St. Catherine Indian School campus could be rezoned

Yahoo

04-05-2025

The former St. Catherine Indian School campus, now dilapidated and desolate, for decades served as a private Catholic boarding school — not just for Indigenous children but also for other students from across Northern New Mexico.
Since the school closed its doors in 1998, developers have considered its potential; the campus is nestled in a prime location in northeastern Santa Fe, adjacent to Rosario Chapel, Rosario Cemetery and the Santa Fe National Cemetery. But the historic property, located in one of the city's historic districts, poses major construction challenges.
The Santa Fe Civic Housing Authority, an independent nonprofit focused on providing affordable housing for low-income residents, has owned and maintained the site since 2016 — an expensive endeavor in itself. But Executive Director Ed Romero acknowledges the property isn't appropriate for low-income housing. Instead, he plans to launch a rezoning effort, making the campus more attractive for commercial developers.
"The game plan is to give it zoning that will enable developers to come in and do their project, with the guidelines of, 'They must save the historic buildings that are on the site now,' ' Romero said.
He expects to move forward in the fall with a request to the city of Santa Fe to rezone the property to a C-2 designation, expanding the potential commercial uses. Currently, the unused site is zoned R-5, Romero said, or five residential units per acre.
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The Santa Fe Civic Housing Authority plans to seek a zoning change for the historic St. Catherine Indian School property to make it more enticing to a commercial developer.
The dozens of permitted uses in the city under C-2 zoning range from bookshops to museums to neighborhood community centers and business centers, as well as hotels and grocery stores.
City Councilor Signe Lindell, who represents the city's District 1, where the campus is located, noted any project there would be a very complicated affair for a developer.
"I'd love to see something go on that property. It would be a great place for housing," Lindell said. "The way it sits now, it's really not benefiting anyone. In fact, with the deterioration, it's been an uphill battle at times keeping unsheltered people out of there."
'Historical need' to preserve it
Purchased by the Santa Fe Civic Housing Authority for around $1.7 million in 2016, the old boarding school campus was never viewed as a viable site to build affordable housing. Rather, officials said they thought they had a responsibility to protect the historic property and wanted to keep it safe until a financially sustainable use could be found.
"It could be offices. It could be hotels. It could be schools," Romero said. "It could be multiple ideas out there."
The housing authority would hope to make a "modest" profit, Romero said, money that would then be put back into its local affordable housing initiatives.
"The problem you have is you cannot build an affordable property that rents at $1,000 a month [a unit] when you're going to pay perhaps $20 million to $30 million to rehab eight old buildings that are going to provide you maybe 20 units," Romero said.
The property is 17 acres with more than a dozen buildings, some of which are landmarked, he said, noting no developer is going to be able to raze the buildings.
"It's a historical need" to preserve the property, Romero said, adding, "We felt like, if we didn't step up when we made this decision, nobody else was going to."
When the housing authority bought the property, Romero said, it was in talks with a San Diego firm that wanted to build housing on the site. They signed a memorandum of understanding contingent on the firm securing tax credits for the property, a plan that fell through. Another purchase deal has not emerged.
Rezoning the property would make it more enticing for a developer, Romero said.
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Details at the historic St. Catherine Indian School include a small cemetery where clergy were buried and murals created by some of the students.
"Nobody wanted to buy this property, or wants to buy this property today and go through a zoning process with the city, [in] which you could be in another $300,000 to $400,000 and not get approval to move forward," he said.
St. Catherine Indian School was established in 1886 as St. Catherine's Industrial Indian School for Boys and operated as a private boarding school for more than 100 years before closing in 1998 because of a lack of funds. It later went into foreclosure.
It was founded by Katharine Drexel, a wealthy heiress who took religious orders and became a nun. She was later the second American canonized as a saint in the Catholic Church. Drexel founded the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, the order that ran the school.
Since its closure, the campus has remained empty except for a handful of special projects, such as being used as a location to film the movie Cliffs of Freedom several years ago.
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Aerial view of St. Catherine's Indian School, circa 1975, Neg. No. HP.2014.14.1430.
Garron Yepa, an architectural design professional and an enrolled member of Navajo Nation, has a vivid memory of being part of a crowd at a basketball game at St. Catherine Indian School when he was young.
"Most of my family matriculated and found a lot of kinship with folks from other communities, and those ties remain very strong as a result of that lived experience," Yepa said. "… I would love to see its future embody some of that history."
The challenges of developing the property doesn't mean people haven't shown interest.
Would-be buyers — or perhaps dreamers — run the gamut. Over the years, someone who wanted to turn the property into 'the Harvard of the Southwest' expressed interest. So did someone claiming to be a member of the Walton family, the owners of Walmart.
One person proposed the idea of building an orphanage and getting the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to renovate the campus.
"I know there are quite a few organizations who would be perfectly at home there," said Yepa, who serves on the city's Community Development Commission. "However, Santa Fe is a challenging market to navigate, especially for Indigenous communities."