Downtown El Paso Library Will Be Site Of Mexican American Cultural Center

The site of the future Mexican American Cultural Center will be inside the downtown El Paso library.

City Council voted in the site at their regular Tuesday meeting. It will take over 40,000 sq ft of the library. The MACC is part of the 2012 Quality of Life bond election. It was originally budgeted at $5.7 million. The City has said that they will add an additional $10 million.
For some time, a group who wanted the MACC to be located at the Abraham Chavez Theater. The Mexican American Cultural Institute tried to raise $30 million but ended up over $60,000 in the hole. The group along with others took over a recent meeting that was supposed to give the public information about what the MACC would look like within the downtown library. They said the site would be disrespectful to their “cultura”.

The library site will offer twice the space that would have been available in the Abraham Chavez. There will be spaces for galleries, classrooms, a teaching kitchen, an auditorium and black box theater and be close to public transportation and other downtown cultural institutions.

I'm glad the MACC will be in the library. There are a number of reasons why it is a good location for the MACC. Hopefully the group that was opposed to its location there will jump on board and help the City develop a center we can be proud of.