by Bryan Gibel
Daily Lobo
City Council voted to renovate the former Ice House building to use for a cultural facility for teens, but there is debate on how the center and its programs should be funded, the city council president said.
Debbie O'Malley said that although there are funding concerns, the council supports the initiative.
"As an initiative, yes, there is support," she said. "I think the issue is probably the type of funding, or how we're going to maintain it in the long run."
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The council voted unanimously May 21 to appropriate $800,000 for renovation of the former strip club, at 506 First St. N.W., to use for the teen center.
The idea for the center began in February 2005 after the city began an initiative to ban all-ages concerts in venues that serve alcohol, student Katie Larntz said.
"I ended up writing Mayor Marty (Chávez) a letter and told him that if he was going to shut down the Launchpad or stop them from having all-ages shows there, he needed to have a backup plan," she said. "So, I brought up the idea about Warehouse 21, and he ended up e-mailing
me back."
Warehouse 21 is a teen arts center in Santa Fe.
Larntz said the teen center should have a venue for all-ages concerts, a skate park in the parking lot, murals, art installations, dance workshops, a screen-printing shop and a recording studio.
Larntz said she and a friend began meeting with Mayor Martin Chávez in March 2005.
The mayor's proposal asks for $370,000 to contract Warehouse 21 to develop a youth arts center in Albuquerque.
Councilor Michael Cadigan said he is concerned because the mayor's proposed contract for the center allocates $55,500 for a lead consultant and less than $11,000 for youth leaders and promoters.
The proposed contract is not the right way to develop the center, he said.
"If one were to figure out how we can do this as inefficiently as possible, that would be the way to do it," Cadigan said at the meeting.
Cadigan said the mayor's proposal would fund only eight events in the first 15 months of the center's operation.
The council accepted the mayor's social service contract for the center on May 21 without changes, according to the City Council's Web site.
However, there was no mention of the vote in the council's May 21 action summary agenda on its Web site.
The council voted to allocate funding for the teen center. However, Councilor Isaac Benton said the funding would only be enough to get the center started.
"What everyone agreed here was that we were moving a little bit too fast," he said. "We still will be retaining some funding for staffing to get this off the ground - but it's a much more modest start-up phase."
