Every time I drive past 8380 Cerrillos Road, I slow down a little. There is something going on inside that half-empty outlet mall, and for the first time in a long time, it feels like the something is actually worth watching.
The site has been through more names than most Santa Fe businesses see in a lifetime. It opened in 1993 as Santa Fe Factory Outlets. It became Santa Fe Premium Outlets, then Fashion Outlets of Santa Fe after a company called Talisman bought it in 2007. By roughly 2017 or 2018, a bank owned it. That is the short version of a long, slow slide for a property that deserved better.
On November 1, 2023, local broker and developer Carlos Garcia closed on the property through an entity called 8380 LLC, paying roughly $5.9 million. Garcia already owns the Shops at the Design Center. His leasing team, Garsa Group, handles tenant outreach. The vision Garcia brought was direct: keep the tenants already there and let the mix of businesses determine what the place becomes. The name would follow the tenant mix, not lead it. The name that landed is Sendero Marketplace.
Walk through the gate and the arch says it plainly: SENDERO marketplace, in clean modern type on the same territorial stucco that has framed this courtyard since 1993. The metalwork panels flanking the entrance show silhouettes of horses and riders, cut from dark steel. It is a good-looking entry for a place that spent years feeling apologetic about itself.
The courtyard is still mostly quiet. Adobe-style storefronts line both sides of a wide pedestrian walkway. A wood pergola anchors the far end. Old-fashioned lamp posts stand at intervals. Most doors are dark. Garcia is not hiding that. The window banners in the empty units say exactly what the plan is: "New and local businesses coming soon!" Questions and leasing inquiries go to 505-473-3434 or garsagroup.com. The window banners in the empty units state the plan without hedging: "New and local businesses coming soon." Leasing inquiries go to 505-473-3434 or garsagroup.com.
What is already happening on the property tells you more than the banners do. La Fogata Table is a newer on-site addition. On September 17, 2026, Feria Southside held its fifth annual market here, with roughly 65 vendors filling the courtyard. A market event in its fifth year does not land somewhere by accident. It lands where there is infrastructure, parking, and enough open space to run 65 vendor stalls. Sendero has all three.
The Eye Associates of New Mexico operates a clinic on the property, with signage visible near the red tower at the center of the site. That tower has been the visual anchor of this building since 1993. The bones of this place are real, and they show.
Around back, the ghost of the last identity is pressed into the stucco: FASHION OUTLETS SANTA FE. Nobody pulled those letters off. Maybe that was a budget call, maybe it was intentional. Either way, standing in that parking lot you get the full timeline at once. The cracked asphalt, the lettering fading into the wall, the red tower rising behind it, and somewhere inside the gates, a bench outside a window banner promising something new.
What makes this moment different from the previous owners is who bought the property and how. A local broker, closing through a local LLC, with a local leasing team, at a price that makes the numbers work without a national anchor signing first. Garcia did not acquire this site to flip it. He owns the Shops at the Design Center. He builds tenancy over time. That is a different posture than every ownership group that came before him.
Sendero translates to path or trail. As a name for a marketplace that is still figuring out what it is becoming, that works. A path means you are moving. It does not promise you have arrived.
The southside of Santa Fe has needed a place like this to work for a long time. Not an outlet mall. A real local marketplace, the kind with vendors and food and services that people who live on this end of Cerrillos Road can use on a regular Tuesday. The courtyard is ready. The infrastructure is there. The banners are up. So: what would you want in a southside marketplace?