At the center of Jan Jacinto Plaza is a Luis Jiménez sculpture titled “Plaza de los Lagartos.”  The piece pays homage to the parks unique history, once being the home to live alligators.

View San Jacinto Plaza in a larger map

The tale of the alligators is a sad one.  Three were added to the park in the late 1800’s and were the main attraction for decades. Unfortunately they were frequently targeted by vandals until they had to be permanently removed from the park. Their last appearance in the park was in 1974.

The sculpture was part of a mid 90’s attempt to revitalize the downtown area.  It originally was more kinetic, featuring water fountain and misting elements. Currently the fountain has been drained and the water features turned off. The ever present desert sun has faded the fiberglass sculpture quite a bit.

San Jacinto Plaza had served as the Sun Metro transportation hub for the Downtown area.  This lead to an abundance of people waiting in the park for the bus as well as pan handlers and vagrants who slept in the grassy areas.  To prevent that, the grassy areas were fenced off making the park not very park like.

Recently Sun Metro has moved the hub and now the park is rather empty.  The revitalization bug has once again been caught by city council so to make the park more people friendly, the city has removed the fencing surrounding the grassy areas.

Surprising that little change really opens up the park.  If I still worked downtown I would certainly eat my lunch here.  More changes may be afoot though as a polarizing plan to revitalize the park even further has been drawn up by an outside design firm.  One of the most prominent changes was the removal of the sculpture from the park altogether: San Jacinto Redesign

The alligators now have their own Facebook page (Los Lagartos) in protest to the redesign and others around the city have voiced concerns as well.  I agree that a redesign should include some elements from the parks past.  Jimenez’s sculpture could be refurbished and better incorporated into a water feature prominently drawing from the parks historical significance.  If removal is still in the cards, then one would hope that any reuse of the sculpture doesn’t wind up being an affront to the original artist intent.

The city should follow the recent revitalizations of the Plaza Theater and the Mills building.  Both have been brought into this century while maintaining their heritage.  The Mills building even added back some nice architectural elliments that had been removed by the previous owners refurb in the 70’s:

That’s the one thing that El Paso really has going for it, architectural history.  After being largely neglected but left intact, we are finally waking with the desire to improve our downtown.  We should resist the attempts to go whole hog modern, we are never going to be “that city”.   Lets move forward by better using what we have.

A larger flicker walk through is here: San Jacinto Plaza

For a few months I’ve been exploring an abandoned industrial plant located at the corner of Executive and the Border Highway, the Southwestern Portland Cement Plant.

View Southwestern Portland Cement in a larger map

In this trip I concentrated on the back portion of the complex. There is a cluster of buildings that are interconnected and appear to be in better condition than the front sections of the plant:

The walls were painted and boxes of equipment were scattered around. One portion had the remains of an office complete with a 2006 calender on the wall.

This area was quite striking in comparison to the older portions.  Sure, it was still a mess but it had some cool items of late 90’s vintage:

Continuing on through the warehouse to the outside, there was a small yard diesel parked out back.

As I began to make my way back into the warehouse, I heard a truck coming around the corner.  Since I’m not sure if the owners would like me wandering around their abandoned factory, I darted behind a shed.  The truck parked out of my view by the warehouse and soon I could hear somebody whistling a tune.  I figured I wasn’t in much danger and continued to take pictures outside while the pied piper was inside.  After a few minutes, he appeared in a doorway nearby.  As he turned to me I greeted him, “Hi”.  Startled, he let out an “Aye cabrón!”. Luckily he wasn’t security, just a Cemex worker.

We chatted for a bit and he told me that Cemex rents this portion of the plant for storage explaining the somewhat refurbished condition. Seeing that I was taking pictures, he asked if I was interested in buying the place. I told him “No” and he said that was good because it would take a lot of money to clean up the asbestos.  I now had my answer to this plants demise.

I still have one area left I would like to visit, the old front office. I may try to get to it soon because I’m not sure how much longer ill have access through the front.  The road has been recently torn up by the ever advancing El Paso Water Utilities purple pipe project:

The full Flickr set can be viewed here: Portland Cement (pt.4)

The previous Flickr sets can be viewed here:
Set Three 6/21/2011
Set Two  5/16/2011
Set One 5/10/2011

A few days after mowing down the last batch of mushrooms a whole new crop came up.  This time around they were more developed and much larger:

I had 4 areas were they popped up in nice little clusters. They were in full bloom for about 2 days before they turned brown and started to dry up.

Sadly no Smurfs ever appeared.  This Sunday I mowed down this batch so it will be interesting to see if I get any more after the nights rains.

Full set can be seen here: More Mushrooms

On the outskirts of Canutillo, visible from I-10 is a rather curious structure. Sitting in the desert is a dome shaped, round concrete house.  As a kid, I could recall seeing it when we would travel west and it would immediately conjure up images of what living in the “future” must be like.

I never got to see the house up close but you easily could see the domed concrete roof, gazebo and diving boards from the freeway.  It was right out of an episode of “That’s Incredible” or “Real People”, where they would show some family living off the grid in a solar dome in New Mexico making their own gasoline from corn or something.

On a recent trip to pick up firewood in Las Cruses, I scanned for it as we passed where it should have been. Either I had missed it or something was blocking my view because I didn’t see it.  I checked Bing maps’ “birds-eye-view” and found an image of it so at least when Bing went live it was still there:

Hmmm, It didn’t look as fantastic as I remembered but hey its standing.  I headed to check it out in person and see what it would be like to live in a future from the 70’s.

The site was less Barbarella and more Mad Max. The main house has collapsed on itself and unkempt shrubs and weeds were everywhere.

Upon closer inspection you get a sense that the construction was a little less refined than it appeared from afar and whoever built it really liked concrete.  Not only was the roof concrete but the exterior walls, gazebo and weird tubular perimeter fence were cement. The interior walls also have rocks embedded in them in a rather haphazard pattern.

I couldn’t get a feel for what the interior would have looked like due to the roof collapse.  It was apparent that nobody has lived here in a long time.  The interior has been stripped and graffiti covers every surface.

The pool must have been a sight in it’s heyday. You can imagine all manner of 70’s disco parties taking place here; mustaches, corvettes, polyester and cocaine.

It would be interesting to know what caused the owners to abandon their hip outpost. Judging by the lack of any insulation, keeping this place cool or hot might have been a chore. Maybe they were bankrupted by the acres of concrete layed in casting this place.  One things for sure, you don’t get up and leave your house unmonitored in Canutillo.  That’s asking for gangs to move in.

It was a bummer seeing this place in such disarray.  Much like my fantasy future of geodesic dome living never panned out, it didn’t for the owners here either.  The hard truth is given enough time, concrete will crack no matter how much you pour.

A bigger walk through is here: This Old Round House.