Parking Proposal for Santa Fe Railyard

John Muir Limited Co. is asking the city to amend the Railyard Master Plan to allow it to build a 29 space, gravel parking lot next to their John Muir building, located near the Farmer’s Market and Market Station commercial complex.

Gerald Coppler, a principal of John Muir Limited, said the company is bleeding a few thousands dollars a month and a parking lot is needed to attract a tenant to John Muir and keep the project solvent.

“We’ve been there quite a while, a number of years, and we don’t take any of this lightly. We certainly don’t think the master plan is a flimsy piece of paper that can be changed at a whim. We’re doing what we think we need to do to survive,” Coppler said at an early neighborhood notification meeting held at the Santa Fe Main Public Library Monday night.

Only a handful of people came to Monday night’s meeting, and all but one was connected with the Santa Fe Railyard Community Corporation, the non-profit that runs the Railyard. SFRCC is against the proposal.

“The north Railyard design was predicated on the concept of shared common parking,” Executive Director Richard Czoski told the Journal before the meeting. “We feel that building surface parking lots will undermine the intent of the master plan.”

He also cited aesthetic problems and the potential loss of parking revenue for the city as issues.

Czoski pointed out that the Railyard already has 900 parking spots.

Coppler said a number of prospective John Muir users have indicated they want on-site parking. He also said he still wants to eventually build a second structure.

John Muir is currently leased month-to-month to Santa Fe Southern Railway, which runs excursion trains to Lamy. The building, which dates to 1929, was mostly empty prior to that, housing one artist studio