Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff has become the latest, and certainly the most influential, local official to take issue with the proposal for the multi million dollar renovation of Alamo Plaza, News Radio 1200 WOAI reports.
Wolff, like many citizens who have expressed their opinion on social media and at public forums, says the translucent plexiglass wall that designers have proposed to line the north and south ends of Alamo Plaza is wrong and inappropriate.
"I think we are going to have to be very careful when we think about boxing everybody off by a wall," Wolff told News Radio 1200 WOAI. "That is a people place, it is one where people are going to want to congregate, and they shouldn't be boxed off by a wall of plexiglass."
The designers are using the trunslucent wall to mark where the original walls of the 1724 Alamo mission stood. Many supporters of the design say, currently, visitors have no idea where on the grounds of the mission they are standing, and the wall would give a 'sense of place' and the plexiglass nature would allow people to see through to Alamo Plaza.
But Wolff says plexiglass does not say 'Alamo' to him
."You could put up ballard to define where the wall is, you could put up a segment of the wall to show what it looked like," he said. "They certainly didn't have any plexiglass on the site during the Battle of the Alamo."
Wolff says he is confident that a compromise on the wall can be reached before a final design is approved.
IMAGE; ALAMO