Here's something you might be interested in.
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
Will Trump’s Baja resort be built after all?
Long-stalled development sparks art exhibit, gets new life
Alvaro Alvarez holds a picture of Trump Ocean Resort Baja Mexico, as envisioned in 2008
Video:
GOLDEN DREAMS: A different sort of Trumpian comeback?
Once, Donald Trump had a dream for Baja California — well, at least for a cut from the sales that came from attaching his name to a dream project at Punta Bandera in Playas de Tijuana, about 10 miles from the San Ysidro crossing. Trump Ocean Resort Baja Mexico, according to Wikipedia, was to be a three-tower, 25-story, 526-unit condo-hotel. But that was in 2008; real estate troubles were brewing. Trump withdrew his name association from the project. Soon after came the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers and the severe economic crisis of 2009. Investors in Trump Ocean Resort Baja Mexico were each out $200,000-$300,000 from the down payments they had made to the failed project. But it wasn’t just the Trump building. That was just part of a 46-building mega project up and down Baja which collapsed in its entirety. Ever since, those 46 holes in the ground and shells of buildings have been all that remained of a dream to transform Baja into a Mexican Riviera.
Which is why I’ve paid a visit to BLK Box Art Gallery and Creative Center in San Ysidro: it’s where the Mexican American artist and architect Alvaro Alvarez has displayed the 46 papier maché sculptures he created, each representing one of the failed buildings or its site. “It’s called ‘46 Renacimientos’ — ‘46 Rebirths,’” he explains, “because at last they are coming back to life after 16 years.”
Alvarez’s papier maché sculpture of Trump Tower, still a hole in the ground after 16 years
Alvarez is a youthful-looking architect-turned-artist. “In the History of Baja California, this was going to be the biggest development ever. Three billion dollars in sales, 12,500 homes, 65,000 jobs.”
He leads me towards one of the sculptures on display and stoops over it: it seems to depict ditches rather than buildings. “We’re looking at my interpretation of Donald Trump’s project,” he says. The Trump site would have created 2600 jobs and generated $130 million in sales. Sixteen years later, it is still just a hole. “But,” says Alvarez, “it has a fence around it. And you know how much the president loves fences.”
We move to the next sculpture. “This was going to be Tiger Woods’ golf course in Punta Brava, Ensenada. It never happened either, and in a way that’s a good thing, because it’s alive with breathtaking views — so many birds and exotic foliage now, unlike if it had become a golf course.”
Alvaro Alvarez, artist and architect, is helping create a New Mexican Riviera
So where is the rebirth? Alvarez says the projects “are coming back to life, all 46 of them. That’s why we’re celebrating here. The actual projects are all at different stages. Some of them are already finished in their ‘reborn’ configuration. Some of them are in construction as we speak, and then some of them are in different stages of negotiations. It’s been eleven years of trying to get people around the table, to get this back up [and active again]. The Trump towers are still in the ‘discussion’ category. But the good news is that there’s a lot of goodwill from local authorities, from the banks that took the projects over after the 2008 collapse, and there’s a lot of interest from new investors. It is a beautiful coast!” And the Tijuana river, with its pollution problems? “Fortunately for us, the currents carry those waters north from the border, not south.”
The man behind this giant 46-building revival project? “My grandfather, Luis Bustamante. He has been working on this since 2013. I started this project with him. I was an [architectural] intern at the time, studying in college in New York. I was called back home, and my job since that summer has been to go and document each of these sites. And my grandfather has been non-stop working, getting people excited about what the vision for these abandoned buildings could be. I, as an artist, can now tell the visual story that I’ve witnessed. It’s a wonderful happy story, because even though these unfinished buildings were sadness, monuments to failure, now we can see them as symbols of resilience.”
Here's something you might be interested in.
Will Trump’s Baja resort be built after all?
Long-stalled development sparks art exhibit, gets new life
Will Trump’s Baja resort be built after all?
Long-stalled development sparks art exhibit, gets new life
Alvaro Alvarez holds a picture of Trump Ocean Resort Baja Mexico, as envisioned in 2008
Video:
GOLDEN DREAMS: A different sort of Trumpian comeback?
Once, Donald Trump had a dream for Baja California — well, at least for a cut from the sales that came from attaching his name to a dream project at Punta Bandera in Playas de Tijuana, about 10 miles from the San Ysidro crossing. Trump Ocean Resort Baja Mexico, according to Wikipedia, was to be a three-tower, 25-story, 526-unit condo-hotel. But that was in 2008; real estate troubles were brewing. Trump withdrew his name association from the project. Soon after came the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers and the severe economic crisis of 2009. Investors in Trump Ocean Resort Baja Mexico were each out $200,000-$300,000 from the down payments they had made to the failed project. But it wasn’t just the Trump building. That was just part of a 46-building mega project up and down Baja which collapsed in its entirety. Ever since, those 46 holes in the ground and shells of buildings have been all that remained of a dream to transform Baja into a Mexican Riviera.
Which is why I’ve paid a visit to BLK Box Art Gallery and Creative Center in San Ysidro: it’s where the Mexican American artist and architect Alvaro Alvarez has displayed the 46 papier maché sculptures he created, each representing one of the failed buildings or its site. “It’s called ‘46 Renacimientos’ — ‘46 Rebirths,’” he explains, “because at last they are coming back to life after 16 years.”
Alvarez’s papier maché sculpture of Trump Tower, still a hole in the ground after 16 years
Alvarez is a youthful-looking architect-turned-artist. “In the History of Baja California, this was going to be the biggest development ever. Three billion dollars in sales, 12,500 homes, 65,000 jobs.”
He leads me towards one of the sculptures on display and stoops over it: it seems to depict ditches rather than buildings. “We’re looking at my interpretation of Donald Trump’s project,” he says. The Trump site would have created 2600 jobs and generated $130 million in sales. Sixteen years later, it is still just a hole. “But,” says Alvarez, “it has a fence around it. And you know how much the president loves fences.”
We move to the next sculpture. “This was going to be Tiger Woods’ golf course in Punta Brava, Ensenada. It never happened either, and in a way that’s a good thing, because it’s alive with breathtaking views — so many birds and exotic foliage now, unlike if it had become a golf course.”
Alvaro Alvarez, artist and architect, is helping create a New Mexican Riviera
So where is the rebirth? Alvarez says the projects “are coming back to life, all 46 of them. That’s why we’re celebrating here. The actual projects are all at different stages. Some of them are already finished in their ‘reborn’ configuration. Some of them are in construction as we speak, and then some of them are in different stages of negotiations. It’s been eleven years of trying to get people around the table, to get this back up [and active again]. The Trump towers are still in the ‘discussion’ category. But the good news is that there’s a lot of goodwill from local authorities, from the banks that took the projects over after the 2008 collapse, and there’s a lot of interest from new investors. It is a beautiful coast!” And the Tijuana river, with its pollution problems? “Fortunately for us, the currents carry those waters north from the border, not south.”
The man behind this giant 46-building revival project? “My grandfather, Luis Bustamante. He has been working on this since 2013. I started this project with him. I was an [architectural] intern at the time, studying in college in New York. I was called back home, and my job since that summer has been to go and document each of these sites. And my grandfather has been non-stop working, getting people excited about what the vision for these abandoned buildings could be. I, as an artist, can now tell the visual story that I’ve witnessed. It’s a wonderful happy story, because even though these unfinished buildings were sadness, monuments to failure, now we can see them as symbols of resilience.”
Comments