LAS HACIENDAS Y LOS CONDOMINIOS

The old Hacienda Restaurant was located across the street from my present apartment.  I had visited it a couple of times shortly after I arrived in Vallarta.  It had the most beautiful garden patio, but the food was not good and the service was worse.  It was only open until 2:00 pm so basically it was just breakfast.  The waiters seemed to adapt the attitude of the owner or manager.  He had a permanent sneer on his face so instead looking like he was happy to see you; it looked like he was thinking "why are you here?"  After I did move across the street, I never went back.  I was not surprised when it closed.  Then a large For Sale sign went up and I feared what might happen to the lovely old building.  Sure enough a few months later I saw a construction crew ripping off the roof.  I thought "Oh No! is it going to be another concrete high rise?  I loved that it was a one story building and I have no one behind me, giving me almost total privacy on my deck.

I immediately went across the street and found the foreman who luckily spoke a little English (although I did begin in Spanish).  He said they were just during a remodel as it would be another restaurant that would be open for breakfast, lunch and dinner.  He assured me it would remain a one story although they were raising the ceiling in a few areas.  I was very happy and anxious to try the new restaurant.  But construction went on for a year.  The noise and dust were awful, but they did a beautiful job and spent so much money on it, I wonder if it is "laundry money"  Since they finished so late, it did not open until the following winter season.  I was there the second day it was open.  It has a great menu and the food was good, but alas the service was terrible.  It is such a gorgeous place I was hoping that it was just because they had just opened.  Sadly, NO!  They just cannot seem to get their act together or maybe it really is drug money and they do not care.  Still I am very happy not to have one of those awful concrete structures there.

Unlike San Miguel who has preserved its beautiful old colonial buildings, Vallarta seems intend on tearing them all down.  They are going to destroy the charm of the city that brings tourists here.  You might think "how dumb" (which it is) but the main culprit was the old mayor.  He issued over 500 building permits during his six years, including 20 permits for high rise condominiums just on my side of the river.  This area named the "romantic zone" is only about 12 by 14 blocks.  Way too many for a small area. Why? you might ask.  Simple, For the Money.  He also granted a horribly expensive trash collection contract.  Not only was the trash collection spotty and messy, it was bankrupting the city.  When the new mayor took over, he found the treasury empty.  What happened to this crook?  Oh he went to Mexico City where they made him finance manager.  Who knows more about money that he does.  Yes! It is Mexico!  The new mayor had to lay off half the police force and a lot of the City employees just to pay the horrendous trash collection contract.   Somehow he got out of it and now the City does its own collection and it is much better (although it is still the one thing I dislike most about Vallarta).  He is a good guy and has started up neighborhood committees that are making lots of improvements.

But the ugly condominiums keep popping up.  There is not only a tall skinny one on my street but around the corner a huge complex is going up.  Why?  We are five or six blocks to the beach?  The real estate market has tanked because there are now hundreds of new condo for sale.  I think that 90% are still empty.  Thank God because I am sure no one figured out what replacing a one family home with 20 or 40 units will do to the infrastructure.  What about the sewage, garbage and the additional traffic and cars?   There are already two huge empty buildings that I know of that have been empty since they were built ten years ago.  The worst is that awful eight story building on Plaza Cardenas at the end of my street.  It looks across the park to the ocean but is now falling apart.  Some balconies are collapsing onto each other.  No one knows why it just sits there.  A block from me is another two or three story white building, occupying half a block.  Several bars have opened on the corner unit (never lasting one season) but all the apartments are empty.  They just build a strange concrete tower on top of it.  Why ??

This post was started almost two year ago.  I never finished it because first the construction took so long and then with the loss of two computers and my camera, all the photos I had taken were gone and I was just too lazy to go out and retake them.  I now have a small collection of these ugly high rises.  They are all the same, just a concrete monolith.  Why couldn't they add a little brick and red tiles or something?  Also the construction varies.  The skinny one down my street and the huge one around the corner were constructed of concrete blocks and cement that was mixed in the street and hauled up one bucket at a time you can see the scaffolding is just wood..  How solid can that be?  Some near the ocean are steel beams and they actually have cement mixer pouring in the concrete. But this steel tower's foundation was built in a lake.  They reach the water level about ten feet down. It is sad how all the old haciendas are being torn down.  There was a gorgeous white marble one on Badillo that is now gone,  I went into the sales office and took a photo of the model for the building.  It looks like a stack of ice trays.

It is so sad what greed is doing to this town.  There are still a few lovely old haciendas so I took photos of some near me.  Even with the poor service I do go to the new Hacienda Carlotta for it is convenient for me.  They did a great job on the old building, but it lacks a lot of plants.  Luckily they managed to save some of the large flowering trees.  I spoke to the manager and told him that for $50 to $100.00 I could turn it into a tropical paradise, but he wasn't interested.  Mexico ???