Tres Semillas Discusses Plans to Sell Land

July 26th Meeting - Image Courtesy of Ashley Haywood

By Carol Bondy
 
Note:  As this article was going to press, NYP was contacted by a realtor who said that the land had listed on Monday for $610,000 though no public listing has appeared as of press time.

Abiquiu residents recently have heard through the grapevine that the owner of the property across from Bodes plans to sell the property. Currently, the property hosts the post office, the Frosty Cow (ice cream and frozen yogurt), the hair salon Studio 84, the weekly Tuesday Farmers’ Market, and the Northern Youth Project (NYP) garden (a teen program focused on agriculture, arts, community service and leadership, profiled in last week’s edition of the news). Fueling the buzz, NYP and the Market recently reported that owner Tres Semillas declined to renew their leases or licenses past the fall.
 
This centrally located 12.5 acre property was once owned by Karl Bode, of Bode’s Mercantile and General Store. Bode sold the land to Tres Semillas in early 2008. The sale included a transfer of Bode’s zoning rights: the County rezoned 6.9 acres for small-scale commercial use, and required other parts of the land to remain open space. The acre of irrigated land where NYP is located is zoned to remain free of commercial use.
 
Tres Semillas was founded back in 2007 as a public charity with a donation that came from Helen Hunt, a former owner of El Sueño de Corazon Ranch. The charity has been stewarded by Bernadette and Steve Gallegos, who have been on the board since the beginning. The charity’s bylaws say that its purpose is to pursue “economic development in the Abiquiu, New Mexico area.” But the history of the land’s use and state registration have reflected a broader purpose: as the state registrar described the charity’s submissions (scroll to 2009 Registration), the purpose is “development of land for community purposes including education, arts, health, economic opportunity, and other forms of community support.”
 
In an early meeting complete with whiteboards, Bernadette Gallegos engaged the community in a brainstorming session about possible uses for the land. The charity’s application for tax-exempt status noted the importance of the community’s involvement and committed to continuing to involve the public on all future planning and development. The application also proposed possible uses that included a low-income daycare or other businesses that would be started by a Women’s Cooperative. The emphasis was on “businesses that provided training and employment opportunities for the unemployed and underemployed in the area.”
 
In 2009, according to Tres Semillas Planning and Development Director W. Azul La Luz, plans were underway to create a Women’s Cooperative to run the whole project, to develop activities like the low-income daycare. In the meanwhile, Tres Semillas began to take on tenants to generate income to support the Women’s Coop and cover costs.
 
Tres Semillas inherited both the post office and the gallery Tin Moon as tenants (though Tin Moon did not survive past the sale).  Fifteen years ago, Tres Semillas welcomed the Northern Youth Project (profiled in last week’s edition of the news), providing the project with an acre of irrigated space on which Project interns learned how to grow plants and crops.
 
In 2011, Tres Semillas rented space and a portable classroom building to the Rising Moon gallery, which operated as both a local artist gallery and community gathering space for performances, lectures, movies and more.
 
More recently, in 2019, Tres Semillas provided space for the Farmers’ Market, watching as the market grew from a group of four vendors to a thriving and well-attended weekly market with more than 25 vendors. The Frosty Cow moved across the road from behind Bode’s to the property in 2021.

​To provide clear information to tenants and interested community members, Tres Semillas agreed to meet with the property’s current tenants and other interested stakeholders—a group of about seventeen--on July 26th. Peter Solmssen, a Tres Semillas board member and the group’s spokesperson for the occasion, joined the group via Zoom.
 
Solmssen told the group that after much deliberation, Tres Semillas had decided to sell the land. The charity was pivoting to “move in a direction more closely aligned with the [charity’s] charter.” In the board’s view, Tres Semillas was not owning the land well—the land was not covering its costs, and the land ownership model was "slowly going broke.” Solmssen said that there had been management challenges, and that fundraising had been variable.
 
A review of Tres Semillas 990 forms filed with the state (scroll to Financials in link) reveals that since the organization’s founding fifteen years ago, expenses exceeded revenues in three years: 2018 (revenues $11,568 expenses $22,137); 2013 (revenues $28,695 expenses $43,523) and 2011 (revenues $23,692 expenses $26,941). In the other eleven years, revenues exceeded expenses, in four years by $10,000 or more, and in one of those years by $20,000.
 
When contributions are added to income, Tres Semillas available funds appeared to exceed expenses by even more. In 2014, contributions were at a high of $57,815. Including contributions for each year, expenses exceed contributions plus income in only one year, 2018. For the last four years, charitable contributions to the charity have been at zero. Solmssen stated at the meeting that a great deal of work had been done over the years by volunteers, primarily board members Berna and Steve Gallegos.
 
When asked about these financial statements, Solmssen responded, “Tres Semillas did not operate in the red every year. It doesn't mean things were going well.” Solmssen mentioned the need for reserves for obligations like a roof repair for the Post Office. “It was responsible cash management. Tres Semillas had ongoing obligations that had to be funded.” 
 
At the July group meeting, in addition to the problem of going broke, Solmssen also emphasized that the land ownership and charitable activities were not meeting the organization’s original charter: economic development to benefit people who were in economic need, according to Solmssen. Despite many attempts to find an economic development strategy that was “viable, sustainable and effective,” the charity’s model had failed, he said Instead, Tres Semillas was now “running a public park with private resources.” (According to resident David Shavor, in 2012, Tres Semillas in fact authorized a committee to do some work towards creating a public park on the property.)

Image Courtesy of Jen Harrington

Representatives from NYP, the Farmer’s Market and the Frosty Cow pointed out their contributions to the area’s economic development. NYP noted that the organization had raised over $750,000 in donations and grant funding (scroll to Financials in the link), money that had stayed in the community to develop teen skills in agricultural development.  The Farmer’s Market estimated that the market was doing $140,000 per season in business for local vendors. Director Andrew Furse noted that the market simultaneously provided under-resourced families with access to healthy nutrition and kept the money in the community to support local vendors rather than national chains. The Frosty Cow also told Solmssen that the business employed six to nine kids each season, paying for their education to get a food handler’s permit and training them in the running of the business.
 
Solmssen congratulated these organizations but did not appear to concede that these activities counted as economic development under the charter. However, under New Mexico law, the organization’s ability to claim a property tax exemption for the land appears to require that the property’s “primary and substantial use” be for charitable purposes. No tenants other than NYP and the Farmers’ Market appear to be currently engaged in such use.
 
Asked about the possibility that the charity was closing, Solmssen said that it had not yet decided to shutter—that call would depend on how the board decided to use the money from the land sale. Solmssen acknowledged that Tres Semillas was actively considering donating the money to the Los Alamos National Lab Foundation scholarship program, which serves seven northern counties. Speaking for himself and not the whole board, Solmssen expressed concern, saying that the sale had to benefit the Abiquiu community as per the original charter. (Federal and state law appear to require that a non-profit selling assets to a for-profit entity must use the proceeds of the sale, directly and immediately, in furtherance of the charity’s tax-exempt purposes to benefit the “same class of beneficiaries.”)
 
Solmssen appeared to rule out the board’s reconsidering the decision to sell. He also described as unlikely the option of recruiting new board members to take over from the current board, given the board’s decision to sell the land.
 
Solmssen discussed a preliminary sale price of $500,000 but said the actual price would depend on real estate expert advice. Solmssen appeared open to NYP purchasing their land, or a purchase by other stakeholders, but said it depended on the effect of those on the overall price of the land. Asked whether the board would just sell to the highest bidder, Solmssen said that the board’s sense was that it wanted to consider the community’s best interest when choosing a buyer. Solmssen, who is a retired corporate governance lawyer, expressed his own view that fiduciary law would allow the board to do that, though he noted his view of the law was likely in the minority in the legal community. In terms of the timing of a sale, Solmssen said the group was not in a hurry but had been working with a realtor to prepare for the sale. 
 
Since the meeting, the Farmers’ Market leadership has begun to call on members of the public to contact Tres Semillas, (and send a copy of the letter to  [email protected]), asking the charity to reverse the decision to sell and to appoint new board members.   Other community members have suggested that Luciente, another local non-profit focused on community development, serve as a sponsoring organization to which Tres Semillas can transfer the land to pursue the economic development objective. Still others have discussed locating angel investors to purchase the land and forming a community land trust.

With reporting by Daria Roithmayr