Located next to the Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi, this grassy, green park is an oasis. There are plaques describing Santa Fe history and benches for relaxing. The Santa Fe Artists Market has art exhibitions here at Cathedral Park during certain times of the year. The artists are local, from northern New Mexico, and talented in many different artistic mediums. They bring a diverse collection of fine art together in a lovely and festive setting.
However, according to a story in the Santa Fe New Mexican newspaper, Cathedral Park is also known as "drug park!" It's hard to believe that a public greenery, nestled in the shadows of the great St. Francis Basilica, could have a local reputation as a place where "park rats" congregate and where drinking and drug use is blatant.
Last year in 2014, there was much public discussion of what to do about these unsavory types who loitered in the area. The front half of the Park is given over to tourism--with "tourists pushing strollers as they wander through the gates to peer at the bronze statue of Don Diego de Vargas, the Spanish conquistador. At lunchtime, people from the surrounding downtown shops and offices go there to eat lunch on a bench or on the lawn," said the New Mexican newspaper.
But in the back half of the park, it is a different story as groups of tattooed and dread-locked teenagers play Hacky Sack, beg for spare change and loiter. As a fancy new Drury Plaza hotel was being built, Santa Fe police began a clean-up of the area, which is when I passed through recently. The iron-gated Park seemed benign and lovely to me and the Santa Fe tour guide made no mention of the sketchy and menancing characters who create vagrancy problems.
I loved hearing about Cathedral Park once being the formal entrance to St. Vincent Sanatorium, where the Sisters of Charity housed tuberculosis patients from back East. The fresh, clean Santa Fe air was thought to restore their health and the Sisters counted on the money they raised to help provide revenue to run Santa Fe's first hospital and an orphanage.
So Cathedral Park has a storied history and deserves better than to be a flop house for the city's shadier characters. As it is attached to my favorite Catholic Saint--St. Francis, it is an automatic 5 YELP STARS but I am deducting 1 YELP STAR for Santa Fe allowing things to get out of hand here at Cathedral Park with the riff-raff. I am assuming the reason for the big clean-up is because the Drury Plaza does not want to have to deal with such unpleasantness in their midst, read more