New owner sheri crider, the driving force behind the Sanitary Tortilla Factory, plans several arts-based operations there as nearly two decades of Church of Scientology ownership comes to a close
April 10, 2025
For many years, Downtowners feared that this day might never come.
Since at least 2007, the Gizmo Building – a four-story, 53,000-square-foot monolith on Central between Fourth and Fifth – has been the subject of fights, rage, angst, and dreams. It is generally considered to be a massive eyesore, but in the public imagination, it touches on something deeper. The idea that a structure so big and so centrally located could be vacant for so long has evolved into a favorite example of What’s Wrong With Downtown. People spoke of the Gizmo as though a personal insult had taken the form of a building.
But now, that picture is set to change.
The founder and director of the Sanitary Tortilla Factory (Lead and Second), sheri crider, concluded the purchase of the Gizmo on Wednesday, and she plans to install an array of arts-related ventures throughout the building (crider does not capitalize her name). The ground floor is set to house two art galleries, one of which will be overseen by Electric Playhouse co-founder John-Mark Collins, plus an art supplies retail store called Gizmo Paints. The basement will be devoted to Wonder + Light Studios, a media production firm affiliated with one of the galleries, plus the print shop A Good Sign.
The second and third floors are set to be converted into 24 artist studios (13 at 350 square feet and 11 at 800 square feet). The fourth floor is to include six new housing units – the future homes of participants in a program that helps people coming out of jail reintegrate into society by “using the visual and performing arts as a tool for reentry, recovery, and transformation,” according to this write-up.
crider plans to break the project into roughly two phases, focusing on lower floors first, but declined to share a specific timeline.
There is much to do, in any event, including major updates to the HVAC and electrical systems. But crider has one major advantage that most other new owners of fixer-upper buildings do not: She is a general contractor.
“I’m the person that’s going to be putting in a lot of the labor,” she said.
Speaking of the Gizmo as a whole, crider added that “they don’t build buildings like that anymore … it’s built like a tank.”
News of the sale – rumors of which have been swirling around the Downtown booster set for months – was greeted with a mixture of raw enthusiasm and relief. Likening his reaction to “choirs of angels,” Echoes owner Jake Ralphs called the property “an absolutely critical piece of real estate to develop to really keep Downtown on track.”
“I walk by that building twice a day, and I cannot wait for it to be alive again,” Ralphs said. “It’s a coalescing of vibe for Downtown – more music, more art, more community-minded people, more progress.”
Mayor Tim Keller put the sale in the same general big-good-news category as the new Arrive Albuquerque Hotel, Ex Novo’s opening, and the potential entry of UNM into the Downtown core.
“The particular location and size of the Gizmo has just made it the opposite of a shining star,” he said. “It has been that albatross around Downtown’s neck.”
“Downtown, in a couple years, is going to be vastly different,” he added.
The extent to which public money might be needed to get the new Gizmo Artspace venture off the ground is not yet clear, though City Councilor Joaquín Baca said he had requested a total of $2 million in funding from the state and federal governments on the project’s behalf. As for the city itself, “we want to help however we can,” Keller said, adding that while there is “not a ton of money available” for such things, he sees the forthcoming tax increment financing district as potentially a good source of money.
The project’s execution, however, is not contingent on government help, crider said.
Once a JCPenney, the Gizmo was purchased in 2007 by the Church of Scientology, which planned an extensive renovation with the goal of turning it into a church and street-level bookstore. That idea, however, never got off the ground amid local opposition and zoning disputes. The church put the building up for sale in 2018, and its inherited tenant – The Gizmo Store, which specialized in custom branded clothing – departed about a year after that.
Since 2018, locals have attempted to buy the building with an eye toward fixing it up and again opening the doors. They were met, they say, with unrealistic expectations about the decaying structure’s worth (DAN, 1/17/23). In 2022, Keller summed up the situation by alleging that the church was “essentially holding Downtown hostage” and had tried to “extort whoever wants to buy it.” (The city itself was one of at least three parties that made an offer on the property over the years.)
The church, meanwhile, maintained that it has always tried its level best to sell the building.
“We have seriously considered several offers and will continue to do so,” Patty Allread, the church’s New Mexico public affairs director, said in 2023. “The building has been professionally marketed for quite some time by Colliers, and we have not changed or added to the asking price.” (crider declined to disclose the purchase price, though it was most recently listed at $1.85 million.)
But as of yesterday, it is all water under the bridge.
“We’re very happy that we sold the building,” Allread said Wednesday afternoon. “I think sheri’s going to do great things.”