Hope still alive after Cenotaph vote
With future of memorial unsettled, museum nowmay be a focus in Alamo makeover
The stunning decision by a state agency toblock relocationof the Alamo Cenotaph has put the entire $450 million makeover of the mission and battle site on hold.
But advocates on both sides of that heated controversy are hoping any delay is a short one.
“It’s our duty to tell the story of the Alamo,” said Sharon Skrobarcek, treasurer general of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas and a member of the Alamo Citizen Advisory Committee, which is set to have a virtual meeting at 9 a.m. Wednesday for an update on the project.
She acknowledged that it was a setback when the Texas Historical Commission decided last week to deny San Antonio’s request for a permit to move the Cenotaph but said that shouldn’t put the makeover project at square one.
“It’s the most important story of a historical nature that’s heard around the world,” Skrobarcek said. “We’ll tell the story regardless of where the Cenotaph is.”
Before the commission voted, City Councilman Roberto Treviño had said a decision against relocating theCenotaph“spells theendof the project.” Just after the permit was refused, the councilman,
who leads the six-member management committee guiding the overhaul project, sounded a dire warning.
“The denial puts the project in a state of limbo, and the city must now review its legal strategy and its fiduciary responsibility in order to determine its course of action,” Treviño posted on Twitter.
Later in the week, however, he issued a statement that sounded more positive.
“While elements may be at risk, the three organizations of the Alamo Master Plan Management Committee — the Texas General Land Office, the city of San Antonio and the Alamo Trust — remain dedicated to the Alamo plan guiding principles and their constituents,” he said.
What happens next involves three major issues: the Cenotaph, an aging memorial to the Alamo defenders, which still needs thorough assessment and repair; the south end of Alamo Plaza, which was to get an extensive makeover this year if relocation of the monument had been approved; and resolution of another controversy, over the planning and construction of a 130,000-square-foot museum and visitor center.
Trinity University history professor Carey Latimore, who specializes in African American studies and prepared a report on the civil rights movement for the project, including seven lunch counters that voluntarily desegregated in 1960 — two of them in the Alamo’s historic footprint — said the Alamo project must continue.
“We’re talking about the Cenotaph, but there’s this whole story of the Alamo that’s extraordinarily exciting to methat is not being told right now,” Latimore said. “This plan opens the windows of opportunity, and any day that we miss not telling that story, there’s a young person who doesn’t hear what San Antonio is all about.”
Project officials have said issues related to the plaza, including the monument relocation and closure of streets, had to be ironed out, and a museum design completed, before private fundraising could begin on amuseumlikely to cost at least $150 million.
The Land Office purchased the Woolworth, Palace and Crockett buildings in 2015, to be demolished or repurposed for the museum.
Skrobarcek and others believe the museum concept, generally supportedbypeople on both sides
of the Cenotaph issue, nowshould be the top priority.
“What I believe needs to happen is that we need a world-class museum,” Skrobarcek said.
Alamo officials had hoped the contentious Cenotaph issue could be resolved in the first phase of the project. Two 2014 reports by engineers and conservators warned that the monument might need to be at least partly disassembled for repair, to prevent a long-term safety hazard and “cracking and eventual loss of the heads and faces of the carvedfigures” of David Crockett and other Alamo heroes, renowned stone conservator Ivan Myjer wrote in one assessment.
Becky Dinnin, who served as Alamo director and a manager with the Alamo Endowment from 2015 to 2018, said any move negating hundreds of millions of dollars in capital investment and tourism revenue based on the permit denial for the Cenotaph would be senseless.
“Today, we need to focus on building a museum,” Dinnin said.
She believes the Cenotaph debate has taken the project off course.
“What it looks like to me is they lost focus and just got buried in a cacophony of arguments about the Cenotaph,” she said. “Leadership allowed a distraction, and it cost us two years of investment.”
“They’ve got to regain their focus,” Dinnin added. “For the city
to turn away from that kind of long-term impact would be absurd.”
She and Skrobarcek said the city needs to work closely with THC staff to address the Cenotaph’s deterioration. The city said it could not adequately repair the monument without jack-hammering and replacing its 20-foot-deep foundation, causing vibrations that could damage the Long Barrack. But commissioners were not swayed.
“The THC needs to be brought into the process,” to help determine whether the memorial can be repaired in place, Skrobarcek said.
Dinnin said a second opinion would be needed if the city were to return to the commission to say thememorial cannotbe fixed in its current location.
“They have to bring more evidence,” she said. “The argument was not made. But we can’t stop the whole project for that one argument.”
The museum component of the project has its own obstacles.
The Conservation Society of San Antonio wants the 1882 Crockett Building and the facade of the 1921 Woolworth Building incorporated into the new museum design.
The society generally had supported the Alamo master plan in 2017 because it seemed to address pedestrian access and preserva
tion of the Woolworth and Crockett buildings. But the group led a petition drive against the Alamo interpretive plan in 2018 “because it did not enhance connectivity and depicted removal of the historic buildings,” said Patti Zaiontz, society president.
The society, working with preservation advocates in the local Black community, won the historical commission’s approval in 2018 of designation of the Woolworth Building as a state antiquities landmark.
In1883, when the state acquired the Alamo church from the Catholic Church, the Alamo became “the first historic landmark purchased by a public body west of the Mississippi River,” Zaiontz said.
“Today it is part of a WorldHeritage Site and carries national, state and local landmark designation. The future of the Alamo and its historic structures should be held to the highest standards,” she added.
Gayle Brennan Spencer, a historical writer, blogger and preservation advocate, shares the society’s concerns about the museum design. She’s also worried that renderings have shown little shade in the plaza.
“Before any more planning dollars are spent, it should be determined whether the museum is an adaptive reuse project involving existing handsome landmarks on the west side of the plaza or an entirely new construction project eradicating more than a century of the city’s history,” she said.
“Procrastination on resolving that issue truly does endanger the project,” Spencer said. “The cloak of secrecy should be removed. The creation of an unshaded sizzling hot ‘comal grande’ (big griddle) in front of the future museum canbe resolved while the museum project progresses.”
Skrobarcek said she wants high standards set for the new museum, even if that means razing the Woolworth and Crockett buildings.
“Texas doesn’t do second class. Texas does bigger and better, and it needs to be world class. While I’m a proponent of saving old buildings and things like that, if it’s allowed, this is the Alamo,” she said.
Another obstacle with the museum concept is a set of long-term leases held by Phillips Entertainment, which owns Tomb Rider 3D, Guinness World Records and Ripley’s Haunted Adventure on the ground floor of the state
owned Woolworth and Palace buildings.
Davis Phillips, the company’s president and CEO, has said his company should be compensated if forced to relocate before the leases expire at the end of 2027 and 2028. He estimates that it would cost $20 million.
Alamo officials have not said they have a solution. But in an impassioned plea to the commission not to allow relocation of the Cenotaph, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said he’s willing to help the project achieve a “bigger vision” that would remove such businesses.
Referencing one of the Ripley’s attractions in the plaza, Patrick said, “That’s got to go. Got to go. We’ve got to go there and make a deal. We’ll get it done.”
He also offered to negotiate with President Donald Trump to “take down” or “move” the 1937 Hipolito F. Garcia Federal Building, a historic courthouse with federal offices and a postal station situated partly on the Alamo footprint. Alamo commander William Barret Travis is believed to have died there on the north wall, where the post office is located.
“If this president wins in November — who knows what the elections are going to bring? You want to take down the federal building? We have a very good relationship with the president. We want the full footprint of the Alamo battle walls? I think if we go to the president, the governor and I, and say, ‘We’d like you to move that federal courthouse to somewhere else, so we can build a full Alamo.’ I mean, he moved the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. I think we can move a courthouse. I think we can get that done,” Patrick told the commission.
He also said he’s ready to lead a charge in the Legislature to support a “good plan” that preserves the memory of the Alamo fallen and keeps the Cenotaph in place, without any private fundraising.
“I’m willing to say that the state of Texas will pay for the whole thing. We don’t need to go out and raise hundreds of millions of dollars. We’ll do it,” Patrick said. “Our budget is $125 billion a year. We can afford $300 or $400 million over the next several years. And if we have the right plan, the members will be behind that. This is the Alamo we’re talking about.”
Skrobarcek, who has been on the citizen advisory committee since 2014, said Patrick should promise support of the plan “regardless of where the Cenotaph is located.”
“If he can actually do what he said he could do, then he should be part of the project regardless of where the Cenotaph sits,” she said.
As city officials weigh their options, internally and in consultation with project partners, the nonprofit Alamo Trust, which operates the site, is preparing for a transition to new leadership.
Douglass W. McDonald, a museum consultant hired as Alamo CEO in 2017, opted not to renew his contract. His last day at the Alamo is Wednesday. The endowment has launched a search for a new CEO.
Latimore said he hopes project partners can reassemble a coalition that supports telling an accurate, diversified story of the Alamo, including its history before and after the famous siege and battle.
“If we do that, I do think that we may get beyondthis,” he said. “But if we don’t do that and get bogged down, history is going to look back at us and say we lost a tremendous opportunity.”