Progress Report: Central
Noon, February 24, 1996
Day One
by Mike Greenberg

The Central team's site flanks the San Antonio River between the San Antonio Museum of Art and the downtown core. Much of the property abutting or near the river in this vicinity is vacant or underused. The Central team's main concepts:

  1. This reach of the river, in contrast to the more urban River Walk in the downtown core, should be characterized by a wider and more naturalistic greenbelt, with development pulled farther back from the river itself.
  2. Intensive mixed-use development should be concentrated along Broadway.
  3. Streets that dead-end at the river would become auto-free "green street" west of Broadway.
  4. The team proposes placing a symphony hall on the site (now a parking lot) across Jones Avenue from the art museum.
  5. The team is examining ways to create stronger public transportation links between the museum, the hotel district in the downtown core and the King William Historic district south of downtown.
As of noon Saturday, some members of team were still divided over the balance between greenspace and development. Should the property across the river from the museum be parkland or housing? Should the block at the southwest corner of Broadway and Jones be commercially developed, or should it become part of a continuous park from the river to Broadway, matching up with the existing Maverick Park east of Broadway? How wide should the river greenbelt be?

Preliminary observation:

Better to have less green space, srategically located in relation to its potential users, than more green space and too few users to keep it active. The greener alternative might be entirely appropriate in a context of intensive retailing and mid-rise residential development at the edges, but such intensive development does not seem likely in this part of San Antonio in the foreseeable future.

The "green streets," however, seem to make considerable sense as ways to extend the ambiance of the river laterally toward Broadway and enhance the potential of the Broadway/Avenue B corridor for apartments, retailing and entertainment.