latest news on the downtown revitilazation project? (San Antonio, El Paso: neighborhood, floor)

[HIGH!Lonesome]

I have one comment to make, since when has the Segundo Barrio becaome a village?
I myself sympathize for the fact that alot of the valley where I grew up was destroyed to build the very same projects that came from El Segundo Barrio,so no hard feelings but progress does hurt sometimes.

[holmes]

It's a poem, so I don't think he literally mean a "village". Where exactly do you mean the valley, lower/upper valley? I assume you mean the farmlands & general lifestyle got in the way of progress. There can be some good and bad things that result from it. In my eyes its far better to keep the city in the city and leave the rural areas wide open for farmlands and wildlife. Of course, there eventually comes a tipping point.

[HIGH!Lonesome]

The valley is normally the lower valley since it's larger than the upper valley everyone would refer to the upper valley as country club.

[malamute]

Originally Posted by holmes

Here's an interesting poem by Luis Alberto Urrea titled "Progress, Plastic Adobe, Get yer Churros!" (edited for naughty words)

EL PASO'S CITY council is planning
to demolish the historic Segundo Barrio
where much of the Mexican revolution was
plotted and planned, where Pancho Villa
ate ice cream cones and his men got drunk and went to
church, where Francisco Madero plotted & where
Mariano Azuela finished the classic novel, Los de abajo. And
where Teresita and Tomás went to live after the
older city council forced them out of their house
up on the hill for attracting too many unsavory Mexicans.

Same as it ever was.

So now the city wants to tear down the historic
Mexican village in the heart of the city and at the heart of the history of both countries, and they want to replace it with a “Lifestyle Center.” A shopping mall. I was sad when my ol’ pal Susie Byrd explained: They will tear down the Mexican village to build a faux representative Mexican village!

Teresita’s house, for example, will be a parking lot.
Progress!

Plastic adobe! Clean authentic Chinese
Mexican paving tiles! Burbling fountains!
Sanitary “Mexican” restaurants serving the best
blueberry margaritas and processed cheez-food
mega-nachos! La Gap, La Banana Republic,
El Tower Records Superstore selling the latest in
peasant music and fashions! 7-11 could concoct a new
authentic “Mexicanny” guava Slurpee! No beaners in sight!
No unsavory smells of caca, frijoles, dogs, goats,
history, or cigarettes. No borrachos. No p*tas. No friggin’
lowriders, though the lowriders could probably get a gig
taking tickets at the Teresita parking facility.
Wandering Puerto Rican and Guatemalan mariachis!
Chocolate shops selling cowsh*t and burrosh*t
joke chocolate patties! T-shirts of Pancho Villa
hanging out where there is no trace of his having been anymore or ever again!

Go, El Paso, go!

I wondered aloud if they were going to install
animatronic Mexican robots. They could have robot
women nursing android babies and old fiberglass cobblers hammering nails into rubber cowboy boots, bandido droids
rolling by at 10:30, Noon, and 3:45
on solar-powered electric hybrid horses.

Churros! Git yer churros rat cheer!

Paso Del Sur

Whenever I've talked to people from out-of-town, what always stands out is that they're disappointed there isn't more of the "real" El Paso and when you ask them what they mean by that -- they really wanted to see an old West kind of town or at least something of that.

I think we don't capitalize on our past or uniqueness much at all and we should have kept the run down historic buildings. Who wants to travel all the way to El Paso and just see some other modern city with modern buildings? Not that something shouldn't be done but it should be looking at what people coming here were expecting to see and why they don't bother returning.

[malamute]

Originally Posted by EnjoyEP

I cannot describe just how much I agree with this statement malamute.

This is a major reason among many else why I really like El Paso.

I always shudder a bit when people try to change the cities I really love - El Paso and Albuquerque - into being so much more like those "cool" cities you describe. Sure, progress isn't a bad thing at all, but El Paso is unique and EP should be proud of that.

Yes -- I would hate to see even certain aspects of downtown destroyed. Maybe it would be better to look back and see why people used to shop downtown --- because at one time they did. People at work talk about those old stores back some time ago that they worked their first jobs in, or loved to shop in. It's not so much that we need to revamp but to get back something that was lost -- and hold onto what's left.

It has to be something they can't get at the malls -- or else they'll just stop there and never make it downtown.

[peggydavis]

To tear down a historic area and build some mall that looks like every other mall in the US sounds like a dumb idea to me.

[holmes]

Originally Posted by malamute

Whenever I've talked to people from out-of-town, what always stands out is that they're disappointed there isn't more of the "real" El Paso and when you ask them what they mean by that -- they really wanted to see an old West kind of town or at least something of that.

I think we don't capitalize on our past or uniqueness much at all and we should have kept the run down historic buildings. Who wants to travel all the way to El Paso and just see some other modern city with modern buildings? Not that something shouldn't be done but it should be looking at what people coming here were expecting to see and why they don't bother returning.

Exactly. Of course there are other facets to the "true" el paso. We have the wild west history, the mexican revoultion, pachucos, chicano movement, etc. To me, that is far more valuable to our own cultural self worth and to the interests of a tourism industry than a few tall buildings. *Yawn*. There's a lot more to downtown than that. And when we start recognizing that (hopefully the city & doubtfully the PDNG), the better off this downtown renaissance will be.

[holmes]

Originally Posted by peggydavis

To tear down a historic area and build some mall that looks like every other mall in the US sounds like a dumb idea to me.

Well it's not really a mall, at least in the conventional sense. Lifestyle centers are designed to look and feel like the urban retail they started replacing in the 60s. The irony.

Here's some background:

Lifestyle center (retail) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The latest incarnation of the shopping mall. - By Andrew Blum - Slate Magazine

[Six Foot Three]

Originally Posted by peggydavis

To tear down a historic area and build some mall that looks like every other mall in the US sounds like a dumb idea to me.

Hey Peggy....i think they eventually want to do as you guys have done in Oklahoma City and like up here in Albuquerque has done and that is build Lofts and Shopping, Cafes and an Entertainment district etc...

You go downtown and it's a dead zone outside a few clubs for the 20 somethings after hours. Oklahoma City downtown is awesome with its Riverwalk and Canal and the HUGE and very nice downtown Arena as it looks like the Seattle Supersonics will move there.

Back in the 80's former Mayor Jon Rogers (my alltime favorate) wanted to make an ''Old West '' theme there with Stage Coach rides and Gun Fights (reinactment) kinda like a ''Knotts Berry Farm'' Theme park in Los Angeles for those who ever been there. He also tried to get the EP voters to approve the largest Cowboy/Rodeo Complex in the U.S. back then but the voters voted it down.

So i hope that the city/county along with Paul Foster can make it a go down there.

[EnjoyEP]

Originally Posted by observe

Enjoy EP I'm not sure what your talking about when you say "Bigger" when it comes to ABQ & EP downtowns.
here are the top 5 tallest buildings and total number of high rises for both cities.

El Paso/ 5 tallest......16 total High Rises
1.) 90m wells fargo
2.)76m chase
3.)73m plaza hotel
4.)71m kayser
5.)63m EP natural gas


Albuquerque/ 5 tallest.....36 High Rises total
1.)107m abq plaza
2.)78m hyatt regency
3.)73m compass
4.)72m abq petrolium
5.)65m bank of the west

Here is the sight I pulled this information from, check it out it's a fun sight.

Tallest skyscrapers

Interesting stuff, observe.

Yeah, I guess I wasn't talking so much of the actual heights of the tallest buildings in each city. Certainly I realize that the ABQ Plaza - Hyatt combo kind of give that dual large visual in ABQ that EP doesn't necessarily have.

I guess more what I was driving at is that when you walk around / drive around the Downtown of Albuquerque and the Downtown of El Paso, you'll find many more mid-to-semi-tallish buildings in EP than you do in ABQ, and there is just more landmass with buildings, etc. too.

Neither city, of course, has "massive" Downtowns, or incredibly big skyscrapers.

So I see where you are coming from observe, I probably didn't explain myself as well as I could've.