(Dallas)Latino Cultural Center opens with celebration(aka Jose Cuervo Performance Hall. No joke)

Dallas' long-awaited Latino Cultural Center opened Tuesday with music, dance and an appreciative audience.

The opening of the center will feature a five-day celebration that kicked off with a colorful parade through downtown Dallas. Floats, marching units and music groups representing every Latin American country and Spain made their way from City Hall to the new center at the corner of Live Oak Street and Good-Latimer Expressway.

"I think it's fabulous, a day of celebration for the city of Dallas," said Jenni Jennings, a North Oak Cliff resident, who watched the parade on Main Street across from Neiman-Marcus. "It's amazing to see costumes of all the Latino countries represented here."

Voters approved $3.4 million in a 1995 bond program for construction of the center, with the idea that additional private funds would push it toward a 1999 opening. The cost of the center since has risen to $10 million and the start of construction was delayed repeatedly.

The building, in shades of terra cotta, features a slant-roofed auditorium and a tall purple tower that is a contemporary version of a traditional Mexican church tower. It was designed by Mexican architect Ricardo Legorreta.

At the center, the parade turned into an impromptu fiesta as different musical groups entertained a crowd of several hundred participants.

Inside the Oak Farms Dairy Performance Hall, Mayor Laura Miller and members of the Dallas City Council congratulated those who had a hand in making the Latino center a reality.

Ms. Miller remarked that such elaborate celebrations for the center illustrate how important it is, not just for the city's Latinos, but for all its residents.

"Never in the history of the city has there been a three-hour ribbon cutting," she said.

http://dallas.bizjournals.com/dallas/stories/2001/08/27/editorial1.html

Name games

Spare us the hand-wringing over the naming rights for the proposed Latino Cultural Center in Dallas.

Guinness United Distillers & Vintners North America Inc. is ready to slap down a million dollars to name the facility the Jose Cuervo Performance Hall. That money would jump-start a project that has languished for six years, but the offer roiled some on Dallas City Council and in the community at large who don't want to condone or glorify tequila consumption.

Pardon us for saying so, but the city of Dallas already is in the liquor business, big time. The city writes the rules for its distribution, sale and consumption and takes a cut of every beer, whiskey, wine, vodka martini and, yes, tequila shot sold in city limits. Entire neighborhoods in Big D exist primarily to cater to drinkers.

Dallas also already allowed the same company to pay $6 million to hang the Smirnoff vodka moniker on the former Starplex Amphitheater. Given all that, the city wouldn't have a leg to stand on, morally or logically, if it refused the tequila money.

Some statements from the opposition -- i.e., one music hall named after liquor is OK, but two are too many -- are simply absurd. Others, such as the suggestion the liquor money will be particularly harmful this time because the venue will cater specifically to Hispanics, is patently insulting and racist. Are we to believe that Latinos are less discerning than the population at large when it comes to making decisions about drinking?

The dangers of alcohol abuse are well-known. Less exposed, perhaps, but equally shameful, is the increasingly popular political philosophy that would gleefully tax alcohol, tobacco and other potentially harmful consumer goods and then sanctimoniously lament the very existence of such commerce.

I'm less bothered by the tequila connection than I am by the building itself. It's just a few blocks from our lovely historic neighborhood, and it's an absolute eyesore. A huge, modernistic, concrete thing painted in day-glo orange and neon purple. Reminds me of that Hispanic woman who moved into the King William historic preservation district in San Antonio a few years ago, knowing full well there were zoning restrictions on paint colors, then painted her house to look like a phosphorescent pinata, and when anyone complained about it being a blight on the neighborhood, screamed "Racism!"

Reminds me of that Hispanic woman who moved into the King William historic preservation district in San Antonio a few years ago

That would be Sandra "Required Reading" Cisneros, an affirmative action baby if there ever was one (Colleges needed a token Chicano for their reading lists, so the mediocre "House on Mango Street" is where she derives her fame and income). She is an annoying lefty feminist who should go back to Chicago.

To be fair to ol' Sandy, however, her is is just OUTSIDE (across the street, actually) the boundary of the historic district, she had the right to paint her house that wretched purple.

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