This is a virtual space to discuss the Victoria Courts site development issues within the Lavaca Neighborhood.

Please express your views with respect.

Note that actual (live) meetings are being held periodically and will be posted in the section of this webpage called "Post It Here." Check that section regularly for updates.

By Penny Boyer

Hope VI Committee

The San Antonio Housing Authority has a Hope VI Application Committee which is meeting regularly. met. This is essentially an in-house committee, which has been meeting since March 12, 1999. The meetings have been focusing on the Hope VI application.

The Committee is proceeding on the basis of the Lavaca plan, which has long been on the table. That plan would develop the Victoria Courts primarily for housing, with limited commercial activities.

As regards public housing, SAHA for some time has said that there will be 100 units at the site. This was predicated on there being 500 units in total... the public housing would be therefore 20% of the total. The Lavaca plan may allow a greater number of units, perhaps 700, which would result in about 150 public housing units?… still 20%.

They also want to enable poor folk to buy units... just like anyone else, but with government support for the purchase.

Stay tune for more information.


By Michael Berrier

99 Mayor's Award Submission Pt 1

So What's the Matter With Lavaca Residents?

Over the past year, San Antonio's oldest existing neighborhood has had to seriously confront its future for the first time since it was severed in half by Hemisfair in 1968.

One fateful day in May earlier last year, VIA Metropolitan Transit Chair and Habitat for Humanity Executive Director Richard Tankerson requested that about a dozen "key Lavaca residents" meet with him in a conference room at the United Way. There, unbeknownst to press, the public or even the San Antonio Housing Authority, Tankerson disclosed possible plans for the future of the forty-four acres that constitute Victoria Courts. That day he set on the shoulders of the Lavaca Neighborhood a concern that has mobilized and activated a theretofore content community now completely committed to the cause of retaining our character.

Within weeks of that meeting, the Board of the Lavaca Neighborhood Association collectively drafted and approved a statement of concerns regarding the Victoria Courts Site Development. The key points were:

?• We trust that the federal regulations regarding relocating tenants of public housing will adequately protect the current residents of Victoria Courts.
?• We believe that residential development at the Victoria Courts site is critical, and should include not only market rate housing, but also below market rate rental and public housing.
?• We therefore reject the use of the Victoria Courts site for the purpose of providing a multi-use convention/sports arena and hotel complex, or transportation hub.
?• We believe there should be no commercial development on the Victoria Courts site.
?• There should be no encroachment outside the Victoria Courts site into the neighborhood; e.g., the Burnet Elementary School should not be viewed as a potential development site. We believe development within our neighborhood [Lavaca] should be limited to single family dwellings. Current single family zoning within the Lavaca neighborhood should be maintained.
?• We believe that restricted parking should be maintained and that consideration should be given to restricting parking on additional streets within the Lavaca neighborhood. We also believe that implementing a sophisticated system of controlling vehicular traffic is essential.
?• As a neighborhood, we join the discussion concerning redevelopment of the site with the intent of maintaining the quality of life in our small community.

And join we have. From that moment on, Lavaca became agressively involved in the dialogue. San Antonio Express-News columnist Rick Casey recognized our earnestness early on and praised us for our unusual perspective on the predicament we faced. "So what's the matter with Lavaca residents? At a time when they should be rejoicing at the news that the Victoria Courts housing project is being removed from their back yard, they're making an extraordinary proposal: They want to keep public housing in their neighborhood."



By Penny Boyer

99 Mayors Award Submission Pt. 2

At an animated early autumn General Assembly Meeting of the Lavaca Neighborhood Association (bimonthly), so much excitement was stirred over the importance of the Victoria Courts site development issue that weekly meetings devoted to this discussion were proposed by membership. As many as three dozen residents met on any given Wednesday night at the newly nocturnal Taco Haven for several months, through to Christmas. The meetings always began with a summary and update of the situation by a rotating roster of residents (in an effort to develop community leadership skills) followed by a round-robin expression of concerns and/or visions for the site. All voices were heard. These concerns, visions and ideas were transcribed and posted in the window of the Southtown offices on South Alamo Street. This public display eventually included a diagramatic map that developed from these ideas--next to a map of the current site and a map of the site as it existed at the turn of the last century. The new diagram, drafted by Lavaca resident Darryl Ohlenbusch, represented a diversity of housing types, price levels and opportunity; population density and building height decreasing north to south from Durango into the Lavaca Neighborhood at Leigh Street; substantial greenspace including a sizable park buffer zone to I-37; replacement of historic street pattern; and the possibility of commercial space at ground floor only along Durango. In other words, it remains an almost exact prototype for the recently ratified plan based on public input that SAHA intends to include in its U.S. Housing and Urban Development HOPE VI proposal due later this month.

Lavaca's success has happened as the result of many cross-community collaborations for which Lavaca is thankful. Without Southtown, the community development corporation whose interest in the Victoria Courts situation is particularly keen because of its recent assignation as a Neighborhood Commercial Revitalization program of the City of San Antonio, Lavaca might not have felt as empowered as we have. Once Lavaca stated its position, it was Southtown that guided and supported us, ensuring that our plans were seen and our voices heard. Both Southtown and Lavaca were well represented in the planning of and at the SAHA's Kerrville conference, "Partnering with Communities: the New Urban Neighborhood--Victoria Courts." Darryl's diagram--"the Lavaca Plan"--was finally further refined at a series of sessions held between SAHA and the San Antonio Chapter of the American Institute of Architects, with primary participation of Southtown and Lavaca area architect input.

Since the intended focus of Southtown's NCR designation is to address the South Presa commercial corridor--the Lavaca's central thoroughfare--it is Lavaca's intention to share the Mayor's Award (were it won) with Southtown, perhaps in a 50-50 split. Were Lavaca to retain a portion of the award, funds would be used to match the Neighborhood Improvement Challenge Grant that the Planning Department of the City of San Antonio has indicated we may very well receive.


By Penny Boyer