Weather cuts into plans for plaza opening
City officials set sights on mid-May

Workers cut bricks on the plaza in front of the McKinley County Courthouse Thursday. Officials say recent wind and snow have pushed back the scheduled completion date of the plaza to mid-May. [Photo by John A. Bowersmith/Independent]

By Zsombor Peter
Staff Writer

Daniel Huerta uses a gas-powered saw to cut bricks on the plaza in courthouse. Huerta is a member of a crew from Creative HardScape, based in Denver, which was hired to install the brick Navajo basket-style dancing circle on the plaza. [Photo by John A. Bowersmith/Independent]

GALLUP — Don't plan on doing any of your Cinco de Mayo celebrating on the city's new courthouse plaza this year. Inclement weather has delayed work on the $2.17 million project originally scheduled for completion by mid-April at least three weeks.

We're probably looking at ... mid-May," said City Planner Lisa Baca Diaz.

The culprit? High winds and a heavy snowfall last month.

"It's all weather related," Baca Diaz said. "We've had a rough March."

The city had no plans of its own to celebrate Cinco de Mayo on the plaza. But it is hoping to have the facility ready for either the Squash Blossom Classic, a showcase of cultural and sporting events scheduled for the second-to-last weekend in April, or the Memorial Day weekend, when the city typically kicks off its schedule of free, outdoor American Indian dance performances for the summer.

"So that's what were aiming for," Baca Diaz said, "one of those two events."

She estimated that work crews were between 40 percent and 50 percent of the way there. They're now in the process of laying the brick work for the centerpiece of the plaza: a circular, 150-foot-wide dance arena that will resemble a Navajo basket from above.

Engineers and designers have made practical adjustments to the plan, like the addition of a bus stop for Gallup Express, Baca Diaz said, "but the actual design hasn't changed."

To accommodate dancers who refuse to dance on pavement for cultural reasons, an earthen pit will fill the dance arena's center. A row of benches around the area will accommodate roughly 100 spectators.

To the arena's west visitors will get to stroll down a tree-lined veterans memorial featuring 12-foot-tall black, granite pillars down either side bearing the names of local veterans.

The city had planned on placing a total of 20 pillars along the walkway. But lacking the funds to install them all at once, it will start with four "specialty" pillars, each illuminated from within and with its own theme: the Bataan Death March veterans of World War II, Korean War veterans, the Navajo Code Talkers, and Korean War veteran and Congressional Medal of Honor recipient Hiroshi "Hirshey" Miyamura.

North of the dance arena, between the arena and Aztec Avenue and flanked by two rows of covered vending areas, will be a parking lot by day and a second performance space as needed by night. Tiered seating, facing north, will serve as both the northern edge of the main performance space and bleachers for the second.

Rising from the middle of those bleachers will be a sun dial designed to mark both the time of day and time of year. Along the same path, the city will inscribe various moments in Gallup's history.

City officials have high hopes for the plaza.

As in other communities across the country, big and small, Gallup's downtown retailers have struggled to compete with the national chains cropping up around the city's edges. Along with some other expensive downtown projects including nearly $200,000 worth of murals and $1 million worth of renovations to El Morro Theater they hope the plaza will draw in the shoppers and patrons the neighborhood will need to thrive.

With the summer dances at the plaza instead of their current home next to the Gallup Cultural Center, visitors will also have a shorter walk to most of the neighborhood's retailers.