rescue

Over the last 30 years, a series of major urban redevelopment projects have been proposed for the Centro by local and federal governments. Most of them didn’t even get started, let alone achieve anything close to success. There was one substantial difference, though, this time round, which would give the rescate a whole new dimension. Like most of the older proposals, it was concieved as a mixed venture of public (local and federal) funding and private investment. It also included a consulting organism with “civil society” representatives. The objectives and even the strategies of the program—at least on paper—were actually quite similar to those before it. The substantial difference, though, was a certain someone named Carlos Slim, number 2 on the Forbes 100 richest people on Earth list (currently there is some controversy about whether or not he's actually topped bill gates). Slim justified his involvement in the project on somewhat sentimental (if not cynical) terms: the Centro was his barrio, his childhood neighborhood, and he simply wanted to “give back”.

Today, when the rescate has reached the end of the first phase, the reasons are becoming clearer. Slim’s overwhelming influence in the country has turned to omnipresence in the Centro. Slim-owned Sanborn’s restaurants and Starbucks and 7-11s and Mix-Up record stores and Suburbia or Sears department stores and El Globo bakeries are now ubiquitous around the newly-paved and restored blocks. Telmex, the former state-owned telephone monopoly that Slim bought in 1994 has not only installed public phone booths everywhere, but also has created a couple of Telmex theaters and a Telmex cultural center and a Telmex technological institute and several Telmex-funded art exhibitions and history museums in the central district. Slim is the central figure behind the Fundación Centro Histórico, a not-for-profit association responsible for steering many cultural events and programs in the area (temporary exhibitions, galleries, concerts and festivals, art-student housing blocks, etc.), as well as supervising over historic building restoration and promoting the creation of “corridors” (cultural, technological, business, entertainment). The Fundación is also close with the Bienes Raíces Centro Histórico (realty group). As a sort of Crown Jewel, Slim has aquired the emblematic Torre Latinoamericana, which was built in the 1950s and remained the tallest building in the city until the end of the 1970s, an absolute if somewhat faded symbol of modernity and one of the two or three key reference points in the whole area.

The city government on its part is in the process of “relocating” informal commerce to streets outside of the restoration perimeter (October 12 was the deadline for removing all informal commerce from the perimeter of the restoration), repaved streets, set up new lighting and strengthened security and supported the regularization of property and rent contracts. The federal government on its part concluded the huge Plaza Juárez complex (by architect Ricardo Legorreta) in front of the Alameda park, which will hold the Foreign Ministry and Supreme Court offices. Recently built or “recovered” monuments and buildings include the National Art Museum (MUNAL), The Central Post Office (Palacio de Correos), the City Theater (Teatro de la Ciudad), the Popular Arts and Crafts Museum (Museo de Artes Populares), and the Centro Cultural de España. Private developments include numerous luxury and business-class hotels (NH, Sheraton, Fiesta Inn, Holiday Inn, Gran Hotel de la Ciudad de México, etc.), apartment complexes (Puerta Alameda, Motolinía 37, etc.), commercial/retail/entertainment sites (Plaza Hidalgo, Plaza Alameda, Sears Alameda, etc) and even student housing in former hotels (Virreyes, Señorial).

The rescate is directly connected to the other great urban development project in the city, the Reforma financial corridor, at Av. Juárez.
34 out of the 668 blocks that form the whole Centro Histórico area have been the chosen as the “lucky few” in the first phase of the rescate; out of an estimated total of 70 buildings of “historical value” included in the program, Slim bought 62 of them for about $600 million Mexican pesos. In a sort of domino effect, the total private investment in terms of real estate in the area last year was calculated at around $4.5 billion Mexican pesos, poured into acquiring over 400 buildings for upper-middle class and luxury residential development. Rents for a 60m2 apartment have gone up from around 2,500 pesos to an average over 10,000 pesos. Tourist activity in the area (lots of which is actually local/city residents riding the new two-tier Turibuses on the Centro Histórico route) has grown 30% in the last two years.

The rescue works include restoration of historic facades, secure and clean streets, closed circuit surveillance, renewal of urban equipment (such as phone and information booths, benches, mailboxes, bus-stops, etc.), improved and extended sidewalks, tourist infrastructure (the Turibuses and a special bus service that simulates an electrical streetcar, tourist information offices, a multilingual tourist aid and security police force, etc.), new lighting and underground cabling, etc.

The rescate is a standard redevelopment/gentrification scheme. Promoters and developers have spotted an opportunity to profit from this place of intensive activity, recovering underused infrastructures to attract other markets such as tourism and high-end living. The redevelopment has concentrated in what is known as the Perímetro A. The Centro Histórico is divided spatially in two perimeters, A and B. The first occupies an area of 3.2 km2, starting from the Zócalo (the heart of the ancient city) and covering the original colonial extension. It concentrates most of the buildings cataloged as monuments in the area (about 1,500 buildings in all of the Centro, 75% of the monuments in the city). The Perímetro B extends 5.9 km2 and includes the more “popular” heritage of the area, with buildings dating mostly from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The redeveloped areas have also been proclaimed “safe zones”. 130 cameras have been installed, hooked to 24hr surveillance monitors. 13 panic button booths can be found in the busiest restored streets, and 15 high-tech “sentry” booths have been installed in the new residential areas (these booths are directly connected to local police, with video and direct communication systems, offering information and emergency support). A new exclusive police corps has also been created. All this security infrastructure has been paid for in great part with donations from the Fundación.