AND NOW, A PRIMER ON SABAL PALMS...AND ON ORIGO WORKS

Special to El Rrun-Rrun

It was with much fanfare and hoopla that the principals of the Origo Works engineering firm announced a redo of the old North Park Plaza at 800 Frontage Road that used to house the old El Globo Supermarket and before that, the old Kroger Store.

As usual, the hype surrounding the remake of the old building extolled during the "groundbreaking" including the claims that it has "prime office and retail spaces...situated along the busy US Highway 83 with a traffic count of 87,245 vehicles per day, and that this center offers excellent visibility and easy access.

"Whether you need a strategic office or a thriving retail spot, Sabal Market Center provides the perfect setting for success in a dynamic and sought-after location, attracting both locals and passersby," the Origo Works site glowingly states..

That may well be, but could someone tell the designers that the three palm trees pictured on the main logo are not sabal palms native to the Rio Grande Delta, but rather the desert palms introduced here from the Mexican western states. They are known as Washingtonia robusta.

Locals know that the native Sabal palms once covered the lower delta and that the annual floods of the Rio Grande watered nearly  60,000 acres of lush “tropical” forest. Today, that 60,000 acres has been reduced to less than 30 acres protected in Sabal Palm Sanctuary southeast of the city.

Mexican fan palm (Washingtonia robusta) has slender, tapering trunk, often with thorns. Texas sabal palm (Sabal mexicana) has fronds with smooth stems. Any local nursery owner could have told the Origo Works developers that there is a marked difference between both plants. As a matter of fact, just about any local resident might have informed them of the difference.

The question becomes: Are there any local folks among the group? And if they can't tell the difference between palms, what else don't the folks over at that engineering firm not know about our local flora and fauna?

If you remember, Origo Works' inclusion into the multi-million redo of the Brownsville-South Padre Island Airport raised the cost of the project and set back the schedule for months at the insistence of then-Brownsville mayor Tony Martinez, whose son was friends with one of the principals.

According to James Kirshbaum, the engineer for CH2MHILL which was in charge of construction, some changes were not in the original engineering specs provided them for the project and. In the original letter, Kirshbaum stated that the changes in engineering/design cost, caused a five-month delay, and increased the overall construction cost due to changes after the RFPs were approved.

"The other item that has caused additional design and management effort is the coordination with our local architect, Origo Works," wrote Kirshbaum, the engineer for CH2MHILL. "As requested by the mayor, we engaged Origo Works to help incorporate 'local' architectural features and elements into the original design. This effort extended the conceptual design phase of the project by approximately five months, resulting in significant additional efforts by CH2M, Corgan and Origo Works."

That entire paragraph had been removed by the later insertion of a second letter which deleted any mention of the mayor or Origo Works. Both letters were dated Sept. 21 and signed by  Kirshbaum. 

However, in the commissioners' agenda backup, CH2MHILL lists payments made, not to Origo Works, but to Jaime Huerta, its owner, of $25,000 under Current Terminal Contract, $15,000 under Revised Terminal Contract, and another $5,000 for Terminal 55 Contract for a total of $45,000. Huerta's company lists the former mayor's Spanky's Burgers and El Rincon de la Paz among its completed work projects. 

If they were hired to "incorporate 'local' architectural features and elements into the original design," did they confuse Washingtonians with sabals there, too?