Las Cruces City Council will decide Tuesday afternoon whether to spend roughly $2.8 million in state grant money to buy nearly 6.5 acres near North Main Street and Solano Avenue for a scaled-down version of the long-planned Royal Crossing affordable housing development — this time reimagined as a 90-unit complex for residents 55 and older earning no more than 60% of the area median income.
The council meets at 1 p.m. in council chambers at Las Cruces City Hall, 700 N. Main St., to weigh Resolution 27-042, which would authorize the city to use state grant funding to purchase approximately 6.49 acres across three vacant tracts on Samaritan Drive, according to Organ Mountain News. The three lots — measuring 1.87 acres, 2.62 acres and 2 acres — would be bought from LC Land Investments LLC for $2,827,044 plus closing costs, per the resolution. A state grant covers $2,837,044 of the purchase, exceeding the listed price by $10,000, and the city would own the property outright after closing.
A Project That Keeps Changing Shape
The purchase marks the latest twist in a development saga that has bounced between different purchasers and different visions for the site. LC Land Investments initially agreed to sell the property to Kestrel back in February 2025; Kestrel's purchaser rights then passed to EC Royal Crossing LLP in December 2025, only to revert to Kestrel in May 2026 before Enriched Communities picked them up again in August 2026, per the same reporting. The project itself has also been rebranded along the way — a state grant attachment refers to it as “Royale Crossing,” while the council resolution calls it “Royal Crossing.”
More significantly, the housing concept itself has shifted. The Royal Crossing proposal that goes before council now, targeting 90 senior affordable units, replaced a 108-unit multigenerational complex that had been proposed in 2025, according to the outlet's reporting. That earlier project was the one the council actually voted on last November, when members approved, 5-1, a preliminary commitment of up to $4.7 million in low-interest loan funding to Enriched Communities LLC, according to the City of Las Cruces. City officials expected that municipal funding would leverage roughly $26 million in private investment, and that earlier commitment was contingent on the project actually receiving tax credits.
What Remains Unresolved
Whether Tuesday's state-funded land purchase changes or reduces that earlier $4.7 million pre-commitment is not addressed in the council packet, per the same reporting — an open question for a council that will need to reconcile two versions of the same project on paper. The Samaritan Drive site sits within the former Las Cruces Country Club property, land the city began targeting for redevelopment in 2020 when it established the Royal Crossing Tax Increment Development District to help finance surrounding road and utility improvements.
The appraisal history on the land has also moved substantially. Earlier appraisals valued the property at $2,047,000 and later $2,261,750, before an updated appraisal dated Aug. 25 pegged it at $3,111,000 — meaning the proposed purchase price sits $283,956 below that latest figure. Notably, that same August appraisal identified commercial development, not housing, as the property's highest and best use.
Strings Attached to the Deal
If council approves the resolution, the land must close by 5 p.m. on Sept. 23, according to the current purchase agreement. Under the arrangement described in reporting on the deal, the city would then lease the land to Enriched Communities LLC to demonstrate site control for a tax-credit application, and the developer would become the city's exclusive development partner for an initial three-year period — during which it must keep pursuing financing and submit at least one complete tax-credit application.
Enriched Communities plans to pursue 9% Low-Income Housing Tax Credits and other financing through Housing New Mexico, the state's housing finance authority. That path follows a strict annual calendar: Housing New Mexico requires developers seeking the competitive 9% credits to file an initial development synopsis in late December, a full application in January, and wait for board award determinations in May. Developers can also request up to $3 million in state construction gap-financing loans through the agency's Housing Trust Fund program to supplement a tax-credit award.
If Enriched Communities fails to land a tax-credit award, the city could either extend the developer's exclusive arrangement or terminate its rights altogether and select another developer, according to the resolution's terms. Any units eventually built at Royal Crossing must remain affordable for 20 years. If the council instead rejects the resolution outright, the land would remain privately owned, and the state grant funding would have to be returned.
Fitting Into a Bigger Housing Push
The Samaritan Drive purchase lands amid a broader state and local push to close a housing gap local officials have flagged for months. Municipal housing assessments estimate Las Cruces faces a deficit of roughly 5,600 affordable rental units for low-income households, a shortage that has shaped several recent projects across the city. Statewide, the pressure is even starker: according to the 2025 Housing New Mexico Housing Needs Analysis, only 13.5% of New Mexico households earn enough to afford the statewide median home sales price of $345,000.
That affordability crunch prompted state officials to designate $11 million from a statewide housing package for Las Cruces and Doña Ana County last September, funding senior housing, single-family developments and rental complexes, as Hoodline previously reported. Las Cruces has already delivered on part of that pipeline: in May, city leaders and state housing officials cut the ribbon on Phase I of Peachtree Canyon Apartments, a 144-unit affordable complex for families at or below 60% of area median income that combined 4% tax credits with $4.3 million in local funding, according to the Housing New Mexico Mortgage Finance Authority.
For households that would qualify for Royal Crossing's senior units, federal guidelines set firm income ceilings. In Doña Ana County for 2025, the 60% area median income limit for Low-Income Housing Tax Credit purposes caps out at $33,960 for a two-person household and $42,420 for a four-person household, per federal data compiled by Westmont Advisors. Enriched Communities LLC, the developer behind the project, is a New Mexico-based firm that specializes in Low-Income Housing Tax Credit projects, senior housing, and intergenerational master-planned communities across the Southwest and Southeast.
