Gustavo Gonzalez Villaseñor. Municipal President of Puerto Vallarta

Q- Mr. President, a few weeks ago you laid out a development plan for the next three years. We’d like you to tell us how it’s going to be like for travel sector.

A- First of all, the plan contains all the necessary guidelines to carry out a sustainable, well-balanced and well-devised development strategy about what we want and how we want to pull it off.

Tourism is the key premise in this plan because it’s the sector that guarantees the hard currency the people need to live properly. Directly or indirectly, we make a living out of tourism and that’s something this City Hall is very clear about. That’s why we’ve conducted an array of executive projects with funds provided by the City Hall and embracing 45 top-priority works. We’re simply trying to build more tourism and housing infrastructure that could give us the kind of sustainability, comfort, services, bridges, streets and communication means that we need to guarantee drinkable water, power supply and paved roads for Puerto Vallarta. We want no loopholes in that respect.

The plan also contains environmental guidelines, restoration projects for some of our beaches that have been hit hard by natural phenomena, like hurricane Kenna, another project to enhance the seawall and to restore the historic center in order to make the downtown area and the coastal road more pedestrian-friendly. We’re going to have a very nice mountainside watchtower and four parking lots under the public parks –three of them will be underground and the fourth will be a three-story building. That’ll give the possibility of moving to the downtown area and finding parking space in a quick and hassle-free way, something that has become a royal pain in the neck lately.

The headquarters of the municipal authority will move out of the downtown area to be next to the bus depot, right across from the airport. This place will be turned into a house of culture and a museum, two institutions that the local citizenry has been claiming for too long and that give visitors just another choice in town.

With the opening of a new road to Mascota, up in the mountains, we’ll be promoting Puerto Vallarta as a beach destination, San Sebastian to the west as a mountain destination –just a half-hour drive from here- and religious tourism in Talpa de Allende. We’re going to put three different options in the hands of tourists, and that’s something very important for this region, for the local arts and culture, and good alternatives for our visitors. Our city is going to help put Mexico’s cultural identity on the map.

All this is contained in the Municipal Development Plan in which education, culture, sports, the environment and public works are the name of the game. We’re streamlining almost all municipal services and creating new ones. We’re also collecting information on what the public has to say about these issues to guarantee proper feedback.

We’re going to promote Puerto Vallarta wherever we see a chance to do it, just like we did not too long ago in Miami before the fifty municipal presidents of Latin American countries that gathered there. I cashed in on that opportunity to show a seven-minute video about Puerto Vallarta and the place’s beauty drew a lot of attention. Some of them had heard about Puerto Vallarta, but they didn’t know what it really was. Now they’ve fallen head over heels for the destination.

Q- A couple of new condos will be built soon, the Shangrila compound at the Marina, and another one right where the Molino del Agua Hotel is now.

A- Yes. The Molino del Agua thing is a heck of a project for Puerto Vallarta’s architecture. It’s going to provide very nice scenery. This is a strong megabuck investment we’re talking about. The Shangrila project has been under construction for quite some time now. We’re also planning to build the Bay View Grand Venetian next to the Holiday Inn, covering a total surface of 133,000 square yards and a $200 million investment.

We’ll soon see scores of developers flocking in to rebuild the Vallarta Marina Shopping Mall, a place that had been neglected for too long. There’ll be fourteen new movie theaters owned by Cinepolis, Mexico’s number-one cinema house network. Just a few days ago at Caracol Plaza, I laid the first foundation rock of eight movie theaters that will be built there, these ones owned by Cinemart, one of Latin America’s mightiest chains of its kind. Liverpool is talking to us for potential investment opportunities, too.

These huge investment efforts speak volumes of the fact that Puerto Vallarta has clinched its own economic future. All we need to do is to make good planning of what ought to be protected from an environmental standpoint, up in the mountains and in the urban outlay, where to plant palm trees and where to cast cement.

There are two other mega-projects, I mean, the Conference Center and the new wharf for cruises at the API Central. This will render in bigger scores of passengers coming in, somewhere in the neighborhood of 900,000 visitors which is twice as many visitors as we receive now. As to the Conference Center, this new facility will bring nearly a third of a million visitors to Puerto Vallarta because there’s no such place in town right now for meetings and conferences. Everything is right here in the Municipal Development Plan.

Q- As to the security measures you’re going to take to make Puerto Vallarta one of Mexico’s safest travel destinations, what exactly are you going to do?

A- We’ve got a safe port, but of course, we must try to make it even safer. We’ve given our law enforcement officers 160 patrol cars equipped with camcorders and other high-tech gizmos that put them in a position to provide better police coverage of all areas.

We’ve caught some corporations doing dirty wheeling and dealing, as well as illegal actions that must be weeded out for good. We must show the people of Puerto Vallarta that we do care for them and that we’re willing to do everything within our power to do what’s right.

We’re very much on the lookout and one of the things we’re pushing harder to achieve is a well-trained police department. Those officers are graduating from a police academy in which the commitment to protect and to serve is the heart of the matter.

We’re strengthening our police force by putting officers on the beat that know how to take care of the environment and are empowered to enforce the law. Those who want to litter Puerto Vallarta will simply be fined.

Q- When will the Conference Center be completed?

A- According to the State Governor, it should be ready in two years.

Q- As far as Jalisco and Nayarit, Vallarta and Nuevo Vallarta are concerned, what denomination will you continue to use?

A- Those who are advising us on communication matters conducted a study that showed that 96 percent of the population knows Puerto Vallarta by that name. That has led us to call the place Puerto Vallarta in this municipality. Yet a new controversy has sprung up, but it’s still Puerto Vallarta for us. The important thing here is to join efforts in order to promote and give tourists hospitality, kindness and a clean bay.

Q- Does a clean bay mean that Nayarit is going to fork over money to cleanse the waters, just like Puerto Vallarta did?

A- (Nayarit) needs to invest as much money as we do because for a long time our grandparents, our parents and the citizens of Puerto Vallarta have put out all the stops to have the kind of city that we have now. Now the addition of Bahia de Banderas as a municipality, with all its economic resources and will all those companies that are setting up shop there, means stricter environmental protection and better preservation of beaches. Whatever happens there will bring ripple effects to Puerto Vallarta and vice versa.