After 'The Alamo'

The dream: to save the sprawling set for posterity. The obstacle: money.

Keeping the 'Alamo' set may not be economically feasible for Eugene Reimers, who owns the property where the set was built. • More photos of the set • Alamo Premiere Coming Friday in Life & Arts Chris Garcia reviews 'The Alamo' and talks to some of the actors and the director. Asleep at the Alamo Asleep at the Wheel is scheduled to play a benefit concert at the 'Alamo' set at Eugene Reimers' ranch on May 15. Tickets start at $35. Proceeds will benefit the Dr. Pound Pioneer Farmstead Historical Museum in Dripping Springs.

Now that the movie-making crews are gone, owners of the ranch near Dripping Springs say they want to keep the set, but they don't know if they can afford the costs of preserving the buildings, upkeep and taxes. Even the movie's production designer, who created the mission and the towns of Bexar, San Felipe and Gonzales with painstaking attention to historical detail, dreams of schoolchildren one day exploring the grounds.

Earlier this month, a barbecue grill sat abandoned in front of the Alamo chapel. A truck rumbled away from the compound, hauling off the last remaining port-a-potties, and livestock meandered through the gravel-covered pasture that served as ground zero for the filming operation from January to July last year.

"We would love to keep it if we can work out things like taxes," said landowner Eugene Reimers, who lives on the property with his wife and can see the faux Alamo from the back porch of his two-story house. So far, he hasn't decided what will become of the set. "All we know is we're definitely in favor of keeping it. But there's a lot of liability that goes with it."

Disney leased the property from Reimers to make the movie. (He won't say how much he was paid.) It took 300 workers about eight months to transform the hayfield into the San Antonio River valley circa 1836. They shipped in thatch from the Czech Republic and molded their own artificial rocks for the chimneys.

"It's made from very solid, durable materials," said Oscar-nominated production designer Michael Corenblith ("How the Grinch Stole Christmas" and "Apollo 13"). "But unlike Brackettville (the Southwest Texas town where John Wayne's 1960 version of "The Alamo" was filmed), which was made of adobe and limestone, our surfaces are made from Hollywood scenic techniques. While the structures are phenomenally durable and will stand 40 years, it's the surfaces that are more delicate and vulnerable. It's not limestone and adobe, it's plaster and paint."

Many of the buildings are facades, not complete structures. If Reimers decides to keep the set and open it to visitors, he would have to add roofs, floors and backs to the partial buildings. He says it would cost $30,000 just to repaint and seal the Alamo portion of the set so it won't deteriorate, and $7,000 in paint alone to cover the salmon-colored San Fernando church in the town of Bexar. He estimates it would cost close to $3 million to structurally reinforce the entire set and make it durable enough to withstand the elements. He would have to improve roads and parking. Then it would take three or four people to maintain the grounds.

"It would cost a lot of money to do all this. You've got to look at it and wonder if it's going to get you your money back," he said.

Reimers doesn't have much time to make his decision. If he doesn't keep the set, it will have to be removed by the end of the year or Reimers will face higher taxes because of the land improvements. Reimers says he's not sure what those taxes would cost — it depends on how the set is valued.

About 175 miles away, the 500-acre set used for "The Alamo" four decades ago still draws a steady stream of visitors, who pay $7 to tour the site and watch staged gunfights. Adobe craftsmen from Mexico spent two years building the Brackettville Alamo replica, and unlike Reimers' set, it didn't require much to turn it into a tourist destination. The place was built to last.

Virginia Shahan, the 88-year-old owner of the set and widow of its creator, Happy Shahan, says she doesn't know if there's enough tourist interest to support two Alamo movie sets in the state. She adds, though, that the new movie has revived interest in her set. "I've got an awful lot of extra traffic I wouldn't have had otherwise," she said. "I want the (new) movie to be a success. If (the Reimerses) can get their set going, people will go see it, then come see me."

Shahan says she doesn't know how many people visit the Brackettville set every year. "It's been busy all through the years," Shahan said. "One day we have 20 people, the next day 300. We've gone as high as 1,500. It's like farming, it's either feast or famine. But each day takes care of the next."

The set near Brackettville has been for sale since 2001, for the asking price of $6.5 million. "I'm looking for someone who will keep it like it is," Shahan said.

Corenblith, the production designer for the new movie, considered more than 80 locales before settling on Reimers' ranch for the movie's backdrop. He chose the site in part because of the ready supply of manpower in the Austin area. The property's physical characteristics closely matched those of the real Alamo, and the movie's producers wanted a set as historically accurate as possible.

Besides having a graded hayfield and a creek that could double as the San Antonio River, Reimers' land sat in a small valley. It had nearly 360 degrees of uninterrupted horizon and sight lines that went on 50 miles with no buildings in the background. In San Antonio, the Alamo faces west. But for photographic reasons, Corenblith needed the Alamo to face south.

"It was an ideal spot," Corenblith said. "It was truly the eureka experience. It laid out precisely towards the vision I had."

Now that the movie is on its way to theaters (after a delay from its planned Christmas opening for more editing), Corenblith says he'd like to see the set become Texas' version of Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia.

"The state would make a generous contribution and turn it into a historic exhibit and it would be crawling with seventh-graders," he said. "It could be a piece of living history . . . If this is a magnet that helps bring production to Austin, then I am doubly happy." But Corenblith, a native Texan himself, is braced for disappointment. "Through the years, I have learned to not become attached to the sets that I create."

Until Reimers makes his decision, he's busy putting an electric fence around the town of San Felipe to keep out livestock. He's had a tougher time protecting some of the smaller pieces of the set, including blocks of fake stone along the mission's walls.

"Lots of stuff has disappeared," he said, blaming intruders who sneak onto his gated property. It would seem a shame, he says, his eyes resting on the statues on either side of the mission, but maybe it makes more sense to burn it.

"I was wishing somehow something would happen where someone would restore the set. If that doesn't happen, I've got only one choice."

pleblanc@statesman.com; 445-3994