No completion date for Taos Plaza remodel

Judging by an official report delivered during the Town of Taos Council’s regular meeting, the Taos Plaza could be closed for several years.

“This has been a pretty fascinating process for us,” Town Manager Andrew Gonzales told the council Tuesday evening (May 23), revealing that the brickwork on the plaza had been torn up and indicating the town will move forward with a landscaping remodel of the plaza at the same time it works to solve a drainage issue that, as of yet, is unknown in scope.

“We hired a demolition contractor by which to remove the bricks after Taos County made their tie-in to our drainage system, and took the opportunity at the same time for that contractor to expose the drainage as it exists today,” Gonzales said. “We did hire Alex Abeyta as our topo engineer to get the topography lay of the plaza. And the desire is to make sure that everything is at grade, so there will be no more step right in front of the gazebo; that will be on solid surface leading up to the gazebo.”

In the meantime, Gonzales presented a rough outline of what constitutes a major restoration of the plaza, which would remain essentially the same as it’s currently configured, but with a few new cottonwood trees possibly planted on the south side.

“For the record, we are not taking [the statue of] Padre [Martinez] out; we are not changing the war memorial,” Councilor Nathaniel Evans said, speaking loudly to be heard as he stood behind the dais, away from his desk microphone.

“Unfortunately, we are not bringing back the pyramid, which was really fun to play on as a kid,” Councilor Darien Fernandez added, at which point nearly the entire council broke out in laughter.

Contractors will not disturb what may be a historic adobe wall directly behind the gazebo, according to Deputy Town Manager French Espinoza. The kiosk that sits on the east end of the plaza will be torn down, according to Gonzales, who said the “power resource” located in it will be moved under the gazebo.

And as long as it doesn’t have termites and no rot is discovered in its beams, officials said, the plaza gazebo, in which bands play and la reina de las Fiestas de Taos is traditionally crowned, will remain standing — and be newly improved with wheelchair access.

The current gazebo was erected sometime after Mabel Dodge Luhan’s adobe gazebo was torn down in the 1960s, according to

Taos historian, anthropologist and acequia advocate Sylvia Rodriguez.

“After it was demolished, an open bandstand with basement police offices was erected in the northwest quadrant,” she wrote in her 2011 essay, “What Tunnels Under Taos Plaza.” A source Rodriguez interviewed for the piece confirmed the fabled existence of tunnels under the plaza: They were dug for utilities in the 1930s, according to Gilberto Roybal, and lay alongside separate “old drainage sewers in the downtown area, but not tunnels like people imagine.”

The inlets to the plaza’s current drainage system, which Gonzales reminded the council emit a foul smell during monsoon season, and which Espinoza confirmed do not prevent the area from flooding, extend beyond the plaza proper.

“We have an [inadequate] 8-inch

storm line [from] all the way north as far as the Taos Inn,” Espinoza said. “It’s not only stormwater falling on the roadway, it’s stormwater falling off the roofs.”

But since Gonzales didn’t present a comprehensive construction plan for a project that will obviously be completed in stages, Councilor Marietta Fambro, who once served as finance director for the town, questioned whether a piecemeal approach would pass muster with state oversight authorities.

“You can’t dig up and leave it like that forever and then say, ‘Oh, we’re done with that phase and now we gotta cover it up with concrete — I just don’t want us to be getting into some kind of procurement violation where this project is already going to exceed $60,000. How are you going to bid out the rest?”

Gonzales assured Fambro that the town’s procurement officer has “been a part of the process every step of the way,” and said more plans and details would be presented to councilors in the future.

“How long is this hole gonna be there?” Fambro asked.

“I don’t want to put any dates out there. It’s a moving target,” Gonzales said. “It was our plans that we get through as much of the construction as possible this year.

It’s the desire and the hope that we have the hardscape at least back in place by around the end of August, early September.”

“But if weather remains temporary, by which we can still do work, then I recommend that we continue to go for as long as we can,” Gonzales added, noting that he’s heard questions regarding whether Halloween and winter events will take place on the plaza this year.

“Those all remain things to be unknown, really, because of the fact that I don’t want to put a timeline on it,” he said. “We have asked public to give us a couple of years to make sure that we just address everything [and] we address it properly.”