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The Bernalillo County Commission unanimously voted to offer UNM $1.5 million to leave the North Campus golf course free of any commercial or residential development for the next 25 years. The golf course is used to host the UNM Cross Country Invitational, and members of the community use it for jogging, walking and golfing.

UNM mulls $1.5m offer to keep North Golf Course

UNM’s North Golf Course will remain a golf course for another 25 years if the regents accept a $1.5 million offer from the county commissioner.

The Bernalillo County Commission unanimously voted on March 13 to offer UNM the money to not develop over the course. In 2007, UNM President David Schmidly suggested building a retirement community on the land as a way to pay off bonds issued by UNM.

Negotiations are now in progress between the County Commission and the Board of Regents.

Bernalillo County Commissioner Maggie Hart Stebbins proposed the $1.5 million 25-year easement. She said the funding would go to repair the North Course’s aging irrigation system. She said improvements to the irrigation system would save UNM about 30 million gallons of water each year.

“The course is a vital part of the community and it’s one of the last large undeveloped areas in central Albuquerque,” she said. “Students use it to relax — (community members) go running there. The project is about protecting a fantastic urban green space in the heart of Albuquerque.”

Despite Schmidly’s suggestion, the 80-acre course has remained undeveloped. UNM’s North and South Golf Courses cost a combined $2.4 million to operate and reported a loss of $521,000 in 2011, according to UNM’s budget report.

Regent Finance Chair Don Chalmers said UNM is open to the proposal, but said he can’t guarantee the board will accept the offer.

“I am very open-minded to what Commissioner Stebbins has proposed,” he said. “But I am only one regent and I guess I have to see more details. We certainly do not have any immediate plans to develop the land and if she wants to get commitment from us and help our budget, we will certainly entertain that.”

Chalmers said the regents tabled plans to develop over the course following opposition from the community.

“We looked at that five or six years ago as a way to retire bonds the University had sold … (but) we went through the process and the neighborhood did not want that, and we respected that,” he said.

Since the early 2000s, members of the North Campus Neighborhood Association have advocated leaving the course undeveloped, submitting official letters to UNM that were included in the University’s Master Plan in 2009.

Vice President of the association, Tim Davis, volunteers as a marshal on the course, and said the area is important to the neighborhood, as well as the environment of Albuquerque as a whole.

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“When there are 75,000 to 100,000 cars on the road every day we need something to offset that,” he said. “Most of the (Downtown and University) area is hard-scaped, and this green area with trees provides storm drainage and helps with pollution.”

An environmental impact study has not been done on the site to determine the effect it has on Albuquerque’s pollution levels.

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