Mayor pulls Treviño from Alamo panels
Mayor Ron Nirenberg, in a major move affecting the massive, beleaguered project to improve and expand the Alamo as a historic site, replaced Councilman Roberto Treviño in two key committee leadership positions Monday.
Nirenberg asked Treviño to resign, Treviño refused and the mayor “moved forward with replacing him,” said Lawson Picasso, Treviño’s communications director.
Treviño’s replacement in both posts is Councilwoman Rebecca Viagran. Nirenberg appointed her to the six-member Alamo Management Committee, which Treviño had chaired, and made her a tri-chair on the 26-member Alamo Citizen Advisory Committee.
“We are ready to begin working with our Alamo partners on a modified plan,” the mayor wrote in a memo, describing a “reset of the project” — a public-private, $450 million makeover of Alamo Plaza that will include construction of an Alamo museum.
Viagran, a descendant of Tejano Alamo defender Toribio Losoya, represents a Southeast Side district that includes the other four Spanish-indigenous mission sites. The Alamo had been the third and final site of Mission San Antonio de Valero before it was secularized and converted to a Spanish military fort known as El Álamo.
“She has a unique level of experience with developing historic sites, and I would say she has very
well-articulated passion for telling the whole story of San Antonio’s history,” Nirenberg said of Viagran.
In his memo outlining what’s next for the Alamo, Nirenberg said city and state officials will work over the next couple of months on a plan that remains true to the project’s guiding principles but ensures public access to Alamo Plaza and preservation of the historic Woolworth and Crockett buildings while providing “flexibility on street closures.”
The city will be responsible for design and construction in the plaza and on Crockett and Bonham streets, while the Texas General Land Office will take care of restoration of the Alamo church, Long Barrack and Alamo grounds. The nonprofit Alamo Trust will be responsible for design and construction of a “world-class museum” and related improvements to Alamo and Houston streets, according to the memo.
Although Nirenberg agrees with Treviño on a holistic interpretation of the site of San Antonio’s first permanent mission and a storied siege and battle for Texas independence that unfolded 185 years ago, the two have disagreed on the importance of moving the Cenotaph. The Texas Historical Commission had voted 12-2 in September against issuing a permit to move the 56-foot-tall monument to nearly 200 Alamo defenders who died in the early morning battle March 6, 1836. ‘Worth preserving’
That action halted the first phase of the project, which was set to break ground last year, despite the pandemic. Treviño had warned that “the failure to relocate the Cenotaph spells the end of the project.”
Nirenberg said there were “far too many aspects of this plan that are worth preserving than to let it all crumble away simply because of the denial of the Cenotaph permit.”
“Councilmember Treviño believes that without the Cenotaph moving, the plan is over,” the mayor said. “And that’s untenable, because we have to accept the reality that the THC denied the permit.”
The removal of Treviño coincided with Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush’s announcement Monday that he no longer supports relocation of the Cenotaph as an integral part of the Alamo project.
Nirenberg and Bush sit on a twoperson Alamo Executive Committee at the top of the hierarchy in a cooperative agreement among the city, the Land Office and Alamo Trust to plan, manage and raise funds for the project.
An amended 50-year lease for the Land Office and Alamo Trust to manage part of the historic plaza as an interpretive space will be presented for public and committee input prior to City Council consideration in the weeks ahead, to cement changes in the Alamo plan, Nirenberg said.
Treviño, a leading figure in the project for the past six years, said the city should instead start with a new lease and be frugal in spending the $38 million it has committed to the project. He said he was disappointed in the mayor’s decision to replace him, especially because he understands the complexities of the project.
“I firmly believe the city should unwind the lease with the state and pursue a scaled-down project in our own best interest. Until we can exit the lease, we should spend no more public money than necessary to fulfill our obligations under the terms of the lease and in accordance with our municipal bonds,” he said.
“Now that the master plan has disintegrated, my focus was to pick up the pieces in the most responsible way possible — both financially and in terms of our responsibility to our community, and to move forward,” Treviño said. “We have lost a tremendous opportunity with unraveling of this project.”
Nirenberg said Treviño has made contributions to the Alamo overhaul that are “many and acknowledged by stakeholders.” He believes the project can be salvaged.
“Having a strong and productive relationship with the state via the GLO is something that is critical to having the Alamo plan come to fruition,” the mayor said.
Cenotaph controversy
Treviño and several others have chafed at the historical commission’s decision on the Cenotaph, dismissing it as influenced by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who supports a focused interpretation of the 1836 siege and battle. Treviño and other proponents of the project have said the massive Cenotaph needed to be moved a few hundred feet south and placed outside the footprint of the mission-fort compound to provide an open, “period-neutral” space to complement the planned museum in the plaza.
Others have said the commission made a sound decision based on preservation principles. Commission members believed there was no compelling need to move the monument and said its placement in the northern part of the plaza in the late 1930s put it close to the Long Barrack, where a high concentration of defenders are believed to have died fighting.
In other changes announced Monday, City Attorney Andy Segovia will replace City Manager Erik Walsh on the management committee, which has made key decisions about the project that have been submitted to the executive committee for final approval.
Also, the mayor named Aaronetta
Pierce, advocate for African-american art and culture, to serve as another tri-chair of the citizen advisory committee. She replaces Lionel Sosa, who resigned in the wake of the historical commission’s decision on the Cenotaph.
Nirenberg also appointed Carey Latimore, an associate history professor at Trinity University specializing in African American studies, to the citizen committee.
The project has been criticized for not including enough participation from the Black community, and some members of the citizen panel have grumbled that it has been treated as a rubber-stamp group without adequate input.
Nirenberg didn’t speak to that directly but said the committee should “be part of bringing this plan to fruition.” He said he’s been in agreement with Pierce that the Woolworth Building should be remembered as the site of one of seven local lunch counters that peacefully desegregated in 1960, helping put San Antonio in a national spotlight.
“She and I have seen eye to eye from the get-go about the importance of telling the civil rights story and legacy of this spot,” Nirenberg said.
He said he hopes to set the project on a “pathway forward” that brings “dignity and respect to the center of our public square” in a way that “doesn’t have to wait for other elements of the plan to come together.”
“If there’s no museum funded and built, there’s no reason to close the streets,” the mayor said.