Belen Will Review Vision for Growth.(South)

Byline: Arley Sanchez Journal Staff Writer

Development Plan Needs Updating

The city of Belen has been lucky in that it has remained essentially the same town it has always been.

Now the city of about 8,500 residents has an opportunity to revise its vision of what it wants to be through an updating of its comprehensive plan. The plan essentially is a blueprint to guide growth, putting emphasis on ways to retain a city's unique character while outlining methods to encourage and control residential, commercial and industrial development.

The coming of the railroad in the late 1880s transformed Belen from a sleepy agricultural community into a bustling town, later nicknamed the Hub City because of its central location in the state.

It was originally laid out in eight plazas and later divided into an Old Town and New Town, with the Plaza Vieja (Old Town) having tradition and most of the original settlers, and the Plaza Nueva (New Town) being comprised mostly of farmers who needed to be closer to the river.

There was a strong German influence, personified by the Becker and Dalies families who established mercantile stores, and it has remained a bicultural, bilingual town with a proud tradition.