Council offers kudos, concerns on Alamo reset
San Antonio City Council members were generally pleased with recent changes to the multimillion-dollar Alamo Plaza makeover plan, but several raised concerns about costs, street closures and free-speech access to the historic mission and battle site in the heart of downtown.
“I think the team has done great work in putting this back together,” said Councilman John Courage, one of two council members who criticized a previous plan that would have relocated the Cenotaph and voted against the city leasing part of the plaza to the state in 2018.
In addition to keeping the Cenotaph where it has been for the last 80-plus years, the revamped plan calls for closing Alamo Street between Houston and Crockett streets but allowing Fiesta parades and other events with traditional ties to Alamo Plaza to continue; preserving the Woolworth Building and two other historic structures on the west side of the plaza; and installing surface pavers to mark the historic Alamo footprint, among other changes.
Councilman Clayton Perry, who also voted against the lease, questioned why the city would fund improvements in the section of the plaza that is leased to the state.
He asked if any of the $13 million the city has spent or committed so far, with another $25 million still left to spend on the project, was for naught.
“How much money did we waste on that first goround?” Perry asked.
Assistant City Manager Lori Houston said the city has paid or committed funds for utility relocation; site prep work in the plaza, including removal of a 1970s gazebo; design work for closures of Bonham and East Crockett streets; and scholarly studies, including one on the cultural significance of the Woolworth Building.
None of those expenses were wasted, she said.
“We did not waste any time,” Houston added “We were able to adjust.”
The changes resulted from Mayor Ron Nirenberg’s March 1 “reset” of the $450 million public-private Alamo project.
Wednesday’s discussion
about the new plan was the first for the City Council, which is scheduled to vote on changes to the city’s lease with the Texas General Land Office next week.
If the council approves an amended lease at its April 15 meeting, part of Alamo Street would permanently close by June 1. And if a new design is approved for the plaza in the fall, an estimated twoyear construction could begin early next year.
A 12-2 vote in September by the Texas Historical Commission to deny a permit to move the Cenotaph monument forced leaders to rethink the project, which also includes construction of a privately funded museum.
The city is having to develop a new repair plan for the 1930s Cenotaph, since the earlier plan had sought to completely disassemble it and rebuild it on a new frame a few hundred feet to the south.
The plan for repairing the Cenotaph will be developed and presented to the Alamo Citizen Advisory Committee and reviewed by the city’s Office of Historic Preservation and the historical commission before any work begins.
Other changes would limit demonstrations, and perhaps other activities such as Christmas carolers, in a planned First Amendment zone outside the Alamo footprint, in the south part of the plaza.
Perry had qualms about those limitations and also was worried street closures could upset business owners and hinder access for the elderly and disabled.
City Attorney Andy Segovia said caroling and other non-controversial activities might be allowed within the footprint, depending on “the details and the context.”
Councilman Roberto Treviño, who had led the city’s involvement in the Alamo plan for six years before being removed by Nirenberg last month from two key committee posts, referenced a pending audit not yet released on the project.
Treviño said he’d like the audit publicly disclosed, and he took issue with the city agreeing to fund improvements in the city-owned part of the plaza that it wasn’t committed to in the current lease.
“We’re spending money on an area that we weren’t originally going to spend money on,” Treviño said.
Houston countered that the new lease achieves the goal supported by a majority of the council to remain in a partnership with the Land Office and nonprofit Alamo Trust. The Land Office is committed to restoring the Alamo church and Long Barrack — an endeavor that could ultimately lead to replacement of the church’s 101-yearold concrete roof.
The trust plans to privately raise funds for a top-tier museum, possibly repurposing the three stateowned buildings, including the Woolworth Building, in the plaza.
Houston noted that the city would have primary control of design and construction in the plaza under proposed changes to the lease.
In a letter this week to Nirenberg, Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff, former Mayor Phil Hardberger and Phil Bakke, a former member of the Alamo Citizen Advisory Committee, supported the changes. They said the updated plan would provide for interpretation of the plaza, with a focus on the 1836 siege and battle, while keeping the area accessible and open for parades and other events tied to San Antonio traditions, and preserving the historic structures.
“The Alamo is an iconic symbol of our liberty and is best commemorated by allowing open access through the plaza as we have done for centuries,” the three leaders wrote in the letter.