Downtown living – something San Antonio is still working on
Over the past few weeks several people have talked about downtown living here in San Antonio. Ben Olivo recently wrote a blog entry about people who live and walk to work downtown. In it he interviewed several residents of my building, The Vistana. It highlighted the fact that people are making downtown living happen and enjoying the benefits of it. I am still into my one year experiment with living downtown and have found new and interesting things every day of it. But I’ve also found some bad things that should be pointed out.
On many weekends I’ll take advantage of living downtown and leverage all aspects including public transportation to take care of errands. Today was one of those days and showed me more of what is good and bad. I decided to have lunch at the Bill Miller’s on San Pedro by San Antonio College. It’s an easy ride on the San Pedro VIA routes. On the way to the bus stop at Travis Park I was walking past the Frost Bank building on Houston. Frost has a one block green space located right across from the building that seems like a great oasis in the middle of downtown.
That’s where the bad issue was. While walking past that block I noticed a family setting up a small tent and planning to enjoy the beautiful day letting the kids play on what seemed to be a safe place downtown. That was until a security guard from Frost Bank walked across the street and told the family they could not use the space. The family complied and immediately took down the tent. But I have to ask what was wrong with what seemed to be a harmless and family friendly activity?
If Frost Bank is going to own a full block of downtown devoted to green space why hoard it away from those of us who live downtown? Why not offer it up for people to enjoy and spend time in? Doesn’t that make much more sense than turning it into a parking lot or something else? I really hope that as San Antonio continues to build its downtown someone at Frost Bank reads this and reconsiders the policy. After all, San Antonio has given so much to Frost Bank in terms of compromise in their downtown residence.
Don’t get me wrong. Frost Bank is a great corporate citizen and has given quite a bit back to the community. I just think they need to reconsider some old policy about use of their green space downtown to help San Antonio grow the downtown. Maybe they should consider deeding the property over to the city for another downtown park, which is sorely needed. With redevelopment plans in the works for Hemisfair Park there’s definitely a need for another downtown green space.
After that little down event I ended up at Travis Park and was greeted by my good situation. There, while waiting for the bus to go eat lunch I saw a great gathering in the park by the congregation of Travis Park UMC. They were hosting their Egg Hunt and Picnic following the Palm Sunday service as a part of their Holy Week calendar. It was great to see families and children hunting Easter eggs in the park along with many of the normal park visitors that often include the homeless of downtown.
Travis Park UMC has always been a good resident of downtown San Antonio and provides a great ministry to the homeless in Corazon Ministries. Providing all kinds of services from feeding the homeless on Sunday mornings to free medical care for those that need it the program is a beacon in the middle of downtown where a homeless problem is needing to be addressed. Seeing their congregation enjoying the green space of Travis Park showed that there is more to downtown than just restaurants and hotels.
In looking at Travis Park that leads to another good and bad of downtown, the homeless problem. Recently the Express-News ran an article about some of the changes proposed by the city for feeding and caring for the homeless. These changes will mostly affect some of the street ministries that have been feeding the homeless several locations. It’s designed to help motivate the homeless to leverage the new Haven for Hope project located on the far west end of the downtown core.
It seems like a good move by providing better care for the homeless but, in some ways, it seems to create layers of bureaucracy as many organizations may not be staffed to apply for the permits to distribute food. Granted, some of the organizations had such loose structures and unclear missions that it might serve well in insuring all services provided for the homeless are compliant with city health ordinances.
So, as you can see, there are good and bad aspects to downtown in the works right now. I haven’t even begun to address the issues of transportation, something I hope to cover in a future blog entry. What’s interesting is that with regards to downtown living, many of the downtown residents don’t even know of the issues their neighbors, the homeless, are facing. Many just walk past them on the streets and turn a blind eye. Hopefully that will change as downtown grows. I would hate for one resident to push out another in the quest to grow downtown.
Hey RBear,
I now work downtown and have been intrigued by projects like the Vistana. One of the fundamental needs is developing a creative, highly educated (post bachelors), & professional workforce at the core of downtown. By this I mean jobs like attorneys, CPAs, architects, etc. that would add to the economic viability of downtown. Right now, too many of San Antonio’s well paying jobs are located outside 410. I believe you yourself work at USAA which is located well outside downtown. There is some degree of this type of highly educated workforce downtown, mostly law firms around Main Plaza, but not nearly enough. Just look at our skyline, it’s dominated by hotels, a tourist attraction (Tower of the Americas), and convention buildings (Alamodome, Convention Center). How SA goes about changing this will take time and good strategic thinking. Perhaps the loosening of term limits and a mayor who has seen firsthand professional-based downtowns in Boston and SF will go a long way into adding this dimension to SA’s urban core. Then, the traditional challenges of our downtown, ie lack of grocery stores, non-touristy dining options, and lively cityscape on the street level, will be met with ease.
Have a great Easter!