Quote:
Originally Posted by kornbread
Now the city is talking about redeveloping Hemisfair Park (which will cost a lot of money). Does anyone see their current plan as some sort of catalyst for growth? Is this the right place to start (should the money go elsewhere)? Is it addressing any of the real obstacles for growth downtown?
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I don't see it as a catalyst for growth, but I do see it as a good place for investment for the city. As for the money going elsewhere; I could think of a few ideas, but then that would only kick the can on Hemisfair farther down the road, which might not be such a horrible thing, and I'll come back to that in a minute.
If the Mayors goal is X amount of new residents downtown by 2020, I think that this (or some other) money should focus on that exact thing. I would say that X amount of dollars should be allocated to fund new housing (large scale, say at least 150 apartments to qualify) in/around DT until we reach a certain number, and you can even stagger down the number per year until you reach 0. So the city would pitch in to help dirt turn on the first 800 apartments this year, 700 next year, 600 the following year, and so on, until we reach 0, which would be 2020, and hopefully by then, you wouldn't need to "beg" developers to build and you would have helped in the building of at least 3500 or so units which would double the amount we currently have.
Now, that's not to say that "investments" that the city made in the last 2 decades were a waste; if anything, they kept our DT afloat. Like Necropolis said, too much attention was placed on the riverwalk. But that attention that was placed there led to investment on the street. Think of what DID happen in the last 20 years that this study doesn't consider "growth." Now I may miss some but this is just to give a small idea of what has happened: I'm a couple of years off, but RC mall was built in 1988 and Marriott RC added 1001 rooms, Alamodome was built, hotels added include Westin, Homewood Suites, Hotel Contessa, Drury renovated and added on to Alamo Bank, the "other" Drury on St. Mary's, Marriott Courtyard, Valencia, Embassy Suites, Home 2 Suites, Indigo, Towneplace Suites, Marriott twins on Bowie, La Quinta, Staybridge Suites, Grand Hyatt, plus a few others on Cesar Chavez, and a couple of others that renovated a couple of our old buildings. I don't know the exact number, but it has to be at least 20 hotels... makes you wonder where our visitors stayed before 1988. And because of the investments recently made on Houston St., we are now starting to feel the pulse as tenants move in to take advantage of the added feet on the street.
That's just the hotels... and it doesn't include the library, additions to city buildings, replacement of Victoria Courts, personal improvements in Southtown, Tobin Hill, Pearl, Dignowity, SAMA, UTSA DT campus, River extensions, etc. After listing all that, it looks like the decades with "no growth" actually had 1000x the growth than the previous 4 decades (1950-90), and the lack of investment in the previous 4 is probably why so much focus was pushed as it was for the last 20 years.
Now, just like adtobias said, we should focus on residential, and I think that once we see that build-up of critical mass, then they should take the Hemisfair plan and ask the "new" residents what they would like in a park. Of course that is not the case and the plan is going forward sooner rather than later, but that is the way I would do things.