Scroll down to see the questions posed to candidates about plans for Alamo Plaza during various forums leading up to the May 1, 2021 election. Click on the link to watch and hear their answers Mayoral Candidate Town Hall by the League of Women Voters Q: What are your thoughts about the Alamo plan, specifically the balance between the 1836 battle and its earlier life as a mission and the location of the Cenotaph and the opening and the closing of Alamo Plaza?

San Antonio's landmark Woolworth Building and its civil rights legacy will be preserved, along with a public civic space, under a new plan for the Alamo Plaza, Mayor Ron Nirenberg said. His pledge came after he replaced Councilman Roberto Treviño as Tri-Chair of the Alamo Citizens Advisory Committee and on the Alamo Management Committee with Councilwoman Rebecca Viagran, and added two Black champions of civil rights history to the Advisory Committee. 

Note: This talk by Kathryn O'Rourke was part of a day-long symposium on the importance of the Woolworth Building as a Civil Rights historic site, hosted by the San Antonio Conservation Society and Bexar County. Click here to see other presentations.

The battle lines are drawn over Alamo Plaza. Leading the charge to defend the iconic public space is the San Antonio Conservation Society, which has collected 7,500 signatures on its Petition to Save Alamo Plaza.

For a document obsessed with events of 1836, the new “Alamo Comprehensive Interpretive Plan,” reads more like “Nineteen Eighty-Four,” a dystopian novel that satirizes hypocrisy by the state. “Embrace the continuum of history” means “repudiate the continuum of history.” “Enhance connections to the surrounding streets” means “reduce connections to the surrounding streets.” “Enable pedestrian flow through the site” means “restrict pedestrian flow through the site.”

NOWCastSA webcast The Alamo Citizen Advisory Committee meeting on June 7, 2018 from the Witte Museum Prassel Auditorium. The committee heard a presentation by the design team on draft site plan and strategy for Alamo Plaza. Afterwards, the committee members discuss the presentation and their reaction to the draft plan. Anyone can replay it here for free, right here on this page, thanks to generous support from Myfe Moore. (Scroll down for additional details and context)

By Mike Greenberg In nearly four decades as an architecture and urban planning critic in San Antonio, I have seen some good plans and some bad plans. Never have I seen anything as destructive, wasteful and historically insensitive as the Alamo Plaza Master Plan. It deserves a place of honor all its own in the trash bin.

San Antonio prides itself on holiday lights. Some people don’t even take their Christmas lights down after the new year. They just flick a switch when the next Christmas rolls around to celebrate another season of holiday cheer.  

As millions of people awaken across the United States on the 10th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks, the Shrine of Texas Liberty -- The Alamo -- will host a memorial service and commemoration of the events that changed a nation.