Still kicking: Wynette Smith's dance studio stands fast in shadow of controversial development

Aug. 13—You come upon the old, cinder-block building as you drive north on Fourth Street toward Osuna. Not so long ago, you might not have noticed it. It was just one of a series of buildings housing small businesses on the east side of the street.

But today, the Starlet Dance Studio is the sole survivor; the other commercial enterprises — a gun store, a cleaners, an upholsterer and more — are gone, demolished within the last year and scraped away to make room for Trailhead at Chamizal, a controversial development at the southeast corner of Fourth and Osuna.

Framed by utility poles, the studio stands fast, near a sign advertising storage units that have also been razed and against the backdrop of the construction project, a looming wooden framework destined to become 204 affordable-living apartments and 28 micro retail spaces.

Starlet Dance Studio was established 60 years ago and has been at its present location, 6528 Fourth NW, for at least 48. Wynette Smith started teaching at the studio in 1964, when she was a senior at the University of New Mexico, and bought the business about 15 years later. She still owns it, despite offers by the Village of Los Ranchos to purchase it.

On a recent weekday morning, music from a Zumba class vibrated through a wall covered with dance art and photos as Smith, 79, sat in the dance studio's entrance area. She had an oxygen concentrator at hand because of a lung ailment that is now part of her life. Her gray hair, which she is accustomed to wearing long, is short and curly due to chemotherapy treatments for the cancer that invaded her breasts and lymph nodes. But her blue eyes were bright, lively, the eyes of a much younger woman.

She said she couldn't sell the studio.

'I've got people who have been here since they were little," she said. "Their kids and grandkids have come here. This is my life. I don't know what I would do without it."

Beloved figure

Trailhead at Chamizal, which is being built by Palindrome Communities, a Portland, Oregon, company, is at the heart of a battle that's been raging in Los Ranchos for more than a year. Some residents are opposed to the project because they feel it violates Los Ranchos' tradition of protecting the village's rural identity and because they allege village administration avoided public hearings to get the project going. Village administrators maintain they acted appropriately and that the development will boost Los Ranchos' economy. Village meetings have been heated, and complaints have been filed in court.

For years the village had owned 11 of the 13 lots cleared to make room for the project, including the storage units east of the dance studio and a trailer park south of it. Palindrome purchased the other two lots, private homes on Osuna. Starlet Dance Studio was the exception, the one piece of the puzzle left unsecured.

Ann Simon, Los Ranchos village administrator, said the dance studio property had an appraised value of $233,000 in 2008, and she suspects it would be worth considerably more now. Simon called Smith to discuss purchasing the property, but she said Smith declined, saying she did not want to start over.

The village did not press the matter.

"Wynette is a long-time business owner and a beloved figure in the village," said Simon, who has two daughters who took dance lessons at Starlet. "One of (my daughters) was a tap dancer and one was a little ballerina."

Smith held on to her studio, but that does not mean her business will be unscathed by the Trailhead development. The project will consume her parking, seven spaces on the north side of the studio.

However, Westin Glass, Palindrome representative, said the company will make sure the studio has twice as many parking spaces on its south side.

"We are happy to work with Wynette and are totally fine with her not wanting to sell her property," Glass said. "This is a huge, complex project with a lot of moving parts. But we will make sure she has access to the new parking spaces before she loses the ones on the north side."

Foot 'in her ear'

Smith was born in Gallup, but moved with her parents to what is now the Los Ranchos area just after World War II. The family, which included four children besides Smith, lived in houses on Elwood Drive near Second Street and on Green Valley. Her father operated service stations in the village.

"I've grown up in Los Ranchos," she said. "This is my barrio. I used to ride my horse through the village."

She and her husband, Michael Emslie, a former professional dancer, still live in the village, in Smith's old family home on Green Valley. There's a storage shed filled with dance costumes on the property now.

Smith started taking dance lessons when she was 6. She was a member of the Valley High School Vikettes Dance Team and on the gymnastics team at UNM, where she majored in education and minored in physical education.

She was a teacher and a librarian with the Albuquerque Public Schools for 35 years, but devoted evenings and weekends to Starlet, teaching ballet, tap, jazz and tumbling. She danced in a half-dozen or so Albuquerque Civic Light Opera Association (now Musical Theatre Southwest) productions, including "West Side Story" and "Carousel."

Nancy Clise, 64, who was in high school when she started taking dance lessons from Smith, might not be surprised to see Smith performing on stage now, despite her recent health challenges.

"You would be shocked if you saw her (work)," said Clise, now head teacher at Starlet. "She's always had her foot up in her ear since I've known her, and she still does. She can still do the splits."

'Humble and small'

Starlet Dance Studio was first located farther north, at Fourth and Tyler. The original owners sold it to Mike Haley in the early 1970s, and it was Haley who moved the studio into the building it occupies now. In the years just prior to Starlet's move there, the building had been a picture-framing store, a plumbing and water-conditioning business and an appliance-service store.

Smith, who worked as dance teacher for the first owners and for Haley, bought the business from Haley and the studio building from its owners.

"I added a third dance studio; put in sprung hardwood floors; pitched the roof; added the front porch to give it a different look; bricked in a garage door; tiled the floors in the waiting room, the hall and bathroom; closed the south door; added a north door and put my office right inside that."

Juliana Padilla, 42, started taking dance lessons at Starlet when she was 4 or 5 and now teaches Zumba and a workout class at the studio and takes a ballet class there. Her oldest daughter, Liana, 21, danced at Starlet for many years, and her younger daughters, Valentina, 13, and Esperanza, 9, still take lessons there.

"We are there every day except Fridays and Sundays," she said. "I remember when it had an orange shag carpet and the door was on the other side. I like that it's humble and small. It feels like home."

Just a few years ago, the studio had 75 to 100 clients, from small children to older adults. Back then Starlet would do productions of "The Nutcracker" during the Christmas season.

But then came COVID, Smith's cancer and the Palindrome project. When the businesses near Starlet were vacant prior to their removal, portions of Albuquerque's homeless population moved in, taking up residence in front of empty stores, in cleared-out storage units and in trailers abandoned at the closed trailer park.

"Just as I was starting to get people coming back after COVID, the homeless moved in," Smith said. "There were people urinating against (my) building. People are not going to bring their little girls here."

It was during this period that some person or persons broke into the studio and stole its sound equipment.

The homeless left when construction got underway, but the work knocked out pipes on the development site that connected Starlet's restroom to a septic system. Smith's building had been grandfathered into the septic system, but that was done with.

"I took out a $35,000 loan to get hooked into the sewer, but my restroom was out for two months," she said. A lot of her clients used the bathroom at the Walgreens store northwest of the studio, but Smith said the inconvenience cost her customers.

"It's hard for little kids to wait to go to the bathroom," she said.

No stopping her

It's been two years or so since Starlet has done a production of "The Nutcracker." You can't mount a show of that size with just 25 performers. And Smith can't pay the bills with just 25 customers.

"It is eating into my savings, but I am doing it because I know I can grow (the business) back. I just know I can," Smith said. "And if I closed, my teachers would not have any place to go."

Clise does not think there is any other dance studio like Starlet.

"Wynette provides a safe, welcoming space, not just for young dancers but for mature dancers like me," she said. "And she creates an atmosphere of diversity — age, ethnicity and sex. My daughter and two grandsons took dance at Wynette's. My 11-year-old grandson takes tap there now."

Padilla hopes that Starlet draws more clients from the Trailhead at Chamizal development.

"That studio better make it," she said. "It has seen a lot of people from the North Valley go through it. I'm happy it's still kicking."

Clise believes it will keep on kicking as long as Smith does.

"She has invested 50 years of her life in the studio, the Los Ranchos community and the kids who come in here," she said. "She's not going to stop."