebrating more than thirty years of bringing FREE classical music to the public. Each season, the volunteer musicians of the SFCO present 5 free concerts of classical favorites, rarely heard repertoire, accessible contemporary works, and world premieres of compositions by NM composers.
UpCOming EvEntS
JANE PHIllIPS
Anatomy of a Symphony Concert preview Lecture/musical illustrations by Oliver Prezant & SFCO Featured work: Brahms Symphony No. 1 Friday, May 31, 6 - 7 p.m. • St. Francis Auditorium Admission is free - donations welcome
Daniela Bencomo Flores blows her egg dry while making cascarones.
community, Freeman said. “Our individual donors represent a very broad base of community support.” The United Way also draws community support in the form of volunteers who serve on its 18-member board. Current and retired business executives are represented on the board, including chairwoman Marte Murphy, a retired Aramark executive; Chairman-elect Alan Austin of New Mexico Bank & Trust; and treasurer and secretary Bill Moffett, formerly of ExxonMobil. Board member Alex Valdez, former president and CEO of Christus St. Vincent and now vice president of international advocacy for Christus Health, insists that early childhood development programs can improve the future workforce. “The quality of life for a child, and the contributions the child makes to society as an adult, can be traced back to the experiences of the first few years of life,” Valdez said. “Early childhood development should top proposed economic development plans.” Valerie Plame Wilson, a former CIA agent who is now a member of the Santa Fe Institute and the United Way board, said home visits are critical for baby care. Plame believes the Children’s Project’s home-visitation program for new parents “means money saved in the future.” Freeman envisions a time when the Children’s Project puts itself out of business. “This will happen when, not if, early childhood development becomes so hardwired in the community that we won’t be needed,” she said. “What we need to accomplish that is more collaborative and cooperative efforts among all of us working on behalf of children.” To volunteer, donate or learn more about the Santa Fe Children’s Project and its programs, visit uwsfc.org.
national chapters
SEASOn FinAlE COnCErt: Rimsky-Korsakov: Russian Easter Overture Grieg: Holberg Suite, Op. 40 Brahms: Symphony No. 1, Op. 68 Sunday, June 2, 2:30 p.m. • St. Francis Auditorium Admission is free - donations welcome The Santa Fe Community Orchestra is… Five free concerts every season Anatomy of a Symphony Concert Previews Side-by-Side programs with the public schools Performances of large choral/orchestral works Collaborations with actors, dancers & filmmakers New Works by New Mexico’s Composers Let’s Dance! our annual swing and ballroom event
info: 505-466-4879 sfcoinfo@gmail.com / like us on SFCO projects are made possible in part by New Mexico Arts, a division of the Department of Cultural Affairs, the National Endowment for the Arts; the Santa Fe Arts Commission, and the 1% Lodger’s Tax.
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enterprising ortega family RETURNS TO SANTA FE
Business combines retail, restaurant and national park concessions By dennis carroll Armand Ortega, the ascending patriarch of the family that dominates much of the tourist trade on the southwest corner of the Plaza, tells of the time the Ortegas abandoned Santa Fe, figuring there was just no more business to be had. But that was nearly 150 years ago, and the Ortega family eventually returned and has done quite well since, to say the least. It would be difficult not to walk into one of the family-owned shops on that corner — the high-end Ortega’s Indian jewelry store, the former Ore House restaurant (now the Thunderbird) atop the jewelry store, the adjoining Mimosa’s clothing shop and, across San Francisco Street, the Yippee Yi Yo souvenir store. Though it bloomed in Santa Fe, the Ortega Family Enterprises’ present growth lies primarily with its recent and ever-expanding list of hotels and concession operations at national parks — from the San Francisco Bay Area to New York City — overseen by Armand’s son, Shane. “Ninety-five percent of our business is not in Santa Fe anymore,” Armand Ortega said. But returning to very early days, Ortega, 63, cites a letter the family has kept since the 1870s that notes that three Ortega brothers, including his great-greatgrandfather, felt that Santa Fe had been tapped out for business opportunities. “We’re moving to Cubero,” Ortega quoted from the letter, referring to a tiny village between Albuquerque and Gallup. The Ortegas had arrived in Santa Fe by way of St. Louis in the 1870s. The brothers, who had taken up ranching on the plains of Western New Mexico, eventually ended up in Concho, Ariz. “They were right there next to the Navajo reservation and that’s when they became Indian traders,” Ortega said. He said the earliest recorded account of his family buying art and jewelry from the Indians is of his great-great-grandfather selling a Navajo rug to Fred Harvey for about $10. Ortega grew up in Tucson, spending summers at his maternal grandparents’ farm in Louisiana or with his father’s parents at a trading post in Lupton, Ariz., on the New Mexico state line. His father, Armand Sr., is still buying jewelry and rugs from the Navajo at a trading post in Gallup. “Those two educations were better than the upper middle-class education I got next to the Tucson Country Club,” Ortega joked. Despite lingering concerns about establishing a store in Santa Fe because it had become “the epicenter of Indian arts and crafts,” and seemed pretty well saturated with such shops, Ortega returned the family business to Santa Fe in 1971, buying the La Fonda gift shop. Ortega’s initial concerns evaporated as the shop became caught up in a national Indian arts boom, and “jewelry was selling so fast…. There was a whole sense of an awareness of the Native American” including a rash of Indian-themed movies including Little Big Man, A Man Called Horse and the Billy Jack films, several of which were filmed in or near Santa Fe. “The people were coming in faster than I could buy the jewelry,” Ortega said. ”You could go to Gallup, take a few suitcases, buy $100,000 worth of jewelry one place, walk down the street and sell it for $150,000…Everybody was coming in on their Lear jet. It was crazy.” Ortega bought the current jewelry store building at 101 West San Francisco St. in 1973, only to see it burn to the ground about a year later. (A fire had also destroyed the previous building, the Claire Hotel, on the same spot decades earlier.) “We had to rebuild and that was the best thing that ever happened to us,” said Ortega, who had it redesigned as it was in the late 1800s. He took over the upstairs Ore House restaurant two years ago. At one point, until 2010, the Ortegas also owned the iconic Simply Santa Fe, down San Francisco Street where Cowboys and Indians is now. As apparently solid as the Plaza businesses have been, the family’s financial interests in the mid 1990s turned to other ventures, especially at national parks 16
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JANE PHILLIPS
from left, shane ortega, Jose Manuel Garcia and armand ortega.
and monuments. Under the direction of Armand’s son Shane, the Ortegas also are busy bumping out the sitting operators of some state and municipal recreational and vacation sites. The family’s first national park concession was at Bandelier National Monument, which the Ortegas managed to finagle away from parks-concession giant Aramark. Since then the Ortegas have sold the Bandelier concession, but emphasizing environmental improvements, historical preservation and customer service, have acquired the concession operations at Carlsbad Caverns, White Sands National Monument, California’s Death Valley National Park, Hawaii Volcano National Park and Muir Woods north of San Francisco, as well as the paddle boat operation on Stow Lake in Golden Gate Park and two beach clubs in New York City. The Ortegas got help from Congress in 1995 when lawmakers changed the national parks bidding laws and regulations, opening the door for upstarts such as the Ortegas to bounce ensconced park contractors, some of whom have been around since the days of Teddy Roosevelt. “Sitting concessionaires had gotten used to doing things a certain way and not having competition,” Ortega said. Shane Ortega said he looks for concession and hotel operations that can be restored to reflect their cultural and historical heritage. “It’s so neat to take these old buildings and turn them into something special,” he said. “Everyone we go after we say, ‘This looks like a convenience store. Let’s restore some dignity to it.’” He noted that when the Ortegas took over operations at White Sands National Monument, “it was like a 7-11 gone wrong.”
2 0 1 3 SUMMER S E A S O N
Besides the usual advice to business startups, such as ensuring that you have enough capital or not expecting to go big time in a short time, Shane Ortega, president of Ortega Family Enterprises, offered a few key tips peculiar to Santa Fe on starting, sustaining and growing a family retail business here. What role does Internet competition play in operating a touristoriented retail business in Santa Fe? Ortega: Don’t fear competition from the Web or think you have to rely on it a lot. Unless you’re in the restaurant business, in destination markets such as Santa Fe, the Internet is not that big a competitor. Nobody is going to buy a $2,000 concho belt on the Internet. They are going to buy it because they are on their honeymoon or their 20th anniversary, and they are so excited to be here in Santa Fe. Put your effort toward teaching your workers how to interact with customers. “It will go a thousand times further” than whatever you do on the Web. How could the city and community and business leaders better help startup retail and other businesses? Ortega: The city departments are often surprisingly helpful when you want to do a remodel or I want to get a business license, but the problem is … there is nobody who can hold [a new entrepreneur’s] hand and say, “These are the three permits you need,” or, “This is what an occupancy permit is.” … If there could be a program that says, if you are starting a business in Santa Fe, here are steps one, two and three. I think a lot of people quit just because they get overwhelmed. What role do emotional or personality factors play in sustaining and growing a tourist-oriented business in Santa Fe? Ortega: Become the world’s expert in your little niche and be afraid of everything. We’re afraid of being ripped off, we’re afraid of borrowing money, but that’s probably why we will never be a super huge company. Also, develop a sense of camaraderie with your business managers. You need a “we’re-in-it-together” attitude. Is a specific location of a business in Santa Fe any more or less important that anywhere else? Ortega: Almost on the Plaza is not on the Plaza. Don’t pay less rent to be two or three blocks off the tourist paths. Your foot-path traffic gets cut by 70 percent and your rent is only, say, 20 percent lower. So a lot of people will open a store … because it’s less rent and they just kill themselves.
ASPEN SANTAFEBALLET
SEASON PRESENTING SPONSOR
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PHOTO: ROSALIE O’CONNOR
— dennis carroll CORPORATE SPONSORS
The Ortega family of the early 21st century is likely to remain rooted in Santa Fe, even though two years ago they shut down Simply Fe. (“No one was buying $10,000 couches any more,” said Shane Ortega.) In fact it wouldn’t be surprising if they even added to their real estate and retail holdings, if, as Shane Ortega said, “the right one came along.” In the meantime, Ortega Family Enterprises has its sights set on at least two or three more national park concession operations, including Yosemite, Yellowstone and Mesa Verde. However, cautioned Shane: “We don’t want to get so big we’re not having fun anymore.”
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Partially funded by the City of Santa Fe Arts Commission and the 1% Lodgers Tax, and made possible in part by New Mexico Arts, a Division of the Department of Cultural Affairs, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
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IntErnAtIonAl Folk Art MArkEt 10 YEARS AND COUNTINg
Unique business model brings the work of art to Santa Fe and the world by patricia west-barker This July, the International Folk Art Market will celebrate its 10th anniversary on Museum Hill. Co-founder Judith Espinar — who spent 18 years in the fashion industry in New York City and another decade as owner of The Clay Angel shop on Lincoln Avenue in Santa Fe — has been intimately involved with the market since it was no more than a conversation among friends. She recently talked with The Santa Fe New Mexican about the market’s founding and her vision for its future. We know what the Folk Art Market is now — an international success that brings lots of people to Santa Fe. But what was it like when you first started?
there are two important things that i would say we’ve done for our artists: we’ve created a marketplace for highlevel traditional arts of the world and we’ve shown that this can be successful — $2.4 million in 21 hours last year. and
Espinar: The first market was started [when] a bunch of people who love folk art got together and said that there was Spanish Market and there was Indian Market, but we folk art lovers don’t have a folk art market. Interestingly enough, we had on our committee a bunch of worker bees, and we had relationships in other parts of the world that actually helped us pull together that first market. We were able to leverage a relationship with UNESCO that Tom Aageson and I had, and they requested — without any kind of a specific plan on paper, just a phone conversation — that I go to Paris and look at their files of gold-medal winners for traditional arts around the world and select the people who would then apply to that market. And they promised at that point to sponsor — meaning fully pay for, house, feed — 11 artists. It wasn’t just huge that we had 11 artists and that caliber of artist, but huge that UNESCO, which has been one of the major voices in heritage importance of all kinds, came in and recognized [the market] from the very beginning as something important. And they made us recognize that it might be more important than we had thought. So we called other organizations that we knew and other people that were doing work with folk artists around the world, and we leveraged it. We told them UNESCO was bringing 11 artists, and we asked, “How many are you bringing?” And from then on in, it was a market. You talked about leveraging pre-existing relationships. How critical to getting the first market up and running and being as successful as it was were those pre-existing relationships? Espinar: Equally important was another kind of relationship. We also recognized that there were many people who owned stores and who had businesses around folk art in many different ways in Santa Fe. And so we invited them all to come 18
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we have always treated them as artists and as business people. Judy espinar
and hear us present this idea. I can’t tell you how many people were there, but it was quite a show, and many of them did turn out to apply to bring an artist to the market — so our local businesses also participated in this in a major way. Our Indian Market and our Spanish Market paved the road for us to do a quality market. And people in Santa Fe — who were the major people who attended this first market — recognized that in Santa Fe, a cultural market was something of quality. They didn’t expect a Renaissance festival. They didn’t expect something that wasn’t high level. The relationships that we had partnering with the Museum of International Folk Art from the beginning, and the Museum of New Mexico Foundation and the state [Department of ] Cultural Affairs also were incredibly important. So, I think if you had to say one thing that was even more important than any of the other things that I said, it would be this: We followed in a tradition of highlevel cultural markets in Santa Fe. So, it sounds like you are saying that this is something that might only have been able to happen in Santa Fe? Espinar: I think, yes. I’ve given this a lot of thought, and I am almost positive that with the market the way it is now and the passion that the world has to bring intercultural events together, creating participation from many, many countries at the same time will lead to other locations that are embracing this idea — but getting it started in another place? I do not think so. I started a store in Santa Fe, and I thought I would
have a little store … and from the first day, it wasn’t a little store. So I had a sense of how people are here and how receptive they are to beauty and tradition. How about the worker bees that you mentioned? Is the quality and quantity of volunteers that you can access here an important part of the market’s success? Espinar: Absolutely. In the very beginning, 25 or more people sat around a big board table at the Museum of New Mexico Foundation. Some of us were returned Peace Corps volunteers, some were people from the museums, some were people who love folk art, some were people who have stores — and we asked everybody to raise their hand if they would actually work on [the market], and all but one person raised their hands and said they would work for the market. And did they work! It was amazing. From the beginning, we started a tradition where volunteers had creative input in what we did and how we formed ourselves. … They also did a remarkable job in getting everything for nothing. We ended up, I believe, only paying for the tents and the portable potties. Lynn Brown, who was very much a big part of this first market and the second market, said to me, “We got everything … every last apple … we got it donated.” And we had artists staying at people’s houses and families driving them around between events and getting them home to sleep at night. This was entirely a community effort. Totally remarkable. At what point did you decide that the market was more than a sales event, that it was a way to sustain artists?
Espinar: I think it was after the first year, when we started to think about doing another market. We started to think about what we needed to do to help [artists] get here to our market. And once we started to do that, we realized that if they could get here to our market — that if they could apply, learn to pack their goods, if they learned how to fill out customs forms, if they learned to label correctly — we realized that we weren’t just a market. We realized that if they learned how to get through our process, which is not the easiest process, that they could apply to any market in the world and that they could get accepted. So we realized that the experience itself was the core of the education — and I think the fact that we realized that from the very beginning really helped us do a better job. We wanted to be clear not just about what they needed to do, but also why they needed to do it. Relatively shortly after that, we started to say that we were the largest international folk art market in the world. And then, two years ago, the Anderson School of Business in Albuquerque did a very, very big study on us, and they confirmed that yes, we are the largest international folk art market in the world. We have more than 60 countries coming this year to market, and that alone puts us out of the reach of other folk art — not craft, folk art — markets.
THE CCA CINEMATHEQUE New Mexico’s Finest Independent Theater • One million served in our 30-year history • Newly renovated theater with new seats •THE STUDIO screening room ® • The most Academy Award-winning films • Partnerships with more than 150 local schools and organizations
The market is 10 years old. Where do you see it 10 years from now? Espinar: My vision has always been about more markets. And the more we do this market, the more we understand that folk artists need opportunities to sell their work, where the work is respected for its essential qualities. In 10 years, I hope that we’ll have many more markets. A market, though, in this day and age, can be many things. And this is really important: For me, a market is an orange crate by the side of the road where a woman sells beads that she strings together. And when she is successful there, she might have a stand in the marketplace and then it goes from there — and a market can be virtual and we definitely believe in the pop-up concept. So we are looking at many, many things, and I hope to spend the next year, maybe the next two years, of my work in the market looking for how we can best discover and identify and possibly create additional opportunities for folk artists to prosper. Is there anything else you think we should know about the origins and success of the market? Espinar: I think that you need a business background. If you want to start things, you should start them with people who not only understand business but who are inspired by it and think it’s wonderful. Clearly you were one of the business brains that helped set up the market. What about business is inspiring to you? Espinar: I think what happened is that we started with business people and that we treated our artists as business people. And this is something that, after they are there for a while, they identify with and they appreciate because we do not tell them how to do everything. We try to structure things in a businesslike way so that from the very beginning things connect and they make sense, dollar-and-cents-wise. There are two important things that I would say we’ve done for our artists: We’ve created a marketplace for high-level traditional arts of the world and we’ve shown that this can be successful — $2.4 million in 21 hours last year. And we have always treated them as artists and as business people. For more information about the International Folk Art Market, visit folkartmarket.org. The Work of Art, a new book about the market by Santa Fe author and editor Carmella Padilla, is scheduled for publication this summer.
Premieres
A Cat in Paris • A Separation • Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry • Beasts of the Southern Wild • Black Power Mixtape • Boy • Chicken With Plums • Chico and Rita • Buck • Eames: The Architect and the Painter • Five Broken Cameras • A Single Man • Into the Abyss • Invisible War • Jiro Dreams of Sushi • Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present • Chasing Ice • Marley • March of the Pinguins • Pina • Samsara • Shame • Volver • The Queen of Versailles • Winged Migration • What The Bleep Do We Know?
Special Programs
SF Institute’s Science On Screen • Studio Ghibli Retrospective • Santa Fe Jewish Film Festival • Santa Fe Opera’s OSCAR WILDE Series • Happy Birthday Chuck Jones! • FOLK/ART/CINEMA with International Folk Arts Market • Santa Fe Independent Film Festival • New Mexico Filmmakers Experience • Santa Fe Film Festival
CCA
CENTER FOR CONTEMPORARY ARTS SANTA FE
1050 Old Pecos Trail • 505.982.1338 • ccasantafe.org
Learn more about underwriting opportunities! Contact Jason Silverman at jason@ccasantafe.org • 505-982-1338 ex. 105 2013 cit y different 19
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NATAlIE guIllÉN
liana woodward and rahul shinde join site santa fe’s young curators as they prepare for their presentation of Monomyth, an art exhibit at eggman and walrus, last year.
the information age rEAChES ArTS OrgANIzATIONS
When the medium molds the message, doing business is a lot more complicated By GreG Pleshaw Marketing and communications strategies, also known as marcom, have long centered on news releases, print advertising, direct mail and newsletters sent with postage stamps. But today, businesses and nonprofits are embracing every piece of new technology available to help advance their profits and their missions, using email blasts, websites, mobile sites, Facebook pages and posts, and Twitter feeds — and keeping up with consumer reviews posted online. The Information Age is here, and it has made doing business a lot more complicated. “The reality nowadays is that organizations and businesses have more work to do to generate exposure and awareness,” said Jennifer Marshall, founder and president of The Marshall Plan, a New Mexico public relations firm. The old days of massive print campaigns à la Mad Men are over, and the new world of online marcom means businesses and nonprofits must spend a lot more time honing a message — and an even greater amount of time in front of a 20
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computer screen or smartphone, making sure everyone sees it.
Center for Contemporary arts Prior to the arrival of SITE Santa Fe in 1995, the nonprofit Center for Contemporary Arts was the only real contemporary arts space in Santa Fe. But while SITE casts a worldwide net in its exhibition of new art, CCA’s scope is local and regional, with shows that tend to feature people you might know. Nestled in a little field behind the Armory for Arts building on Old Santa Fe Trail, CCA is a comforting and even homey place for cutting-edge arts. Featuring both visual and performing arts, the site is more likely to draw locals than tourists. Most first-time visitors at CCA arrive to view an independent feature film at Cinematheque, where popcorn comes with tamari, brewer’s yeast and real melted butter. CCA has been around in various incarnations since the 1970s, and for many
local contemporary artists, it was the first place they showed or performed. CCA has developed a community of loyal followers — and a quietly growing social media presence. “Our marketing budget was slashed to $5,600 this year,” said Erin Elder, CCA’s visual arts director. “So clearly, advertising is not an option. … And we don’t have the manpower for a social media campaign.” But a quick look at the Web — on a mobile device, even — reveals that CCA actually does have a robust social media campaign on its Facebook page, which has almost 4,000 likes. CCA also has a regular email blast that reaches thousands of people every 10 days or so. “In addition to what we put out in our blasts and Facebook, we do a lot of push towards editorial,” Elder said, citing coverage in media such as Pasatiempo, the Weekly Alibi in Albuquerque, the Santa Fe Reporter, AdobeAirstream and local radio shows, including Mary-Charlotte Domandi’s Radio Café. “There’s not a ton of media in New Mexico for the arts,” Elder said. “Fortunately, we find that artists are all out there doing their own marketing via Facebook and postcards. We don’t have to play by the rules.”
Lensic Performing Arts center The Lensic Performing Arts Center was built in 1931 as a vaudeville theater, and the wild arches and cornices inside the theater are reflective of the time. The building’s development was spearheaded by local merchant Nathan Salmon and his son-in-law, E. John Greer, and its unique name was formed by using the first initials of Salmon’s six grandchildren — Lila, Elias, Nathan, Sara, Irene and Charles. It quickly became a hub of community social activity and then became a movie theater in the 1950s, serving popcorn and Coca-Cola to generations of moviegoers before it closed its doors in 1999. A magnificent building with ample seating and the ability to show both films and live performances, the Lensic lay dormant for only a short while until a coalition of local arts organizations, spearheaded by philanthropists William and Nancy Zeckendorf, began to raise money to turn the Lensic into a performing arts center. Things moved more quickly than anyone could expect for such an ambitious project, and in 2001, the new Lensic opened its doors. Today, the Lensic hosts more than 200 professional performances a year, including music, dance, theater and film. The theater is also available to local organizations, returning the Lensic to its former glory as a vibrant community center. So, how does this place steeped in history communicate with its modern-day audiences? The old-fashioned way, of course — newspapers and magazines — and a sprinkling of social media. “We do a lot of traditional media,” said Dianna Delling, director of public relations and marketing. “Our audience is 45 and above, primarily, and our research shows that most people hear about our shows from newspapers and print advertising, followed by email blasts. Facebook comes in last in our surveys.” Delling, a former journalist who was an editor at Outside magazine for eight years and also an editor at The Santa Fean, has been with the Lensic since August 2012 and has built a marketing strategy based on the numbers. While her No. 1 venue is Pasatiempo — and she also buys ads with other local sources and pitches story ideas to newspapers and radio stations — the Lensic has a rich website with a full roster of events and the ability to sell tickets directly from the site. In addition to its website, the Lensic has a Facebook fan page that boasts more than 4,000 likes. The theater also maintains a Twitter feed and has a 3,500-member email blast list, all maintained by marketing assistant Erica Davila. The Lensic sells out a lot of its shows, Delling said. “We do think our marketing combo is working,” she said. “But we do want to get deeper into social media to get people talking about the Lensic and building general public relations.” She cited LinkedIn, Tumblr and Pinterest as sites the center may target as it expands its social media network.
site sAntA fe Since its inception in 1995, SITE Santa Fe has consistently delivered world-class, cutting-edge arts programs and exhibitions. A SITE Santa Fe opening night is a
CLYDE MuELLER
dianna delling, director of public relations and marketing at the Lensic Performing Arts center.
who’s who of the local art industry, attracting hundreds of people who come to see the latest in contemporary art from Santa Fe and around the world. SITE Santa Fe’s biennial exhibitions have attracted well-known curators and artists from all over the world, and the organization’s Young Curators program has taught scores of local youth how to organize an art show. Despite its innovative programs, however, SITE Santa Fe only recently began to develop an up-to-date, user-friendly website. After dealing with an ancient website (circa 1998) for too many years, SITE recently partnered with local design firm Anagr.am for a total website overhaul. “The primary issues that we were dealing with in the old site were that we couldn’t change anything on the site without going through our designer, which involved a lot of back and forth via email,” said Anne Wrinkle, SITE Santa Fe director of external affairs. “The other issue was that we had all these archives — documents that included text files, audio files, video files, etc. — of all these different exhibitions and experiences here, and there was no way to get to them easily.” SITE Santa Fe’s new website allows anyone within the organization to easily change Web content. The website also has a search feature that gives viewers quick access to an enormous archive that dates back to SITE’s inception. “SITE is an organization with a tremendous volume of important archives, events and exhibitions,” said Zane Fischer, co-founder and president of Anagr.am. The challenge, he said, was organizing that information so the site was easy to navigate — “and to maintain a design aesthetic worthy of a world-class contemporary art organization.” While SITE Santa Fe operated for many years with an antiquated website, it was keeping up with the online marcom revolution. It has been increasingly focusing its marketing efforts on email blasts, as well as Facebook and Twitter feeds. “We currently have 4,900 followers on Facebook,” said Brittny Dayes, SITE Santa Fe’s director of membership and digital communication. “We’ve worked hard to generate that amount of followers because it’s really the lifeblood of how we generate buzz around everything we do.” Dayes said SITE Santa Fe uses Facebook and Twitter in different ways to get its messages out to fans. “Twitter is about blasts,” Dayes said. “You’ve only got 140 characters to play with, so you say what needs to be said and you’re done. … Facebook, on the other hand, gives you enough space for narrative. With Facebook, you really have a chance to tell a story about your exhibition … and if you do it correctly, you’re engaging your audience with content that is compelling enough to bring them to the location.” 2013 cit y different 21
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CLYDE MUELLER
LUIS SÁNCHEZ SATURNO
MarCoM DRIvES CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT
Tech-savvy Santa Fe businesses exploit the potential of online marketing and communications strategies By GreGory Pleshaw
The Plaza Café Opened for business in 1905 and probably the oldest surviving restaurant in Santa Fe, the Plaza Café has been owned by husband and wife Dan and Beneranda Razatos since 1947 — and has remained with the family ever since, serving up local New Mexican favorites, along with Greek and American dishes. In 2010, the original restaurant on the Plaza was damaged by a fire, so the family opened another location, Plaza Café Southside, on Zafarano Drive off Cerrillos Road. Today, both locations are open; chef Andrew Razatos runs the downtown location, while his older brother, Leonard Razatos, operates the south-side location. And both brothers have embraced social media to help keep customers coming back. “What primarily keeps us in business is good food, longevity, word of mouth and location,” Andrew Razatos said, “but we are rapidly recognizing that the technological extras from the Web and other channels do bring in repeat and new business all the time.” Each Plaza Café location has its own website featuring the restaurant’s menu. And each website has links to the individual restaurant’s own Facebook and Twitter feeds. While the Facebook page for the Plaza Café Southside displays photos and information about dishes and drinks, the downtown restaurant’s page offers a little more, such as cooking tips and recipes. Both locations take their Facebook pages seriously — updating content on nearly a daily basis. The downtown locale is ahead of the curve in employing what’s known as “responsive design technology” for its website. Such technology allows a website to detect a viewer’s browser, determine whether the viewer is using a mobile device and figure out which operating system he or she has. The site can then automatically deliver a mobile version of the site that matches the viewer’s needs. The two Plaza Café locations share an app that takes a viewer to their websites — a cheap purchase for the family owned “chain.” The south-side restaurant also offers a text-based discount program, in which a customer can send a text message to a special number and then receive a response that includes the day’s meal deals. Andrew Razatos also sees value in Web-based restaurant review sites — which make some restaurant operators cringe because they know that one bad review 22
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can kill their business. But Razatos uses complaints on the site to help make improvements at the Plaza Café locations. The review sites that most businesses follow regularly are Yelp, Urbanspoon and TripAdvisor. “We follow that traffic religiously,” Razatos said. “We monitor it constantly. When people have complaints, we will occasionally respond directly on the site, and if it seems like a legitimate complaint, we bring it to everyone’s attention during a staff meeting.” Razatos said social media is particularly important in drawing tourists to the restaurants. “We could probably do without this stuff if our aim was only to provide food and service for the locals who know who we are and what we do,” he said. “But there’s a big world of people who come to Santa Fe, and they need to know we exist.” But technology is also a way to keep in contact with local customers. “When it comes to Facebook,” Razatos said,” … we’re able to keep in constant touch with our audience of fans and let them know, ‘Hey, check out our burgers,’ so they are constantly reminded that the Plaza is a place to come any time and have a good meal.”
heriTage hoTels & resorTs A big part of the promise of online marketing and communications lies in a company’s ability to tell a compelling story about what it offers — and to create and control that story for an ever-growing list of patrons and fans. One such company is Heritage Hotels & Resorts, which operates the Hotel St. Francis, the Hotel Chimayó de Santa Fe and The Lodge at Santa Fe. The company also owns the Hotel Albuquerque and Nativo Lodge in the Duke City, and the Hotel Encantado in Las Cruces. Heritage’s online marketing and communications effort, known as marcom, is the centerpiece of the company’s overall marketing strategy. In fact, the company is working to zero out its print budget. Maresa Thompson, marketing and creative director for the chain, said Heritage has trimmed more than $80,000 a year from its print advertising costs. Thompson works closely with Heritage vice president Caryl Hesel, former vice
president of TravelClick, an online hotel marketing and reservations management site. “Each of our hotels has a unique flavor to it,” said Hesel, who recently moved to New Mexico. “Because we’re not the same everywhere, our online collateral tells a compelling story about why you should choose to stay with us.” While Heritage has a website that lists all of its properties, each destination also has its own website, which reflects the look and feel of the hotel. Heritage sends each of its guests an email asking for feedback and suggesting that the guest provide a review on TripAdvisor. The company also uses EBuzz, a tool for monitoring a business’s online reputation. Rather than scouring the Internet for review sites where customers have entered glowing reports — or devastating complaints — an Ebuzz subscriber can quickly scan the day’s posts from multiple sites, such as Yelp, Expedia, Priceline and Travelocity, to see what customers are saying. The company can then respond quickly when there are issues worth addressing. “Through Ebuzz, we’re able to monitor a lot of feedback channels at once,” Hesel said, adding that the company can pass the information to its individual hotels, along with recommendations for best practices. Until recently, Heritage built its websites the old-fashioned way, designing a separate computer site and mobile site for each hotel. Now, the company is moving toward “responsive design.” “Our mobile traffic is through the roof,” Thompson said, “and is only going to get larger as more people adopt smartphone technology. Responsive Web design is the only way to go.” Heritage Hotels & Resorts also has a Facebook page and Twitter feed for each hotel, bar and restaurant. “Facebook and Twitter is less about driving commerce than about driving customer engagement,” Hesel said. “The point is to always make our properties top of mind for the traveler who may return to our destinations, as well as local traffic who patronize our bars and restaurants.” Hesel said the company views itself as more than a hotel chain. “We see ourselves as a cultural preservation company with compelling stories to tell about our locations. There is a strong customer base that wants that kind of experience.” With the help of marcom technologies, she said, the company is able to “tell that story and to do it in our own way, wherever the client is looking for us and on whatever device they’re using to find us.”
Turner-Carroll Gallery Michael Carroll, the former president of the Santa Fe Gallery Association and the co-founder of the tony Turner-Carroll Gallery on Canyon Road, is familiar with the powerful impact Santa Fe’s art scene has had on the city’s bottom line — and on his own bottom line. Carroll and his wife, Tanya Turner, have been able to combine their knack for selecting contemporary art with a tech-savvy business sense that has kept their business growing for most of its 22-year history. Beginning in the 1990s, while the couple were in their 20s, Carroll was at the forefront of galleries using computers to manage inventory. “It began as a matter of simple practicality,” Carroll said. “We had an inventory of art that we’d either sold, had in stock or were about to bring into stock, and we had to keep track of it all. Once we had a handle on how to manage our databases, the Web arrived, and so we soon set up our own server.” He said the gallery was quickly able to “show our entire inventory to the whole world.” Carroll said running a gallery in Santa Fe is no easy task. Santa Fe has a lot of artistic innovation, he said, but he feels gallery owners are at a disadvantage compared with peers in other cities because of Santa Fe’s poor communications infrastructure and the city’s small size. But no matter where a gallery is located, he said, there are two key components to its success: technological strategies that can draw global clientele and a physical location in an area that is foot-traffic friendly and contains several galleries. “To a degree, those two ingredients are about the same thing,” Carroll said. “It’s very crucial to our business that we’re on Canyon Road. But it’s also crucial that we’re on all these art-marketing websites, listing our artists and their works for the serious arts buyers who are coming from all over the globe to buy art, no matter where it lives.” Carroll regularly updates listings on more than 40 private and subscription-
based websites that are considered the “A-list” sites for art sales leads. In addition to his carefully cultivated art-world Web network, Carroll regularly posts information on sites such as ArtNet and Pinterest. He also uses Facebook to display new works and deliver information about artists and events. The majority of his Web-based traffic comes from his Facebook fan page, Carroll said, but he considers the social network as one channel in his online marcom strategy, not as a place to sell artwork. “Our audience is older and tends to rely on trusted industry sources, he said, citing the A-list websites. “Of course, we’re excited about social media — it’s fresh and new and exciting — but we don’t see it as a means to generate sales conversion. Twitter and Facebook make sense for younger people, but our clientele is older, and they don’t go there. And if they do, they aren’t using it as a discovery tool for high-end art purchases.” Still, Carroll said, one of the most important aspects of a major gallery’s marketing strategy is face time. “You have to remember that in selling high-end art, we tend to have 12 different points of contact with the client before we make a sale,” he said. “Seriously. It’s extremely rare for someone to walk through our door and see a $20,000 piece of art and say, ‘Perfect. I’ll take it.’ It simply doesn’t work that way.”
CenTury Bank Behind the counter at every Century Bank location, there’s a small sign that reads, “Like Us On Facebook.” It’s a sign of the times, but does a bank really need social media to market its product and services? For the past few years, said Floyd Morelos, Century Bank’s vice president of marketing, the bank has developed a strategy “to make sure that we’re top of mind when it comes to the notion of a community bank.” That marketing effort combines print, radio and online ads with social media, he said, “but really, the best way that we market that message is through our services and the referrals that follow.” The Century Bank Facebook page is a small affair that had just a few hundred likes in mid-April. Its content is a mix of financial tips, news releases and community announcements, which are posted about three times a week. The page lacks a strong message about the bank and its products, which is typical in the banking world. “Unlike other industries, banking advertising and marketing of any kind is highly regulated,” said K. Jeffrey Szabat, Century Bank senior vice president. “While we find Facebook attractive as a place to maintain a point of contact with our customers, it can’t really advertise interest rates or any of that kind of information.” Where Century Bank has put most of its technological innovation has been in customer convenience, such as online banking and a mobile app that allows customers to access their accounts and make transactions from their smartphones, computers and other mobile devices. While these innovations make banking easier for customers and allow the bank to reduce its personnel and operating costs, they also have affected how banks make money. “The most interesting thing about the way technology has affected our business — and not just Century Bank, but the banking industry as a whole — is that we’ve created so many systems that allow people to either bank online or on their mobile phones that no one wants to come into the bank anymore,” Morelos said. So despite Century Bank’s top-of-mind campaign, its online services allow a customer to walk into a bank branch, open an account, get a debit card — and never visit the bank again. That creates challenges when it comes to selling products such as IRAs, CDs and loans, Szabat said. Loans are still essentially a face-to-face transaction, Morelos and Szabat said, since a bank’s marcom strategies are limited. Community Bank’s biggest marcom issue is whether print, Web or digital advertising will dominate its marketing budget. “We still see a need for print advertising,” Morelos said, “but we recognize that the next generation is certainly on the Web or mobile devices — or both. Wherever we go, we’re pushing our top-of-mind as a community bank that offers a personal touch that the big banks can’t compete with.” 2013 cit y different 23
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more about our nonprofit/ arts & humanities advertisers * ceNter for coNteMPorary arts
founded: 1979 executive director: candace tangorra Matelic
cca provides a vibrant regional gathering place for the exploration and presentation of diverse and challenging contemporary art forms. the center’s interdisciplinary programs include film, digital media, visual art, performance art and educational outreach.
ccasantafe.org
GeorGia o’Keeffe MuseuM
founded: 1997
the Georgia o’Keeffe Museum is dedicated to the artistic legacy of Georgia o’Keeffe, to defining its ongoing significance, and to the study and interpretation of american Modernism, late nineteenth century to the present. the museum’s collections, historic properties, exhibitions, research center, publications, and education programs contribute to scholarly discourse and inspire diverse audiences.
MuseuM of New Mexico fouNdatioN the Museum of New Mexico foundation supports the Museum of New Mexico system — including the Museum of indian arts & culture/Laboratory of anthropology, Museum of international folk art, New Mexico Museum of art and New Mexico History Museum/Palace of the Governors, seven historical sites and the office of archaeological studies — by raising funds for exhibitions and educational programs, financial management and advocacy.
saNta fe coNcert associatioN the santa fe concert association presents artists of international caliber in chamber and choral music, symphonic performance and solo recitals; ballet, folk and modern dance; musical comedy, touring opera and operetta. the organization also offers educational programs for young singers, musicians and dancers and concerts featuring New Mexico musicians.
saNta fe coMMuNity orcHestra the all-volunteer santa fe community orchestra performs five free concerts each season, including lecture demonstrations by the music director. the organization also promotes and performs new works by New Mexico composers and offers educational programs for students.
director: robert Kret okeeffemuseum.org
founded: 1962 acting President and ceo: Bruce Larsen museumfoundation.org
founded: 1973 executive and artistic director: Joseph illick santafeconcerts.org
founded: 1982 Music director: oliver Prezant sfco.org
saNta fe desert cHoraLe
founded: 1982
the santa fe desert chorale, which celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2012, is one of the premier professional chamber choirs in the united states. each summer and december holiday season, the chorale brings some of the finest singers in the country to santa fe to perform for New Mexico residents and international visitors.
executive director: Joshua Habermann
saNta fe iNterNatioNaL foLK art MarKet
founded: 2004
the santa fe folk art Market — now in its 10th year — fosters economic and cultural sustainability for folk artists and folk art worldwide. the annual festival and sale features some of the world’s finest folk art, multicultural entertainment, ethnic foods, artist demonstrations, educational activities for children and families and an artists’ training program to help folk artists succeed in the global marketplace.
desertchorale.org
executive director: shawn McQueen-ruggerio folkartmarket.org
*Organization/program descriptions excerpted and adapted from centerfornonprofitexcellence.org. 2013 cit y different 25
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Creative Santa Fe PROVIDINg A BACkBONE FOR CHANgE By Patricia West-Barker Cyndi Conn is executive director of Creative Santa Fe, an independent, nonprofit organization dedicated to “strengthening Santa Fe’s creative economy and enhancing the quality of life for citizens and visitors through collaboration and innovation.” Conn, who holds a master’s degree in curatorial studies and arts administration, grew up in Albuquerque and lived
When doWntoWns are viBrant, are connected, are WalkaBle, they’re safer, they’re more attractive to tourists. there’s a huge economic imPact if doWntoWns are WalkaBle.
cyndi conn
in Paris, Mexico City, Austin, Texas, and New Orleans before returning to New Mexico. She talked with The Santa Fe New Mexican about several of Creative Santa Fe’s more advanced initiatives and the impact the organization hopes it will have on the city’s economy.
What are the major projects that Creative Santa Fe is working on? Could you give us a quick overview? Conn: One of the main initiatives is [Connect Santa Fe], a walkability/connectivity project looking at connectivity in the literal sense: How do we connect downtown Santa Fe and make it a more walkable, more user-friendly place for both locals and tourists? So much of the time, we see tourists dropped off at the Rail Runner or dropped off at the Plaza, and they don’t know how to get from point A to point B; they don’t know how to get to the Railyard; they don’t know how to get to Canyon Road. When downtowns are vibrant, are connected, are walkable, they’re safer, they ’re more attractive to tourists. There’s a huge economic impact if downtowns are walkable. People actually walking from place to place has a very dramatic effect on the restaurants, stores, shopping. There is a quantity of data out there that shows that downtown walkability is not just a luxury, it’s an actual necessity for a vibrant city. If [downtown] is not a healthy, vibrant place where both locals and tourists want to go, the rest of the city suffers dramatically. And so our first step in this larger walkability initiative is the reopening of De Vargas Park on June 15. What we’ve JANE PHILLIPS done is partnered with the city of Santa Fe and over 30 partners for this park project to showcase what a vibrant downtown can really look like. Rodeo de Santa Fe has changed the time of their parade and rerouted it so that it will circle around the park and end at the park around 3:30 p.m., when the mayor will do a ribbon-cutting ceremony. In the afternoon and evening, we
have everything from a fashion show to the Santa Fe Culinary Academy doing some cooking events; we have live music, bands, some children’s dance performances and light shows. [Our] intention for this park project is to show that this is the first phase of a much larger development project all along the Parque del Río, which is the linear park that goes along the river in downtown Santa Fe. … We’re going to show the public what that park could look like and how it could be used as a multimodal trail and as an actual downtown access to the river, a new place for locals and tourists to go to really walk and connect. We also will be showing a lot of interactive light and video art in the park that evening, with the idea of introducing the concept of having an international light festival in Santa Fe in the winter and a new class of festival for our city. Could you say a more about what you mean by a light festival? Conn: There are cities throughout the world right now — Lyons, France; Sydney, Australia; San Antonio, Texas — where the city comes together and does everything from video art projects — temporary installations, sculptures, video projections, walking paths — that all feature this incredible light work that highlights the scenic architecture of a city, so Santa Fe is perfectly positioned for that. It’s really a broad range of art, and it’s also a really interesting opportunity to showcase this unique industry that Santa Fe has — and that is the intersection of art and science. So there are opportunities for visiting lectures, for conferences, for information about art, science and technology and how this all comes together in Santa Fe to really boost and to bring together some of the really unique aspects of the city. Collaboration and relationships seem to be very important … Conn: Absolutely. A critical aspect of success is community buy-in. Every initiative that we take on is a grass-roots-based initiative based on information about what the community wants. We have no specific agenda other than helping facilitate change that the community wants to see happen in Santa Fe. What are the barriers to collaboration? What kinds of problems do you run into when you are trying to set this up this kind of relationship? Conn: We have found that as soon as the community started to understand our larger goal — which is that we want bring the community together to build public-private
Connecting people and places to improve the city’s 26
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partnerships — and we started attracting money from outside sources, we really began to see the collaborations happen. I think the first challenge was really getting the community to understand that we did not have a competitive agenda and that we are looking to bring new money, new ideas, new resources, new residents to Santa Fe — not to grow Santa Fe in any major way, but to start replenishing some of the resources that we’ve been losing with an aging tourist population, an aging resident population. It’s great to have an aging population, but you need to start having action and movement in situating a city such that you attract younger residents and younger tourists as well.
Awaken in you that place where music is, most simply, a source of joy.
What do you think are the major challenges the city faces? Conn: I think that in Santa Fe, as in any historic city that takes pride in its legacy of architecture and the way things are done, introducing the idea of change can meet with some questioning, some caution, so I think that one of the biggest barriers is getting the community and city leaders to understand that you can have innovation within preservation, and that change doesn’t always mean explosive growth. The challenge is helping people understand that we’re not looking to change the city; we’re just helping to bring all the assets to the forefront. Why should the people who live here care about your projects, particularly the people who are underserved or marginalized? Conn: Our two main initiatives, Connect Santa Fe and the Arts + Creativity Center, are focused on a systemic approach to addressing some of Santa Fe’s most challenging and complex issues. Over and over, we hear of our community’s need for more jobs, attracting young talent, retaining the young population we currently have, bringing in a new tourist base, more nightlife options and affordable housing, so that our youth and creative population can live and thrive in the city. In the book Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America One Step at a Time, author, city planner and industrial designer Jeff Speck says that “the walkable city is not just a nice, idealistic notion. Rather, it is a simple, practical minded solution to a host of complex problems that we face as a society, problems that daily undermine our nation’s economic competitiveness, public welfare, and economic sustainability.” We need a downtown that attracts creative and entrepreneurial talent, is safe for youth after dark — the [newly refurbished De Vargas] skate park will be lighted every night until 11 p.m. — and we need affordable live/work spaces for artists and creative people in our community so they can become contributing members of the local creative economy. Our initiatives are beginning, through widespread community support and public private partnerships, to take these issues on to make change for the entire population. For more information about the full range of Creative Santa Fe projects and initiatives, visit creativesantafe.org.
economy and quality of life
Santa Fe
Desert Chorale Every summer the most talented choral singers in the country come to New Mexico to perform for you. Experience a true gift.
Summer Festival | JUL 11 - AUG 19 The Road Home: Songs of America in Santa Fe and Albuquerque Northern Lights Touched with Fire Romance to Requiem with Susan Graham, Special Guest Artist in Santa Fe and Albuquerque The Triumphs of Oriana: The Birth of the English Madrigal A Gala Benefit - An Evening of Cabaret with Sylvia McNair
For more information or, S a n t a Fe tickets visit desertchorale.org D E S E R T CHORALE Or call 505 988 1234 2013 cit y different 27
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eDucAtion MAkES ThE dIFFERENCE
Child- and family-friendly policies critical to Santa Fe’s future
Working as a school counselor allows Bernice Baca an understanding of the entire child. “You become more aware of their whole lives, rather than just getting the little piece you see of them in the classroom as a teacher,” she said. Baca, who was born in a one-room hospital in Vaughn and raised in Santa Rosa, has worked as an educator for about 35 years and currently serves as a counselor at Aspen Community Magnet School. She also is president of the National Education Association-Santa Fe. She has worked at five different Santa Fe Public Schools sites during the last 20 years and has no plans to retire. “As long as I can do this and be effective, I’ll stay in the job,” she said. You have counseled students at the elementary, middle and high school level. Do you see a big difference in their needs? Baca: Yes. The similarities are based on Maslovian needs: food, shelter, the basic human needs. The difficulty for them at the elementary school level is that the kids are totally helpless and at the will of their adult caretakers. At the middle school level, they are feeling their wings and start pushing against their parents as they pursue their own needs. At the high school level, they are more on their own, pulling away from their parents — for better and worse. They are feeling independent, dealing with boyfriend/girlfriend issues and holding down jobs. In some cases, they need to have jobs to help the family. At the elementary level, they love you if you pay attention to them. Middleschoolers also love you, but they are also volatile and you never know when they are going to turn. And high-schoolers are more respectful of you, more open to talking with you as an adult. And then, if you show them respect, they love you. At all three levels, do you find students talk to you about their dreams? Baca: About half talk dreams. Most of them talk about leaving Santa Fe. They don’t feel wanted here; they don’t see opportunity. Those that stay usually stay because of ties to their families or because their families own businesses where they can work or eventually take over. But it’s our job as educators to help those kids who don’t have dreams to find them, and find a path to fulfill those dreams. And at the K-8 level, are they already talking about graduating or dropping out? Baca: Yes. Some of them, as early as the second or third grade, are talking about dropping out.
it’s our job as educators to help those kids who don’t have dreams to find them, and find a path to fulfill those dreams.
bernice baca
What is the best way to keep smart, college-educated kids in Santa Fe? Baca: This is just going to sound like a platitude, but I truly believe that one of the — if not the — most important changes that would ensure longitudinal success for our beloved city is to enact policies that are truly child- and familysupportive. This means a long-term, not flavor of the month, citywide … initiative to provide sensible, and the best possible, housing, health care and education for all of our children. Investment in education has been proven to provide the best possible “return.” For nonbelievers, study the post-World War II GI Bill boon or statistics of the income levels of college grads versus high school dropouts. Companies considering locations consistently ask about the quality of education available. This, more than any other investment, which involves many philosophical as well as practical changes, would encourage the kinds of industry, infrastructure and family cultural stability to which our children would want to return, and that would preserve the essence of Santa Fe.
Child- and family-friendly policies critical to Santa Fe’s future
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CLYDE MUELLER
Marie longserre, president and ceo of the santa fe Business incubator, talks about the work to be done on the bio lab with Walner linares, superintendent of Bryon construction, on april 1.
santa fe business incubator BIRTHS A NEW BIOLOgY LAB
The shared lab facility dramatically cuts costs for startups By dennis carroll
The new bio lab at the Santa Fe Business Incubator might not look all that impressive right now with its stark emptiness, bare walls and untiled cement floors. But Marie Longserre, president and CEO of the 16-year-old small-business support center, expects the retrofitted room to be humming soon with centrifuges and cytometers, glistening with test tubes and bubbling with bioconcoctions all meant to advance biology-based technology fields in Northern New Mexico. “The Santa Fe Business Incubator is very excited that we have the ability to build this shared lab,” Longserre said. “We think it’s going to serve a real need and help create some exciting career opportunities.” The lab is being created with a $1.25 million grant from the U.S. Department of Commerce. Improvements include upgrading the mechanical, plumbing and electrical capacity of the center, as well as equipping the lab with about $500,000 in state-of-the-art equipment. The lab will be contained within the business incubator’s existing facility at 3900 Paseo del Sol, just off Airport Road, and is expected to be ready for use by late summer. Longserre said the lab will be able to assist startup firms in the technology community by serving as a shared facility for entrepreneurs. Startup and operational costs could be cut by as much as 90 percent for some companies that otherwise would have to build their own labs and equip them. One of the center’s tenants, John Elling, president of Acoustic Biosystems, said he currently has a biology lab in the center but only uses it 10 times a month at the most. “It’s very expensive to keep it around as a resource for occasional use,” he said. “If I can use a shared facility, instead — for me, it’s much more costeffective.” Elling said the major value of having a shared lab is “for the next companies that start up because they won’t have to invest in their own equipment. … If you have a shared facility around, you still might have to buy some specialty instruments, but you can save building all the basic infrastructure. You can get right to work.” He said a company facing $1 million in startup costs could see that amount reduced to $100,000 through a shared facility. “That’s $900,000 you can use for payroll,” he said. “That’s a heck of a lot money in my world, where we squeeze every nickle twice.” Elling’s firm is an example of the type of company that would be attracted to the lab. Acoustics Biosystems is developing sound-pump technology that could be used by medical labs to separate white blood cells from red blood cells. 30
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Acoustic flow technology, he said, eliminates the need to constantly reload a centrifuge, requiring less time and fewer workers. “If you are trying to do 10,000 white blood cells a day in a clinical laboratory, that means you have to have somebody loading and unloading 10,000 tubes,” Elling said. He said the technology also could be useful in cancer research. Longserre said Elling’s venture is the type of company that the incubator center seeks to encourage. ‘Whenever we see a cluster [of business types] being formed that we can support, we will support it and we will try to bring things together.” She said construction of the bio lab will not diminish services to other kinds of startup business ventures that involve information technology, software development, data mining or retail services. “It’s important that our incubator reflect our community. … Our job is to get a stand-alone company out and into the community.” Biophysicist Spencer Farr, a former Harvard and MIT professor and now CEO and chief scientist at Santa Fe-based Vista Therapeutics, said the new bio lab offers entrepreneurs numerous financial, research and networking opportunities. Besides lowering the cost of starting a high-tech company as it develops prototypes, partnerships and a customer base, Farr said a shared lab also acts as a “force multiplier” — it provides credibility to a company, showing potential investors that the company can get started without risking “unnecessarily large sums of capital on equipment and infrastructure.” Farr, whose Vista Therapeutics focuses on medical nanotechnology and biotechnology, also said a shared lab offers the opportunity for developing connections among scientists and engineers “that would be far less likely if every startup has its own facilities.” That network could help spark new markets for a company’s products and lead to new businesses, Farr said. Longserre said bio lab companies also will have access to the center’s other startup assistance programs. She said the center is the next step for businesses that are “coming out of the house. It’s been on the dining room table … where it’s ready to go.” Since its inception in 1997, Longserre said, the Santa Fe Business Incubator has helped create and grow more than 100 companies, and the payrolls of its “graduates” have exceeded $45 million. Five years out, 80 percent of the firms that have used the incubator’s services are still in business or have merged with or have been bought by other companies.
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moving more data faster IN NORTHERN NEW MExICO
Regional broadband project comes into focus By Julie Ann Grimm
Trying to explain the infrastructure that makes the Internet succeed or fail in a community is like trying to trace the rainbow-colored wires through a Santa Fe state government data center to a fiber-optic cable that stretches to Albuquerque. The journey is long, and the route far from direct. Economic development planners, however, say that Northern New Mexico will soon get faster and more affordable Internet service as a big picture for a regional broadband project comes into focus. Within Santa Fe’s city limits, up to $1 million in city bond money is earmarked to invest in improving the backbone for connectivity along a few core routes. Sean Moody, a project administrator with the city’s Economic Development Division, has been working on the loosely defined broadband project for nearly two years. He says patience has paid off, and what once was a good project has evolved into a great one — involving state government as well as businesses. Internet access involves a complex web of private businesses that are regulated by the government. There are commercial carriers, such as CenturyLink, that own infrastructure like copper wires and fiber-optic strands and that also provide Internet service. Other businesses, such as Cybermesa, are “local access carriers”that lease space on the bigger company’s information highway and provide Internet service through fixed wireless systems and other mechanisms. Moody’s proposal calls for construction of underground tubes that will connect a handful of buildings to create a zigzag of fiber-optic cable through the core of the city. The new pipeline would tie the CenturyLink office on Alameda Street to state buildings nearby, then to the Railyard — where empty tubes already await cables. The pipeline would then connect with the state’s Simms Building on St. Francis Drive and the headquarters of the state Information Technology Department, and would end at the city’s water office on San Mateo Road. In exchange for connecting the state buildings, the Information Technology Department would agree to help Santa Fe overcome what Moody says is its biggest hurdle to affordable Internet access — connecting to the “Internet backbone” in Albuquerque. “I realized that the first problem to solve is getting to Albuquerque,” he said. “It fully explains the difference in price between Santa Fe and Albuquerque or Santa Fe and [Los Angeles]. It’s that 60-mile crossing. … It’s like we are out on a spur here.” Today, the state owns capacity on private fiber-optic cables between Santa Fe and Albuquerque, but uses only about 20 percent of its bandwidth. Estevan Lujan, a spokesman for the department, said officials have been in preliminary talks about how to grant the city access to 1 gigabit of “backhaul”to Albuquerque, which Moody said would be a game-changing agreement. The city, in turn, would turn over or lease the capacity to a commercial Internet provider, which would allow other companies to tap in. Right now, Internet providers have one choice to get between Santa Fe and Albuquerque. With the city’s plan to partner with the state and make that fiberoptic capacity available to carriers, the choices would begin to multiply, he predicts. “By lowering their costs, they will be able to deliver to customers better speed for the same price,” Moody said. 32
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Moody said the construction phase of the project could begin later this year. The city might also issue a request for proposals for the fiber-optic contractor and require that firm to also install the pipe. If businesses inside the city of Santa Fe have a right to complain about Internet speed and access, businesses in rural Northern New Mexico have even bigger gripes. In the village of Chimayó on the border of Santa Fe and Rio Arriba counties, for example, the so-called high-speed digital subscriber line, or DSL, grinds to a halt each afternoon. Belinda Bowling, owner of the Casa Escondito Bed and Breakfast, and several other area business owners and residents have filed complaints with federal officials about Windstream, the provider there, because of poor service. “The witching hour starts around 4:30 p.m., and I generally can’t use the Internet until about 11 at night,” Bowling said. “They indicate the problem is that they have brought on so many new customers without upgrading the equipment, and there are just so many people using the Internet, that there is a bottleneck.” Many businesses in the area have switched back to satellite Internet because it’s more reliable — albeit more expensive and uses older technology, she said. A cable television provider in the area called Baja Broadband also has said it hopes to have cable Internet for more of its rural residents in the future. A massive federally funded infrastructure effort called New Mexico REDI Net also aims to inject a solution in some areas. The 140-mile fiber-optic network crosses nine jurisdictions, including several tribal lands. It runs north as far as Embudo and Dixon, through Taos, Española, Santa Fe County and Los Alamos — to name a few areas. Construction on the $85 million project began in 2011 and is about 90 percent complete, according to Duncan Sill, a project manager with the North Central New Mexico Economic Development District. “New Mexico has been deficient in its access to broadband,” Sill said. “This is known as a middle-mile backbone project, which is akin to the development of the interstate highways.” While the network is already serving some 50 anchor institutions such as health care facilities and schools, the next step is for Internet providers to expand their sides of the infrastructure to reach individual businesses and homes in communities near the new backbone. Finding a partner like that for the Chimayó area is one of the district’s goals, Sill said. The next expansion will happen in Santa Fe County’s Community College District. Because the network is a community asset, any provider can contract to tap into it, and any profits from the endeavor will be reinvested to expand the infrastructure — all facets that Sill said should keep it viable. “It’s much more than just a high-speed way of doing online shopping and checking your Facebook and your email,” said Kathy Holian, chairwoman of the Santa Fe County Commission. “It also has a lot to do, especially in rural areas, with providing more opportunities for people to have educational services, health care services, public safety and very importantly, too, economic development.”
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SFCA
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