Aztec Revitalizes Main Avenue

The city of Aztec is making progress on revitalizing its downtown area, both up and down main avenue. You're watching the Farmington Local News, brought to you by distilled Beer, wine and Spirits, and MNR Plumbing. I'm Ryan Simonovich. Last year, Aztec updated its metropolitan redevelopment area plan to include North Avenue and a large swath of vacant land.

Most importantly, by creating this, this area, this district, it opens up the doors for the city to, to get involved with private sector and a public private partnership. It just makes it much easier for us as a government entity to support or incentivize businesses that come in.

Aztec officials hope to attract further development along the recently completed extension of Maine Avenue. North Maine also includes recreational amenities, such as parking, a vault, toilet access to the Animus River and Aztec Ruins National Monument. The city government purchased a plot of land to attract an outdoor recreation business. Aztec is also revitalizing the southern part of Main Avenue.

We've had some other successes with Badlands burgers and Brews that just came in. They filled a vacant building and they, they seem to be doing well. Another restaurant venue more like a breakfast type is ancient grounds. They feel the vacant building there. That's been good. The Petite Hotel that we, we have now downtown offers a great venue for folks to just kind of be in a downtown up, you know, kind of in a two story overlooking our, our main street called the Lenoir, that also received some economic assistance. And then further south, as you come into town, you see a lot of decorative, you know, metal art and, and a feed store. A feed store has probably one of the original buildings in Aztec that also received some economic assistance. It's called Rustic Creations, that, that also has, has taken over what was vacant for almost five years. So,

Dee Camillo has been working with the New Mexico Economic Development Department to designate Aztec as a New Mexico Main Street community. The program helps communities attract business while preserving cultural and historic resources.

Just the last six months, the city of Aztec has been designated as a frontier community. It's kind of a first step to, to kind of graduating our way up to a full blown Main Street program, much like they, they have in Farmington. And we hope to, you know, to, to model the success that Farmington has had in their Main Street program. So, you know, we've continued to kind of work towards that. Just in the last three or four months, we've organized a board. We're just finishing up our 5 0 1 C3 nonprofit status. We've got some, a lot of energized business owners and building owners that are, that are taking part in it. So we're really excited to continue to work through that program and the state's just a tremendous resource in, in helping us, you know, March along that path.

Learn more about this and other local news stories at Farmington Local News. Thanks for tuning into the Local News Network. I'm Ryan Simonovich.