Austin’s Mexican American Cultural Center Closing for Expansion This Year
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The Emma S. Barrientos Mexican American Cultural Center (ESB-MACC) located at 600 River Street is an often-overlooked masterpiece of Mesoamerican-inspired modernist architecture, standing at the crown of downtown Austin’s ever-changing Rainey Street District and representing the historic working-class Mexican American character of the neighborhood prior to its rapid development starting in the 2000s. Designed by the late Mexican architect Teodoro González de León with Hispanic-owned local studio CasaBella Architects, many Austinites are unaware that the center’s striking crescent-shaped structure is incomplete — the building as it appears today mostly dates back to 2007 with some small additions in 2010, but plans for two further phases of construction fell by the wayside unfunded.
Nearly 15 years after the facility’s opening, the city’s finally making that wrong right, with a facility expansion plan by the Parks and Recreation Department approved by the Austin City Council in 2018 and funded by a number of sources including the city’s bond election held the same year. We’ve run down the general plans for the center’s transformation earlier this year in further detail if you’d like to review the finer points — bottom line, current expectations for the project indicate the facility will roughly double in size, with a design from the partnership of local architecture firm Miró Rivera and acclaimed Mexican architect Tatiana Bilbao.
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