Commonweal Conservancy

Commonweal Conservancy’s signature project is called the Galisteo Basin Preserve. The Preserve is a 13,522-acre land-conservation and community-development initiative located in Santa Fe County’s Galisteo Basin—a high-desert area of fragile land and water resources celebrated for its scenic, cultural, and wildlife values. The Preserve is designed to protect and restore more than 13,000 acres of open space in this exceptional landscape, as well as promote thoughtful, stewardship-oriented community development. Much of the Preserve’s open space will be publicly accessible by a network of 50 miles of planned hiking, biking, and equestrian trails.

The initiative’s community-development focus is “Trenza”, formerly known as the Village at the Galisteo Basin Preserve, a compact, resource-efficient community plan that will help support the conservation and care of the Preserve landscape. Designed for economic and social diversity, the Trenza plan includes market rate and affordable homes of various types, sizes, and prices. Commercial, educational, and civic development aims to foster a dynamic, walkable urban core, while parks, trails, and open space connect neighborhoods, link to the Preserve’s open space and public trails, and encourage a culture of stewardship. Trenza has received national recognition for its integration of large-scale land conservation, environmental sensitivity, and compact, mixed-use, mixed-income design goals.