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

The West team had the most fully fleshed-out scheme of the five, as of Saturday morning. The site covers about 3.5 square miles and has a population of about 24,000, all but about 600 of whom have incomes above the poverty level, according to team leader Davis Sprinkle. The team is focusing its work on a core area that flanks Apache Creek/Elmendorf Lake and includes Our Lady of the Lake University, Rosedale Park and Cassiano Homes.

Main ideas:

  1. Create a "cohesive linear park" along Apache Creek/Elmendorf Lake from Rosedale Park to the San Antonio Produce Terminal at Zarzamora Street, and beyond. Some green areas would be widened to slow down runoff entering the creek. Some natural habitats with soft creek edges would be created; other portions of the park would be more manicured.
  2. Remove a considerable number of houses that back onto the creek to allow constuction of a more-or-less continuous parkside street on either side of the creek and, beyond the street, multifamily housing in courtyard or townhouse configurations. Sprinkle says a net gain in housing units would result.
  3. Extend Rosedale Park westward into underused land.
  4. Create a "zocalo," intensive mixed-use development of three- or four-story scale, around three sides of a proposed new square-block park on Commerce Street across from Elmendorf Lake and a short walk from the university.
  5. The existing Handy-Andy grocery and other retailers at the southwest corner of Commerce and 24th Street would be relocated a few blocks west to create additional parkland along the creek.
  6. The intersection of Commerce and General McMullen would become a traffic circle, and underused commercial property would be densified with infill projects.
  7. A new arts center, including a creekside amphitheater, would be built at Hamilton north of Commerce.
So much careful and, indeed, radical (in the best sense) thought went into this scheme that it demands much fuller evaluation than is possible in this quick reaction. A few observations:

The scheme greatly improves neighborhood access to the creek and lake and turns the existing park areas, now little more than prairies flanking a drainage ditch, into a varied sequence of more attractive and usable spaces. The ÒzocaloÓ is ideally sited to serve as a traditional university neighborhood and to bring human activity to the edge of the lake. One quibble: An arts center, in the ideal, ought to be more intimately connected to the zocalo than it is in this scheme.

Of particular interest is the thought that went into the design of multifamily and infill single-family houing. The team developed several prototype plans for courtyard clusters and small-lot single-family houses, in each case taking care to reflect the historical urban character of the neighborhood; to deal sensitively (and, in most cases, practically) with parking; and to give residents both privacy/security and an intimate connection with the public realm, thus honoring the traditional social practices of the neighborhood. The courtyard scheme bears a formal resemblance to the "corral" housing of memory -- a resemblance that may have negative emotional associations for some, but for others may suggest a positive connection with the history of the Hispanic West Side. If the negative associations are not too much of a barrier, these courtyard prototypes may represent genuine progress toward a multifamily housing paradigm (if you'll pardon the cliche) that is specifically fitted for this neighborhood.