Santa Fe, The City Different

I just returned from a brief vacation in Santa Fe, New Mexico. As usual, I wanted to spend a little time reflecting on what I saw and heard on my travels and how it relates to finance and issues of the spirit. Normally, when I write one of these things I have a single clear story in my head. This time it is different. It seems there are many stories to be told about Santa Fe.

We visited Santa Fe in January 1996. We enjoyed it and wanted to return, but never got around to it until last week. Things have changed a lot in the last 14 years. The most immediately noticeable change was in parking. There isn’t any. 14 years ago it was not easy to find parking near the prime tourist areas, but with a little patience, one could always find a spot. Now free parking is a distant memory. Public parking facilities are expensive and not all that convenient. The folks in the visitors’ center complain about the lack of parking, the shop owners complain about the lack of parking, their employees complain about the lack of parking and the cost of parking, and the visitors complain about the lack of parking. For a city with only two industries, tourism and government (Santa Fe is the state capital) it seems Santa Fe needs to address this issue. If they do not want to damage the historic ambiance of their 400 year old city with nasty looking parking garages, at least provide some sort of subsidized shuttle system for tourists with arthritic knees, such as yours truly.

I think the parking situation in Santa Fe, like a fractal, is a microcosmic, reduced, representative of the whole. According to the guide book, just about the time of our last visit, the economy in Santa Fe reached some sort of critical mass. A chain reaction started that continued unabated until the current recession. Santa Fe has been home to an extremely productive colony of artists, at least since the 1920s. In the 1960s those in search of alternative lifestyles and spirituality came to discover an unspoiled wilderness and Native American wisdom. The light and the space of the mountains and desert, the artists, and tolerance of different lifestyles and forms of spiritual practice, attracted the rich, the beautiful (especially from Hollywood) and the eccentric. The presence of wealth always attracts efforts to service that wealth. So Santa Fe grew and became more and more expensive at a much faster rate than most places in our country.

Everything is expensive. The art galleries are expensive. The finely crafted hand made jewelry is expensive. The Native American pottery and textiles are expensive. The many excellent restaurants serving one of the most distinctive regional cuisines found in our country are expensive. It seems everyone has their hand out. The museums are expensive (some like the Georgia O’Keefe museum were worth the price of admission). The Loretto Chapel, formally belonging to a Catholic Girls’ School, hit me up for six bucks to view the miraculous staircase. We visited the Anastasi ruins in Bandelier national monument (a side trip well worth the effort). Even at a site supported by my tax dollars, the Department of the Interior nicked me for $12.00. Things are a little better in nearby Taos and Los Alamos, but Santa Fe is no longer a mid-priced vacation. It is still, deservedly a top ten tourist destination. There is so much to see and do a week or even a month would never do this area justice. I think one would almost have to live in Santa Fe to experience everything it has to offer.

The unemployment in Santa Fe County currently runs at about 6%, well below the national average. In fact, housing in Santa Fe is so expensive many residents have two or more jobs. A dumpy little house in need of repairs located in a historically desirable part of town could easily cost $500,000. It is not unusual to find someone like a registered nurse working part time as a waitress to help make ends meet. Two of the big industries in Santa Fe are art and alternative health care. Since providing these products is unlikely to produce a steady predictable source of income many of the artists, practitioners of bodywork, herbal medicine, and shamanic practices need day jobs to pay the bills on a regular basis.

We visited the State Capitol Building to view their wonderful art collection (believe it or not, this attraction is free). Like most of our states, New Mexico is having problems balancing its budget in the face of falling revenue and rising costs. Their economy is at least partially based on mining and materials. These sectors are doing pretty well, all things considered, so the politicians can still raise taxes faster than they cut expenditures. Their most controversial tax increase was a 2% sales tax on food. The hardest to understand was a tax increase on cigarettes. Most of the tobacco sold in the state is sold on Indian land where there are not any collections state taxes. Guess the politicians want to lose even more revenue.

The recent real estate and stock market crash has hurt Santa Fe, but not to the extent found in many areas of our country. Real Estate prices have declined, but not enough to provide affordable housing to a registered nurse with a second job. There have been some foreclosure auctions and short sales, but prices still remain at historic highs. I was told by a gallery owner that in the last year over 60 art galleries in Santa Fe have gone out of business. As a tourist this is not a problem. There are still over 250 art galleries in Santa Fe. In the particular art gallery where I learned these facts, the owner was forced out of a comfortable retirement in Costa Rica. He returned to Santa Fe, laid off all his employees, sold all his personal art, and continued business on a consignment sales basis with artists he has supported for years. He isn’t happy but he is surviving. He told me that today art was a buyers’ market, make an offer, if it is within the realm of sanity, it will be accepted. Even with galleries and jewelry stores advertising steep markdowns (20%-50%), art is not cheap. A small painting can go for $1,000 to $2,000. Large paintings can easily run $10,000 to $15,000. In one gallery I saw a painting that was maybe 8 feet high and 15 feet in length. I asked the gallery manager, who could have a wall big enough for such a painting. He informed me that he had customers that had bare walls that required even larger paintings. Sometimes, he assured me, the rich and the beautiful would buy paintings just to have something new to put on a large wall, sort of like I would repaint a room in a slightly different color and put a few new decorations. However, even the rich are having trouble coughing up $15,000 for disposable wall decorations.

One of the biggest changes I noticed is not in the town of Santa Fe but in the areas surrounding the town. During our last visit there were a couple of Indian owned casinos in the area, small operations with a few slot machines and not much else. Today there are casinos all over Northern New Mexico, so many I don’t understand how they can all stay in business. We stayed at the Homewood Suites, located on the property of the Pojoaque Pueblo, adjacent to the Buffalo Thunder luxury resort and casino, a first class operation with ten restaurants, a high end spa, and a golf course. I overheard one of the managers at the Homewood Suites tell a customers that he was one of the owners of the hotel. All of the members of the Pojoaque Pueblo are owners of these properties and this pride of ownership shows in the way they run their operations. The North Santa Fe Homewood Suites is one of the best mid-priced hotels I have seen anywhere. The housekeeping is impeccable, the rooms are nicely decorated with museum quality prints of Native American art and a Southwestern theme in colors and pattern selections. The staff is uniformly polite and competent. Really it is more than that. These people make you feel like a guest in their home rather than a customer at their hotel. The complementary breakfast and weekday dinners are unusually good, a real plus for families with hungry children and business travelers on a limited per diem. Finally, let me mention I discovered that if I walked across the parking lot to the resort casino and identified myself as a customer staying at the Homewood Suites, I would be given access to their fitness center, indoor pool, and hot tub with no additional charge.

The story of the Pojoaque Pueblo is worth telling. They are the smallest of the Northern Pueblos with fewer than 400 members. Twice during their history they were almost wiped out; first during the rebellion of 1680 and then by a plague that occurred at the beginning of the 20th century. Today they are the second largest private employer in Northern New Mexico. The same manager that identified himself as an owner proudly told me their operations are attracting hotel and restaurant professionals with considerable resumes from as far away as New York City. Business at their hotels and casinos has dropped during the recession, but I was told that the cash flow is still positive. I found the members of the Pojoaque Pueblo both thankful for how much they have received from their hard work and astute business decisions and confident as they face an uncertain future.

I think Santa Fe will continue to be special because so many of the people who live there are not living their lives to earn a living. They are filled with a passion for whatever they are doing whether it makes any economic sense or not. They love what they are doing and they believe in it. Their art is their joy. Santa Fe calls itself The City Different.

Maybe, there is a lesson for all of us in the way they found to live.