Greg Harman
¶ San Pedro Creek Improvement Project‘s first phase will open to the public in San Antonio, Texas, with a dedication ceremony on Saturday, May 5, 2018. Deceleration has been meeting with residents of the area in recent weeks (like these two).
¶ During a recent visit to the affordable-income apartments, Soap Works 1 & 2 and Towne Center, where many live on fixed incomes, the Bonsai nursery service hacked away at the hedges (and someone took out a much loved rose bush, bringing tears to one elderly resident who had long cared for it).
¶ There was a woman moving from one side of the complex to the other with boxes in hand (from a $750 one-bedroom to a $900 remodeled efficiency). “These people, they call it a studio loft,” she said, rolling her eyes. “But I love being by the river.” Her chin nodded to the dusty San Pedro Creek Improvement Project work going on at the bottom of the apartment’s fractured parking lot.
¶ Another, who had only joked about gentrification in the past, spat as she described the new laundry facility. Washing tokens are no longer accepted. One has to have a smart phone and Apple Pay or Google Wallet to access the machines. She’d been walking a long ways to access the closest alternative.
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From the creek project’s website:
San Pedro Creek has been a place of natural beauty and human occupation for millennia. Bexar County/San Antonio originated in this vicinity with the founding of Mission San Antonio de Valero. This history will now be restored and shared with new generations through the San Pedro Creek Improvements Project.
Bexar County and the San Antonio River Authority, in coordination with the City of San Antonio, have undertaken this project to transform San Pedro Creek from a concrete-lined drainage ditch into a natural creek habitat and world-class linear park. The project will improve the creek’s function in flood control, revitalize natural habitat and water quality, and catalyze economic development.
