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Monday, June 09, 2008

Dump Cleanup Makes Way for Business Park

By Richard Metcalf

      The heavy equipment is churning and the mounds of dirt are rising to turn a 7.7-acre “brownfield” site into a business park near Balloon Fiesta Park.
    A year from now, the first buildings in a planned 120,000-square-foot business park should be nearing completion on what had been a city landfill.
    The roughly $950,000 cleanup and related site work involves digging out 85,000 cubic yards of dirt and trash, then sifting out the trash and hauling it across the river to Albuquerque's Cerro Colorado Landfill. An estimated 17,000 cubic yards of trash are expected to be removed, said project manager Jeremy Mechenbier.
    Local developer and builder John Mechenbier has undertaken the massive project with a $500,000 loan from the New Mexico Environment Department's Brownfields Clean Up Revolving Loan fund. The loan has an extremely low 1 percent interest rate, which is the incentive for using it.
    Mechenbier's loan is the second in recent years made through the revolving fund, although interest is growing, said Rick Shean, fund coordinator for the environment department. Negotiations are under way for a similar loan to the Sawmill Community Land Trust.
    Describing the cleanup activity under way on San Mateo NE, between Venice and San Diego, John Mechenbier said, “Big toys for big boys.” At any given time of day during the week, locally owned contractor Custom Grading Inc. has eight trucks and earth movers of various sizes moving around the site.
    The project's hub is a “screening plant,” a portable piece of heavy equipment that separates the trash from the soil. The plant runs all day long, with occasional stops to clean it, at a pace of 250 tons an hour, said Jeremy Mechenbier, who is John's oldest son.
    “Everything's centered around it,” Jeremy said. “It's the baby.”
    The city operated the Coronado Landfill on the site from 1963 through 1965, although there's some evidence dumping continued after it's official closing. The green-and-white painted bottles of Pleasuretime Soda, made locally from 1970 to 1982, have been unearthed during the project.
    Reflecting the comparatively lax refuse disposal standards of the time, the landfill was basically an arroyo filled alternately with layers of trash and soil. Much of the trash is construction debris, plastics, tires and the occasional hot water heater, Jeremy said.
    But there's also household trash that could be seen as a time capsule from 45 years ago.
    “Some things are beginning to break down, but it's minimal,” Jeremy said. “We're pulling out newspapers where you can still read the articles, personal checks with signatures that are still legible.”
    The city monitored the site for years. Although there were measurable levels of contamination, it wasn't bad enough to violate groundwater quality standards, according to the environment department.
    John Mechenbier said he purchased the land nearly six years ago, partly to protect his investment in four leased commercial buildings across Venice Avenue to the north. At the time, proposed uses for the former landfill site included a truck service center and outdoor storage. Those two uses would have hurt his property's value as well as the future development of the area, he said.
    The prospect of cleaning up the site, however, was clear from the start.
    “There was a very comprehensive soil report, so I had a very good idea of how much dirt needed to be moved,” Mechenbier said. The depth of the excavating is expected to range from about 20 feet to as shallow as six.
    Two years ago, he said he got started on getting the property listed in the state's voluntary remediation program and thus eligible for the low-interest loan. The cleanup started in late April and is scheduled for completion at the end of August.
    Because it's a brownfield remediation project, the Mechenbiers received a major discount on the city fee to deposit the trash at Cerro Colorado, Jeremy said. But the escalating cost of diesel fuel, up 68 percent from a year ago, has eaten up that savings.
    “The thing that's killing us is the haul,” he said.
    Home of their own
    Lil' Squirrels Preschool is taking the big jump from home-based business to its own 6,347-square-foot building at the Journal Center.
    The $1 million project at 7411 Hancock Court NE is a major step for Shirley and Matt Padilla.
    After 13 years as an elementary teacher with Albuquerque Public Schools, Shirley launched the preschool as private day care in 2005 in their North Albuquerque Acres home. “I've always had the dream of owning my own preschool,” she said.
    She said she started with three or four children of friends, “then I got referrals.” Enrollment is capped at nine until the move to Hancock Court in August, when it will jump to at least 70.
    For Matt, who owns M Builders, the project continues his transition from custom home builder to commercial contractor. The project is also an investment for the couple, who got their financing from the Small Business Administration.
    “The building had to be designed so that, in case the preschool isn't successful, it can be rolled into an office or retail with a showroom,” Matt said.
    Lil' Squirrels will be the first preschool in the Journal Center, a hub of commerce at the southwest corner of Jefferson and Paseo del Norte NE. Pre-enrollment is under way for the fall and Shirley expects to open with around 35 children.
    The new building, which will have six classrooms, opens the way for expanding the preschool from a three-person operation to as many as 14 full- and part-time employees, Shirley said.
    Richard Metcalf covers commercial real estate for the Journal. You may reach him at 823-3972 or rmetcalf@abqjournal.com.>   

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