Heads Up

The Petroglyphs, 2005

Heads Up is working with Albuquerque’s Westland Development Company to create a one-of-a-kind master-planned community on the Westside. The Petroglyphs community is situated on 1,700 acres bordering the Petroglyph National Monument’s southern edge. “No other planned community in Albuquerque has this unique mix of housing, employment, shopping and recreational opportunities,” said Fred Ambrogi, Westland’s Vice President of Development. “This isn’t going to be a sea of tract housing. This will be a community offering everything from high-end custom homes to commercial development and everything in between.”

Both Eclipse Aviation and mattress manufacturer Tempur-Pedic International will flank future phases of the new development. Officials from Albuquerque Public Schools have worked with Westland to set aside land for a new high school, with plans for potential middle and elementary school sites within The Petroglyphs.

Crews from Heads Up are working now to landscape several “pocket parks” sprinkled throughout Sundoro, the first phase of the community. Heads Up will also landscape walking trails that Westland has constructed adjacent to Ladera Drive and Arroyo Vista Boulevard. They will provide pedestrian access from neighborhoods to the “Town Center” and into the city-maintained Atrisco Terrace Open Space, which is an 800-acre public owned corridor that runs through The Petroglyphs and connects I-40 to the Petroglyph National Monument. Sites Southwest, architects for the project, have emphasized the petroglyph theme throughout. Common area walls feature volcano designs, and parks will highlight plants and rocks native to the immediate area. Later phases will focus on desert water and weather patterns.

“We chose Heads Up because of the positive experience we’ve had on previous projects,” said Brent Lesley, Vice President of Marketing. “Heads Up is able to move their crews in quickly and we need that. Construction is hot and heavy now and we need to move fast.” Westland has completed Sundoro’s infrastructure and building is well underway with some homes already occupied. Westland estimates that by the time the entire project is complete over the next 15 to 20 years, 17,400 lots will have been developed to accommodate about 50,000 residents.

The Petroglyphs Master-Planned Community is part of the original Atrisco Land Grant. The history of the land grant began in 1692 when Fernando Duran y Chaves was given two tracts of land as payment for his assistance in re-settling the Rio Grande Valley following the Pueblo Revolt. Over the years, heirs to the Atrisco Land Grant faced many challenges in securing their right to the land, but in 1905 President Theodore Roosevelt signed the United States Patent conveying over 80,000 acres of land that had been approved by the Court of Private Land Claims to the Town of Atrisco. In 1967 the heirs of the Atrisco Land Grant voted to change the Town of Atrisco into a business corporation and Westland Development was created to facilitate orderly development of the land and generate dividends for the shareholders. Ownership of Westland stock is restricted to heirs of the land grant. The goal of each project is to maintain the Southwestern essence of Albuquerque, while meeting the continued demand for residential, commercial, and industrial uses.

“The Petroglyphs will be a community within a city,” says Fred. “People can work, live, shop and play without driving to some distant point. We’ll have parks, landscaped medians and trails along every major street. It’s a development we’ll all be proud of.”