Quote:NEW MEXICO (KRQE) – “Who the heck thought it was a good idea to build it where they built it?” asks State Representative Gail Armstrong. We don’t know who chose a remote spot on the New Mexico prairie for a taxpayer-funded, multi-million-dollar tourist attraction. What we do know, however, is that when it was plopped down amidst the creosote and mesquite south of Socorro, it became a case study for misguided and ill-conceived government waste.

Welcome to the El Camino Real Heritage Center, a history museum dedicated to the Royal Road of the Interior. Established by Spanish conquistadors, the historic byway extended from Mexico City to north of Santa Fe.

The Royal Road was in use for three centuries; however, the museum lasted barely a decade. Due to shoddy planning, it had few visitors, meager revenue, expensive maintenance, and inadequate infrastructure. Nine years after it opened, the monument was closed, artifacts packed away, exhibits dismantled, and the gift shop emptied. Today, all there is to show for taxpayers’ hugely expensive museum complex are abandoned buildings 40 miles from nowhere. The museum site is in State House District 49, represented by Legislator Gail Armstrong. The Republican lawmaker refers to the museum as “a complete waste of taxpayer dollars.”

“On paper, this didn’t look like a project that should (have been) funded. This is not how government is supposed to work,” said economic development expert John Garcia. Garcia served in state cabinet posts under two governors.

To understand how this happened, you need to take a close look at the state legislature and how it spends public money. Most legislative appropriations undergo checks and balances that include open hearings and debate. But there are exceptions. In fact, each year tens of millions of dollars are doled out behind closed doors. It’s called Capital Outlay, a legislative system that allows individual lawmakers to allocate public money for infrastructure projects. Under Capital Outlay, ventures are funded without justification, feasibility studies, planning, hearings, or debate.

Consider the Oñate Visitor Center in the northern New Mexico village of Alcalde. State lawmakers blindly allocated almost $2,000,000 for a colossal monument and bigger than life statue honoring notorious Spanish conquistador Juan de Oñate. At the time, no one questioned the extravagant appropriation. However, today, the multi-million dollar monolith and statue will likely go down in legislative history as an ill-advised waste of taxpayer money. Plagued by a lack of planning, vandalism, and remote location, the state-owned visitor center opened in 1994 and closed a few years later.

“They built a big facility in northern New Mexico on a road that didn’t have a lot of traffic. It was the theory, build it and they will come. However, nobody came,” said Governor Gary Johnson’s Secretary of Tourism John Garcia. “I sold it on behalf of (state) government for a dollar back to (Rio Arriba County) because we couldn’t afford to operate the facility, there was nothing in it,” Garcia said.

Since the visitor center was shut down seventeen years ago, the building has been leased by Rio Arriba County to a charter school, flea market, yoga studio, and, now, a chicken feed and macaroni manufacturing operation.

And then there’s the El Camino Real museum. Armed with $4,000,000 from the state legislature and the Bureau of Land Management, consultants were hired to find the best place to build the museum. After studying various locations, the consulting firm suggested a remote spot on the prairie 37 miles south of Socorro. The experts said, ‘build there and the museum will draw 100,000 visitors a year, bring in $10,000,000 to the region and create 174 new jobs.’ At the time, no one raised a red flag about putting a tourist attraction in an out-of-the-way location. It was only after construction was complete that officials learned the so-called experts were dead wrong. The project was doomed to fail before it even opened its doors.

“I don’t think there’s any good excuse or any rationale for anybody to try to defend a project like this. From the beginning, it should have been scrutinized for its efficacy, its benefit to the public, and none of that was done,” former cabinet secretary John Garcia said.

So what do you do with a $4,000,000 deserted building in the middle of nowhere? Time and vandals have taken a toll. The museum was closed eight years ago, and then state officials abandoned the site. Because little effort was made to secure the empty building, today, it is no longer habitable. Copper wiring has been stolen. There is significant structural damage, mold, a rodent infestation, and no electricity or lights. Most of the HVAC, electrical, plumbing, water, and septic systems are either obsolete or inoperable. Now, Cultural Affairs officials are faced with two options: Either repair the building at an estimated cost of $3,500,000 or tear it down and restore the site to prairie. Price tag for demolition? $840,000.

New Mexico Historic Sites Division Director Anne McCuddin said to leave the building and do nothing is not an option. “We will certainly learn from this, take those mistakes, and learn from them. That’s about what we can get out of it. There obviously isn’t any value to the building,” McCuddin said.

The El Camino Real Heritage Center complex is owned by the Museum of New Mexico’s Board of Regents. “It was an expensive mistake. Now it’s up to the Board of Regents to sadly make a decision on that historic site: Whether to repair it, it’s in terrible disrepair, and that’s very concerning, or, to demolish it,” Museum Board of Regents President Dr. George Goldstein said. “That’s going to become the most important decision we make all this year,” Dr. Goldstein said. The Museum Regents will decide on the future of the El Camino Real property at its next meeting on December 4 at the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe.