Albuquerque restaurant blames ART for closure

An Albuquerque restaurant along Route 66 recently closed its doors for good, and it’s blaming the Albuquerque Rapid Transit project for its misfortune. A local group claims it is the 60th business to close since ART began.

Three Little Birds Cafe on Central Avenue (aka Route 66) shuttered, and according to KOB-TV in Albuquerque, it blames ART.

A sign at the business reads, “We had high hopes that the business would come back after the ART project, but unfortunately it has not.”
Little Birds Café joins a growing list of businesses that have blamed ART for their closure.
The website Save Route 66 lists 60 businesses that have closed since ART construction began in 2016.
Political blogger and former Albuquerque City Councilor Pete Dinelli believes a loss of parking spaces is driving away customers.

Here’s the full segment from the television station:

I looked over the Save Route 66 list of business closings it blames on ART. First of all, the list should contain caveats. I counted at least eight businesses that moved to another location, which isn’t your standard definition of “closure.”

Second, many of the closed businesses are restaurants, which have a high failure rate even in the best of times. There’s no telling in those cases whether ART is to blame or whether it simply used a bad business model.

In short, Save Route 66 needs a comparison of the number of business closings it legitimately can attribute to ART and what a typical number would be without ART.

There is little doubt the lengthy construction of the $133 million ART project adversely affected businesses along Central Avenue and that many still are struggling in the wake of it.

And ART is contending with flawed designs of its bus stops and electric buses so shoddy, the city canceled its deal with the contractor and is going with standard diesel buses. The saga recently was laid out in a Los Angeles Times article about ART’s issues.

The big ongoing mess that is ART must be laid at the doorstep of former mayor Richard Berry, who insisted ART was needed and guided the project through a divided city council. Berry was rumored to have been weighing a run for governor or some other higher office in New Mexico, but this ongoing conundrum makes that prospect a non-starter.

(A screen-capture image from a video of an Albuquerque Rapid Transit sign on Central Avenue)

2 thoughts on “Albuquerque restaurant blames ART for closure

  1. “Richard Berry….guided the [ART] project through a divided city council”?

    A new definition of ‘guided’?.

    Whatever Pete Dinelli thinks, is there just one genuine benefit that ART has brought to Albuquerque?

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