City breaks ground on Multi-complex

Juan A. Navejar Jr.

It is official now the City of Alice held a ground breaking ceremony on November 1st for its $12 million Multi-Purpose Complex that includes a meeting center, natatorium and amphitheater.
Located on the west side of Alice, the new complex will be located on Highway 281 between FM 1554 and Hwy 44, the ground breaking had everyone who wanted to be a part of the ceremony grab a shovel at chance of participating in the event.
“We invite everyone who wants to be a part of history to come in and grab a shovel for the picture,” Alice City Manager Ray De Los Santos said.
Dignitaries from the local, county, state and federal level participated in the event as well.
Congressman Ruben Hinojosa gave an overview of the funding the city has received over the last 10 years with a record $3.1 billion in grants.
“Today we stand here because of the great efforts made by your city manager Ray De Los Santos,” the Congressman said. “In the last four years, the city has received a majority of those funds for infrastructure.”
It is the infrastructure to the west side of the town the city hopes will be the catalyst for big business expansion in the near future.
“This is ‘WOW’ I mean way out west. It is great to see the Alice and the county expanding to the west side of the town,” Jim Wells County Judge L. Arnoldo Saenz said. “I think this is the best thing to happen to Alice in the last 50 years or so, except when they found oil.”
Moving west has been a dream of Mayor Pro-Tem Dorella Elizondo and Councilwoman Yvette Johnson as both echoed the reality of Alice booming and its movement to the west side of the town. Making the reality possible is a $1.2 million grant to extend sewer lines to the area from the Economic Development Administration along with funding set aside by the city from its sales tax that can be attributed to our oil and gas industry boom.
“This is your dream, your children’s, your family’s, it’s everyone’s dream,” Johnson said. “We have been waiting for this for a long time and it is here now.”
Mayor John Lemon concluded with everyone working as a team to get this project moving. He symbolically used sticks to demonstrate alone one cannot get it done but together much like a bundle of sticks, it cannot be broken but a solid unity to get the mission accomplished.