Unfinished architecture...(Mexico News Daily)
Building is like breathing in Baja: never ends till, well...
Not sure where the Ensenada building is located- maybe Baja Guy can offer some local info?
And this explains that sharp right turn when heading south into Tijuana and the lousy pedestrian situation.
http://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/is-it-a-beached-whale-or-a-w...
A walkway to nowhere and a beached whale that is beginning to look more like a white elephant are featured in a recent instalment of El Universal’s
series on costly public works projects that have gone off the rails.
The Museo Caracol (or Seashell Museum) of Ensenada may appear like a huge, white, beached whale for some of it citizens, but after 17 years of
construction more and more people are beginning to see it as an elephant, white in color.
Construction at the site began in 1998 but has been abandoned for the last eight years, long enough that many residents have even forgotten its
original purpose, only shrugging when asked for what it was intended.
A multi-million-peso investment, the 6,000-square-meter Museo Caracol, situated on Ensenada’s waterfront walkway the malecón, was destined to be a
leading meeting point, bringing science and technology exhibits to the masses.
Even as the site appears abandoned, its director, María Antonia Martínez, is able to justify the delay in its completion, explaining that building a
museum of this scale “is no easy feat.” A joint investment by federal and state governments, the project has cost 153 million pesos (US $9.1 million)
so far.
Although an opening date has never been set, construction of museum continues to be funded: just last year the Tourism Secretariat contributed 12
million pesos.
There is some use being made of the building: three of its finished halls are being leased for weddings and other celebrations.
About 100 kilometers north of Ensenada’s beached whale/white elephant lies Tijuana and the U.S. border at San Diego, California, one of the busiest
border crossings in the world.
The port of entry at El Chaparral, in Tijuana, was dedicated on November 1, 2012, the final infrastructure project of former president Felipe
Calderón’s administration.
Completed in just 10 months and with an investment of more than 1 billion pesos (over US $60 million), the 22-lane crossing included the construction
of four two-lane overpasses, substituting the old crossing of Puente Mexico as a means to “facilitate traffic flow in a quick and safe manner,” said
the Communications and Transportation Secretariat (SCT) at the time.
Crossing times from the U.S. to Mexico, it was forecast, would average three to five minutes, and 10 minutes at rush hour.
But construction on the U.S. side hasn’t begun, and visitors from the north have to make a very sharp right-hand turn to get to the Mexican side,
provoking traffic jams and wait times of up to an hour.
In addition, a “mega” footbridge built to one side of El Chaparral for pedestrians leads nowhere, ending in mid-air as it nears the border.
Further developments at El Chaparral are being planned, functionality notwithstanding. The higher education institute Colegio de la Frontera Norte is
reportedly planning to erect a sculpture, creating a bottleneck right in the middle of the 22 lanes.
The monument will be designed by noted sculptor Sebastián, and “symbolize a strong point of attraction of all the flows in the continent, its form a
metaphor of a creative and free-willed knot that will allow societies to agree without tensions.”
Perhap it will also help relieve the tensions of drivers waiting to cross the border.
Source: El Universal (sp)
\"Probably the airplanes will bring week-enders from Los Angeles before long, and the beautiful poor bedraggled old town will bloom with a
Floridian ugliness.\" (John Steinbeck, 1940, discussing the future of La Paz, BCS, Mexico)
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