by Jeremy Hunt
Daily Lobo
The pounding of hammers and sounds that emanate from a construction site disturb the usually serene atmosphere of the Harvard Mall during the day.
Once construction is complete, the area around Harvard Drive across from UNM will have a new life to it, one of the development partners said.
"We'll have businesses that are thriving," alumnus Rich Diller said. "At the same time, we'll have a great residential area that will accommodate both students and working people that choose to live in that kind of environment."
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Diller and his partners are working on the Harvard Mall Project, a development that includes both sides of Harvard Drive and stretches from Central Avenue to Silver Avenue and some of the east side of Yale Boulevard.
The construction underway now is between Winning Coffee Co. at 111 Harvard Drive and the NMPIRG and Environment New Mexico offices at 135
Harvard Drive.
The final products will be two two-story buildings and two three-story buildings, Diller said.
There will be about 7,200 square feet of first-floor retail space and 46 residential units, he said.
Diller said the buildings should open for businesses and tenants by the start of the fall 2008
semester.
"We decided ultimately a combination of apartments and retail would be sort of the best mixed use for the project," he said. "There's not much in the way of nicer, newer apartment units in the UNM area."
Some of the retail spaces have vendors lined up to move in, but nothing has been finalized,
he said.
Most of the retail spaces will be filled with nonprofit organizations and start-up businesses,
Diller said.
"We are going to have a Web site that will show not only the projects, but also the floor plans and the pricing for the various units," he said.
He said the Web site should be up in a month or two.
Diller and his partners also renovated the lot that became home to Satellite Coffee Co. and Red Brick Pizza.
But the Harvard Mall Project won't be over once those buildings are done, Diller said.
"We have real strong ties in that area," he said. "It's not like we're going to slap up a development, sell it and move on. This is something we're going to work on for a
long time."
Diller said more properties along Harvard Drive will be renovated, and some will be replaced by mixed-use buildings.
James Bongard, owner of We Buy Music, at 107 Harvard Drive S.E., said the new development will be good for the area.
"I think it'll dress up the neighborhood," he said. "The borderline-homeless apartments that were there before looked OK on the outside, but when you look in there - Oh my goodness."
Josh Powell, a patron of Winning Coffee Co., said dressing up the neighborhood won't make much of a difference.
"I think there's going to be transients no matter what you build or what you have," he said.
Diller said the area is special to him and his partners, all of whom either grew up in the area or graduated from UNM.
"It's hard to describe, but there's just a sort of eclectic attitude there," he said. "There's a real good feel
to it."
Damian Garde contributed to this story
