About - Mesa Vista

About Us

The recently adopted Elevate Las Cruces Comprehensive Plan identifies the site as a location for a future town center in the form of conservation neighborhoods. Such neighborhoods allow a mix of uses while creating a livable place with a diverse range of buildings and unit types, including mixed-use buildings, apartment buildings, attached row-houses, duplexes, and single-family homes. Generous open spaces preserve the most sensitive ecological systems on the site, including arroyos that cut through the development. Trail-heads connect to a new system of off-street trails. By building more densely in some areas, other areas can be protected open space.

However, the actual plan for this area has yet to be drawn and the vision yet to be fully defined. We are inviting the Las Cruces community to participate in the planning process. This summer and early fall, the Project Team will host a virtual Community Kick-Off Event and Public Design Charrette. These events will give the team a chance to work closely with you, the citizen-experts, to help establish a vision for this site that reflects the needs and desires of the community.

There will be multiple opportunities to engage with the team throughout this process, providing feedback in person and online through this website.

Overview Film – Jason King, Project Director for the Consultant Team, provides an overview of the project in the films below.

Town Center -Jason King, Principal and Pamela Stacy King, Studio Director, worked with a team of designers to draft a plan for the Town Center. In this film they take you through the main spaces of the plan and describe the look, feel, and variety of uses that are possible. Send comments on the film using the ENGAGE tab.

Five Features Every Neighborhood Needs – Victor Dover reviews the basic ingredients of great neighborhoods that are compact, complete, and connected.

A charrette is an intensive planning session where citizens, designers, community leaders, and technical experts collaborate on a vision for future growth and development. It provides a forum for creative ideas and provides both immediate and ongoing feedback loops between designers, stakeholders, and the community. More importantly, it allows everyone who participates to be a mutual author of the plan.

Typically, the Charrette involves an extended stay on or near the site, during which the DK&P team sets up a studio and carries out the design in real time, in public. The online version allows us to engage the residents, stakeholders, and general public in meetings, presentations and interactive design sessions via a combination of interactive platforms.

This virtual charrette will focus remote-community input over a short period of time, through the remote-hands-on effort of participants representing a full spectrum of interests in the area. The consultant team will use the remote-input received to evolve the vision over the following days at an remote-on-site planning studio. Throughout the week, the community’s goals for the area will be pursued while ideas and scenarios are tested. The community is invited to offer continual remote-feedback on the work being produced.

Through this in-depth charrette, participants come to care more about the plan– they see their ideas as they are refined and become part of a more finalized vision. As a result of the educational value of this approach, citizens become familiar with the tools of good urban design and gain an appreciation of the importance of long-range thinking.