Chamber seeks new building

By Zsombor Peter
Staff Writer

GALLUP — The Gallup-McKinley County Chamber of Commerce's search for a new home may be understandable.

According to Executive Director Herb Mosher, it's occupied the same single-story stucco structure at 103 W. Highway 66 since at least 1958. Without any major remodeling since, the building is looking its age. Space is at a premium. The roof leaks, and the carpet is shot.

"It's just a building that, for our purposes, is used up," Mosher said.

Despite the building's condition, securing the city's help could prove easier said than done. Some officials, it seems, aren't too happy with the way the chamber is asking.

Even convincing the city to hold on to the money the chamber has secured from the state to build a new facility has proven tricky. Last week Mosher pulled a request that the city be the fiscal agent for the funds off the City Council's agenda at the very last minute.

The New Mexico Legislature awarded $380,000 for the project in 2005 and 2006 and is facing another request for $300,000 in 2007. The chamber, legally barred as a non-government entity from handling the money on its own, wants the city to be the middle man. Mosher put the request on the council's agenda last Tuesday. But a lease for the city land the chamber wants to build on attached to the west side of the Gallup Cultural Center wasn't ready, and neither the group's chair nor co-chair showed up.

"When we didn't have all of our I's dotted and T's crossed, I just decided to wait," Mosher said.

Fiscal agent
It was probably a wise decision. Councilman Frank Gonzales, for one, said he probably would have opposed taking on fiscal agent duties if the chamber had gone through with the request last week. For one thing, he would have liked a little more advance notice.

The council doesn't take fiscal agent requests lightly. It's even started demanding 5 percent of any money it's asked to hold on to for the trouble of administering it. Having the basic terms of a lease worked out beforehand would also have been nice.

"I wish (Mosher) would have come to us before he went to Santa Fe," Gonzales said.

Mosher said City Attorney George Kozeliski had been drafting a lease for the past few weeks; however, Kozeliski said nothing was in the works and that there's been no progress on a deal for months, not since the city told the chamber it would only support its search for a new home if it moved into an existing building.

The problem with a new building, Gonzales said, is that it's one more building that could eventually be abandoned.

"We don't want another empty building around," he said.

The chamber has looked at old buildings, Mosher said, at least 20 of them. But considering the costs of buying and renovating any one, he said, building a brand new facility would probably prove cheaper.

Multi-use building
The $1.2 million facility the chamber is planning next to the Cultural Center would give it 7,500 square feet of space. Mosher imagines using it to house everything from new classrooms and offices to the Small Business Development Center, the Pro-active Host Program and the Inter-Tribal Ceremonial. He said the building could even come to include new public bathrooms for downtown visitors. All the chamber has so far is a footprint of where it wants the building to go and some external designs.

And even though Gonzales said he had no problems with it, a City Hall source said some of the councilors also had cold feet about Mosher's history with Rehoboth McKinley Christian Hospital. The two reached an unspecified settlement in late December. RMCH officials would only say that the negotiations surrounded expenses Mosher incurred during his time as director of the hospital's fundraising arm, the Western Health Foundation. Mosher is saying even less.

The chamber could turn to any other local public body to be fiscal agent, the McKinley County Commission for example. But since the chamber wants to build on city property, the council makes the most sense.

Given the current administration's concerns, Mosher might want to wait a few more weeks before making his pitch, at least until after March 6, when three of the council's five seats including the one belonging to Gonzales, who's stepping down after being elected county sheriff in November will change hands.