Among the agenda items the City Council will decide Monday, September 18, is the decision — per the March 15, 2017 City Engineering Department Request for Submission of Qualifications for Design of A Project —for which a professional firm will be contracted “to masterplan and design the Boulevard of the Americas,” the four blighted blocks that run alongside the approach to the Juarez-Lincoln International Bridge “from Victoria Street at the north end to Hidalgo Street on the south end, Santa Ursula on the west, and San Dario on the east.”
The RFQ states that the design should follow the “AIA-Laredo schematic design (to include plazas) with aims to preserve historical, architectural, and cultural aspects of the City.”
AIA-Laredo, comprised of local architectural firms, organized a series of three public design workshops or in July of 2015 for public input into the purpose, use, and features of each of the four blocks. That input included leaving open all the east to west streets that define the area and that provide vital connectors from the Azteca neighborhood and the Heights into downtown and IH-35 North, as well as connectors to U.S. Hwy. 59, Texas State Hwy. 359, and U.S. Hwy. 83.
Three teams went before City Council on August 30, 2017 to submit qualifications to be considered for the design — Abrazo Partners Joint Venture, a consortium of four Laredo architectural firms that had gathered considerable community input for the 2015 AIA-Laredo design; Asakura Robinson of Austin and Houston; and Muñoz FR.EE of San Antonio.
ABRAZO PARTERS JOINT VENTURE
Abrazo Partners Joint Venture, which included the principals of Slay Architecture, Cavazos Architecture, Frank Architects, and Hickey-Peña Architects, presented first.
The Abrazo presentation, which included a short information- dense video of the City’s history and its evolution as a portal for international trade, was followed by the comments of architects Memo Cavazos, Viviana Frank Rotnofsky, and Mario Peña, comments that resonated with a value for history, the spirit of a place, and the intent to adhere to the ideas Laredoans voiced for the four-block boulevard.
Memo Cavazos began by introducing the team of four firms, a first for Laredo, when Council member Roberto Balli told him to hurry up.
Viviana Frank told the City Council that citizens who participated in the charette had declared that the boulevard project had to resonate on several levels. “They want us to connect the neighborhoods east and west. A city that pays attention to accessibility is a successful city. Celebrate the whole city. Connect citizens and visitors with beauty and clarity from all points north and south and east and west,” she said.
She noted that every truly great city has a great boulevard. “Its crossroads connect districts and neighborhoods, and ours will connect to another country. All great boulevards are planned and they are meant to develop over time and generations.”
Architect Mario Peña addressed the high stakes and many possibilities for the development of the four-block site. “Who best to author the message Laredo will project on the world? We think it should be its citizens. This boulevard must be Laredo’s message written by Laredoans. We think only this team has proven it can do that. And no design can realistically be considered without the entire community being involved. He noted that all the Abrazo Partner firms had been involved in Laredo’s first charette in 2015.”
Peña said that the AIA charette taught team members that transparency and inclusiveness were essential for the success of the project.
“If selected, this team will continue the work of the charette. We know they produced fantastic results, but they also produced beloved results, which is why they are so important,” Peña continued.
He said the Abrazo team has been considering all the dichotomies that collide on the four boulevard blocks — pedestrian versus vehicular, local versus global, bridge versus border, slow pace versus fast pace, monumental versus human, past versus future, memory versus reality.
Peña closed the presentation with, “Very few moments in a community’s history have generational impact, and tonight for this City council for this City we are faced with one of those moments. It’s a moment very much like when Tomás Sánchez in 1755 founded this city,
“It’s a moment like when our great Cathedral of San Agustín was built. It’s a moment like when our great-grandfathers decided to make this city one of America’s greatest crossing points. It’s a moment that will define our identity indelibly. And so we, your Laredo team are ready to team up with the community to define it.”
ASAKURA ROBINSON
Asakura Robinson’s presentation by principal Brendan Wittstruck, a LEED certified urban designer from the firm’s Austin office, was clear and relevant as to mobility and what makes public spaces meaningful to a community.
Wittstruck presented the credentials of his planning, urban design, and landscape architectural firm and its numerous projects in Texas.
He lauded the AIA charrettes as an excellent base onto which to build.
Of the four-block site, Wittstruck said, “The traffic part is huge for us,” he said, adding that it is crucial to be looking at transportation management. “We don’t believe the parks will be as successful as you want them to be if people can’t get to them safely.” He said that border queing caused confusing movement on IH-35.
“We see a very formal, very symmetrical boulevard, but we don’t have formal, symmetrical traffic patterns,” he said.
HENRY MUNOZ & ASSOCIATES, THEN & NOW
The reputation of Henry Muñoz and Associates of San Antonio, arrived in advance of the speechifying by architect Steve Tillotson with the memory of the bombastic $395,000 Laredo Downtown Master Plan submitted by Kell Muñoz Architects to the City of Laredo in May 2011.
The garish plan — a gift from City management and City Council to Kell Muñoz — did not incorporate the ideas or wishes the firm asked of downtown merchants who had asked for underground utilities, better lighting, more frequent trash pickup, sidewalk reconstruction, the removal of utility poles from sidewalks, and infrastructure improvements to deal with the wafts of raw sewage that belched from downtown’s aging sewage lines.
From the Henry Muñoz and Associates presentation
Downtown business owners said the Kell Muñoz downtown plan — which included a tunnel to move traffic from the Juarez Lincoln Bridge, the closure of Hidalgo Street, a new City-owned retail space called the Pan American Center that would lease to peso exchange businesses and eateries (and would compete with existing downtown businesses) — was “not rooted in reality,” “an expensive comic book,” “not viable,” “off the mark,” “lamentably laughable,” and was not reflective of “what we told them when they asked for our opinions.”
I would not have revived that unsuccessful plan in the same breath as trying to start up a new relationship with the City, nor would I have handed out copies of the never-adopted downtown plan at the August 30 meeting.
TMI
And I probably would not have included in this go around a video from Henry Muñoz saying he was sorry not to be in Laredo for the presentation because he was still on his honeymoon (for a marriage that took place in May.) He said “I want to thank you for this once in a lifetime opportunity to present for the Boulevard of the Americas… I’m actually on my honeymoon, and only my honeymoon would keep me away from this historic opportunity to discuss with you a project that is incredibly important not just to the City of Laredo, but also to the United States, Mexico, and the Americas, much like the Pan American Highway when it was first contemplated….”
There was something a bit pretentious and too familiar with that kind of communication, as though he was a beloved good friend, which perhaps was the case with the Council that approved the $395,000 contract with him in 2010.
The recent presentation had also included a garbled video message from Mexican architect Fernando Romero, the FR.EE part of the Muñoz team. The best part of the Muñoz presentation was that of Sergio Romero who expanded on his firm’s prestigious designs in Mexico and on the world stage, projects far beyond the possibility for four city blocks in one of the poorest cities in the United States.
For those who were unaware of the 2010 debacle with Muñoz or for whom it had been an enriching experience for everyone involved but the people of Laredo, there was an implied spectre of acquiescence to the dazzle and charms of the Muñoz group’s presentation. This was evident in the demeanor of District VIII Council member Roberto Balli — who had earlier told the Abrazo group to hurry up — and in the comments of District V Council member Nelly Vielma.
THE RFQ
Both the Abrazo Partners and Asakura Robinson heeded the purpose of the RFQ, and neither presented designs or drawings. The Muñoz presentation, however, included drawings for monuments and drawings that showed the closure of east to west connecting streets and features never discussed or suggested at the AIA charrettes like a hyperloop train terminal, a brick obelisk monument, or a building called the World Trade Center. More importantly, (and not unlike Kell Muñoz’s disregard for downtown merchants in the 2011 Downtown Master Plan) those drawings showed disregard for the wishes of the 2015 AIA charrette participants.
(Note: The Texas Board of Architectural Examiners Rules that regulate the practice of architecture in Texas states that architects cannot “give a public entity…any design service…of significant value…that would affect the entity’s selection of an Architect. For this reason, typically, only qualifications are requested of architects. The rationale is to prevent large, resource-rich firms from gaining an unfair advantage over smaller well-qualified firms.)
Laredo was announced yesterday as a finalist for the hyperloop in the USA and it can hopefully tie into the project Kell Munoz mentioned coming in from Mexico to Monterrey to Nuevo Laredo. It is a hyperloop connecting Dallas, Houston, Laredo! Some of the projects in the downtown masterplan by Kell Munoz are already being implemented. They also suggested doing something with these 4 blocks. I was led to believe that it was a bad plan but our problem has always been that we don’t think bigger than Laredo. We always think small and we tend to be selfish, and too territorial. When Kell Munoz came to Laredo I was told not to share information with them and I was part of a group in the downtown area that was supposed to help it grow. But because it was someone else I was told not to share information or ideas. I understand why now, pure sabotage, selfishness, and territorial. You can’t try to control the whole city. We need new ideas and new partnerships.
From my understanding Laredo is being considered for the hyper loop project mainly for transporting freight. Is it really a good idea to build a fright terminal in between a highway and our downtown? Also don’t we need to build warehouses to store and trans load the freight into the pods? Where would all this go?
Article that talks about Hyper Loop Texas which is the finalist you mentioned: http://www.hyperloop-tx.com/why-texas-1/
LOOKS VERY NICE….
Will it eventually end up looking like it presently does now? Remember what it looked like before it renovated? What good does it do if it isn’t maintained?