Work begins on Alamo
Work will start as early as next month on the first phase of the $450 million endeavor.
SAN ANTONIO — At long last, ground will soon be broken on a project to transform Alamo Plaza into a place that honors early missionaries, indigenous people and fallen combatants on both sides of the famed 1836 battle for Texas independence.
Work will begin as early as next month on the first phase of the $450 million endeavor to reclaim the historic mission and battle site. Crews will relocate utility lines, move and repair the 56-foot-tall Cenotaph and convert part of the plaza from an urban square to a shaded pedestrian space.
For Alamo devotees who have followed the project since a citizen committee was formed in 2014, the first phase marks a realization of the shared dream of a world-class community gathering space with an emotional connection to past.
Sharon Skrobarcek, a member of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas serving on the 30-member citizen advisory panel, said the project will unite the community but require compromises.
“I don’t think any one person is going to be 100 percent happy with everything,” she said. “But when it’s all said and done, we’re all going to be proud of it.”
The Alamo makeover still has several hurdles to clear in four years to hold its planned grand opening on March 1, 2024, the tricentennial of the founding of the third and final location of the Mission San Antonio de Valero. Alamo officials have less than two years to get a “permanent museum and visitor center” in a “schematic phase of build out.”
Those are conditions set by British rock star Phil Collins, who donated some 400-plus artifacts valued at $15.5 million in 2014. The former Genesis drummer wants all the items publicly exhibited as the Phil Collins Texana Collection.
Potential roadblocks and design challenges include attempting to close Alamo Street to traffic; creating pedestrian access through the plaza; dealing with tenant leases that run through 2028 on the site of the planned 130,000-square-foot museum; and possible demolition of up to five buildings over the objection of preservationists and property owners.
There’s also a federal lawsuit filed by a Native American group seeking designation of the plaza as a cemetery worthy of legal protection. Although no remains have been unearthed in the plaza, discoveries of skeletal remnants in the church in August, September and October have heightened concerns raised by the Tap Pilam Coahuiltecan Nation that more will be found.
“We want the excavations to stop and the project to slow down,” said Ramón Vásquez, executive member of Tap Pilam. “They’re avoiding the issue of the cemetery instead of dealing with it.”
Like Skrobarcek, Vásquez is an original member of the Alamo Citizen Advisory Commission who was appointed in 2014 by then-San Antonio Mayor Julián Castro, now a presidential candidate. But putting aside his group’s lawsuit, Vásquez is far less enthused with the project, worried it could leave a trail of “Alamo roadkill” — damaged relationships with business leaders, preservationists and minority groups.
“We need to calm down, regroup and push back the timelines,” Vásquez said.
In August, bone fragments, ankle and foot bones and a “highly worn tooth” were found near an unmapped cast iron sewer line on the north side of the Alamo church nave. In September, more human remains were found, according to records obtained by Tap Pilam through public information requests. Last month, hand and rib bone fragments and a dozen “unidentifiable bone fragments” were unearthed in a side room of the church.
Tap Pilam’s lawsuit seeks to stop the digs until archaeological studies define the boundaries of one or more cemeteries in the plaza.
Based on mission burial records, archaeological reports have estimated 1,000 or more people were buried during and after the Alamo’s 1724-1793 mission era. A court hearing on Tap Pilam’s request for an injunction was postponed by Chief U.S. District Judge Orlando L. Garcia.
Closing Alamo Street
Closing streets in the plaza is another long-sought change at the Alamo, endorsed by a 1994 Alamo Plaza Study Committee. But closing Alamo Street also is likely to upset downtown business owners, especially if officials proceed with a concept of adding a northbound lane to Losoya, a three-block street with two southbound lanes that often is used for deliveries of food, alcohol and other supplies for River Walk businesses.
Pape-Dawson Engineers, a city consultant on downtown traffic, has recommended adding a northbound lane to Losoya. City Councilman Robert Treviño has said Losoya, which often functions as a dreary back alley lined with trash bins on pickup days, could be turned into “one of those great walkable streets,” even with a northbound lane addition, if a new comprehensive downtown plan for deliveries can be developed.
“We have a lot of work to do on Losoya,” Treviño said last week.
About a dozen owners of restaurants, businesses or buildings on Losoya last year told city officials they would oppose a lane addition on Losoya and believed there are better solutions for the traffic.
Another business-related concern is tenant leases held by Phillips Entertainment, which owns Tomb Rider 3D, Guinness World Records and Ripley’s Haunted Adventure, in two of three stateowned buildings on the west side of the plaza. Davis Phillips, the company’s president and CEO, said his firm should be fairly compensated if forced to relocate before his leases expire at the end of 2027 and 2028. He estimates it would cost $20 million.
A planned entertainment district for those relocated businesses has not been identified. But Phillips, who also sits on the Alamo advisory panel, said he wants to help find a solution that maintains viability of the Alamo project and his businesses, which employ more than 100 people.
“We need to be as focused on that as developing the Alamo plan,” Phillips said. “I want to stay in business. I’m not looking to get a paycheck and go to Tahiti.”
What about public access?
Also at issue is pedestrian access to the Alamo’s “historic footprint” — the portion of the plaza once enclosed by walls of the fort. The Alamo plan would lower much of that area by 16 inches and encircle it with a 42-inch-tall handrail, with only one entry point on the west side on average days and two additional gates on busy days, providing a managed interpretive space during museum hours. Six gates would be open at night.
Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff and others have sought assurances that north-south access will be maintained for pedestrians walking through the plaza. Alamo CEO Douglass W. McDonald says it won’t be a problem.
“We’re still committed to a porous site” on the plaza, McDonald said.
Also yet to be accomplished is a campaign by the Remember the Alamo Foundation, an affiliate of the Alamo Trust, to privately raise $150 million for the museum, once a design is completed.
Often lost amid the disputed issues is perhaps the most important change at the Alamo: possible replacement of a century-old concrete roof bearing down on the mission church’s crumbling limestone walls, which are hollow or filled with rubble, but with no structural reinforcement.
Alamo officials have had engineers and preservation experts capture high-tech images and collect boring samples to determine how the heavy roof is affecting the walls. Experts have speculated the church, which was roofless and used as cannon station in 1836, may need a new, lightweight roof.
Historically, the church was never finished, since a first stone roof collapsed during construction in the 1700s. After the battle, a woodframe roof was built in the mid-1800s by the U.S. Army, which also added the building’s signature parapet when converting the church to a quartermaster depot.
George Skarmeas, planning and design director at Preservation Design Partnership of Philadelphia and the project’s first lead consultant, initially sounded an alarm in 2016 about the “worrisome behavior” of the Alamo’s “most important artifact” — the church that has become one of the most recognized historic structures in the country.