Sawmill District in Albuquerque, NM

Sawmill District sits between Old Town and Downtown Albuquerque, bounded by Interstate 40 on the north, Mountain Road on the south, Rio Grande Boulevard on the west, and 12th and 8th streets on the east. The American Lumber Company put a mill and a rail spur here in 1903, and houses went up around it; the mills closed, the ground was cleaned up, and the neighborhood has been rebuilding since. Sawmill Market, a food hall inside the old Frank Paxton lumber warehouse, anchors the commercial side. The city's Rail Trail runs through, linking the neighborhood to Tiguex Park and the Bosque.

Houses stood here in the 1800s, and the first subdivisions were platted in 1884 and 1905, with most of the residential build-out following in the 1920s. When the particleboard plant that succeeded the lumber mills left contamination behind, residents organized an advisory council to press for cleanup, then turned that effort into the Sawmill Community Land Trust in 1996.

The land trust remediated 27 acres of the former factory site and later added seven more, building Arbolera de Vida: ownership houses, a live-work rental building and a senior apartment complex set around community gardens, playgrounds and a plaza. Buyers there own the house and lease the lot from the trust under a renewable 99-year ground lease; that applies only to trust lots, not to the rest of the neighborhood.

Redevelopment continues on the old mill acreage. The city has approved industrial revenue bonds backing Heritage Cos.'s next phase, which adds extended-stay lodging, a second hotel and a mixed-use building with about 140 apartments over restaurants and retail along 20th Street NW.