Woman working to make downtown Albuquerque a better place

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.- Victoria Van Dame has been working on improving downtown Albuquerque.

In 2020, she organized the Paint for Peace project, an effort to transform a dystopian-looking downtown into an art corridor.

Her latest project is a restaurant, Curious Toast.

"I think we’re going to be able to bring this downtown back to life," she said.

The restaurant is located near the roundabout on Central, which was owned by her late friend, Anna Muller.

After her death, the downtown buildings she owned became vacant.

"I started noticing some of the buildings that Anna has owned and really loved dearly were being taken over by people that shouldn’t have been in the buildings," Van Dame said.

Now Van Dame is on a mission to use art to make the vacant buildings look more inviting.

"Part of that was being able to breathe life back into these buildings," she said.