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He seemed an unlikely opponent of the proposed development of the University of New Mexico's North Golf Course.

A senior vice president at the mega-commercial real estate firm Grubb-Ellis, Bob Feinberg was one of several hundred who rallied recently to save the golf course. The crowd then met with UNM President David Schmidly.

"I'm the big box bad boy," Feinberg said, establishing his bona fides as pro-growth.

Feinberg said he has fought neighborhoods on behalf of developers for 15 or 20 years. "Not one of my transactions over the years has hurt a neighborhood," he said. "This will hurt a neighborhood."

When I first moved to Albuquerque, the city struck me as one giant strip mall with picturesque mountain views.

UNM's North Golf Course was an oasis in a desert of concrete and commerce. Now part of the course might be the site of a retirement community. The North Campus Neighborhood Association is opposed to the development.

Schmidly told the gathering at the law school that he was brought to UNM to increase revenues, among other duties. The Lobo Village retirement community would bring $2.1 million in annual revenue that UNM could leverage for $30 million more. Locating a retirement community on a university campus has worked elsewhere, he said, notably in Texas.

"We're in the business of education," Schmidly said two days earlier on KNME-Channel 5's "New Mexico in Focus."

I respectfully beg to differ. Education is about learning, knowledge and ideas. Business is about earning money and profit. Business and education are like oil and water. They don't mix well.

Schmidly envisions a community advisory board to help bring the retirement community plan to fruition. But no one who spoke at the meeting was in favor of any development on the course. And although virtually everyone in the audience had a connection to and a love for UNM, none expressed a desire to serve on such a board.

The Board of Regents hasn't approved any development plans yet and is merely looking at concepts, officials said. "It's a discussion item only," Regent Mel Eaves said.

But mistrust was in the air. Regents President Jamie Koch told the Daily Lobo in October: "We are going to move ahead with the retirement community for the North Golf Course with participation from the neighborhood association."

Meanwhile, the bulldozers have already arrived. A parcel of land behind Casa Esperanza has been graded and six trees chopped down.

Kay Marr, a former state secretary of finance, objected to "the autocratic way in which the public business has been conducted as a private business."

One neighbor of the golf course, citing a New Mexican truism I hadn't heard before, had some advice for UNM's out-of-state president: "Every calculation based on experience elsewhere fails in New Mexico."