Cinta Costera unfulfilled restaurant will house art museum  

A building  in the Mirador del  Pacifico on the Cinta Costera ,  intended to be a restaurant will become the Museum of Contemporary Art (MAC).

The structure’s that estimated cost was $2 million, although since 2014 – when the project was delivered by Odebrecht to the State – the property, under the administration of the Ministry of Public Works (MOP), was abandoned and presented advanced deterioration. The Ministry has transferred the property to the Ministry of Culture whose minister  Carlos Aguilar, is planning to make a large investment – the amount was not specified – to revitalize the place so that all Panamanians can use it.

This location had been concessioned by Ricardo Martinelli’s administration (2009-2014) to Odebrecht, the same one that built the building; However, due to citizen pressure and after the corruption scandals in, the administration of Juan Carlos Varela (2014-2019) suspended the contract.

Anayansi Chichaco, director of Museums of the Ministry of Culture, said that the current headquarters of the MAC has become too small and its board of directors was in search of a new place.

At the moment, the Ministry of Culture is evaluating with its legal team for how long they could assign this property to the MAC, although Chichaco said that generally, the period is for 20 or 25 years.

MAC Panama was born as the Panamanian Institute of Art (Panarte) in 1962, as a private non-profit entity, founded with the purpose of promoting the cultural development of the Panamanian community. Currently, its headquarters are in Ancón.

Cinta Costera had a total cost of $ 782 million, but only the Mirador del Pacífico, the name with which the MOP baptized the “tourist landfill” built near the Mercado del Marisco, cost $68.2 million.

The reports of that entity, dating from 2014, mention that only the fill of the breakwater represented $48.1 million. The building that would house the restaurant and which will now be the headquarters of the MAC cost $2 million and the “landscaping”, $7.7 million. The rest of the money – $10.4 million – went to paving, drainage, and earthmoving work.