Directly across the street from the Shrine of Texas Liberty, three buildings will soon be in the hands of the Texas Land Office for future planning. The GLO is the steward of the Alamo as well.
If you've grown up in the Alamo City, you've seen the Palace, Woolworth, and Crockett buildings bunched up together starting at the corner of Houston St. and Alamo Plaza. Right now they're owned by Service Life and Causality Insurance Company. In the early to mid-1800s the ground these structures now stand on was part of the original mission of the Alamo.
The reason for the purchase? The land office is interested in trying to find opportunities and options for the Alamo’s master plan “as far as taking another look and re-visioning and what we’re going to be able to do to redevelop the Alamo area to make it something that can hold a world-class visitor center/museum,” said Becky Dinnin, director of the Alamo. “This is just one of those things that can help us that plan.”
Some of the current tenants in those buildings include the Guinness World Records Museum and Haunted Adventure. It also houses a visitor’s center run by the city of San Antonio.
At the moment, the General Land Office has no plans to terminate the existing leases for those tenants and does not have a definitive decision on what could be housed in them in the future.
The price of the three buildings is not being disclosed but the purchase is expected to be complete by the end of the year.
