Extending and improving our city's famous Riverwalk has been talked about for many years, and the project has always appeared to me to be a priority of our civic leaders. Lack of money has stood in the way. Now, the campaign to get this done appears to be ramping up. From today's Express-News:
It takes money to make money.
That's the idea behind a new study that says the $198 million San Antonio River Improvements Project, once completed, could have an annual economic impact of almost $1 billion on the region's economy.
The study by TXP Inc. was commissioned by the San Antonio River Foundation, which will use it to bolster a campaign to raise an additional $50 million from the private sector to fund public art and other amenities for a 13-mile linear park along the San Antonio River.
The report suggested the completed park, running from the Witte Museum to Mission Espada, would add $12.5 million annually to the area's tax base, increase property values adjacent to the open space along the river, and create close to 10,000 permanent jobs.
...
While the city, county and Zachry search for middle ground that would allow construction to begin, County Judge Nelson Wolff said that regardless of the increasing costs, the river project is "the most important public project we have going right now, and we have to push forward."
While I wouldn't take the word of this study, commissioned as it is by an interested party, I have little doubt that its fundamental conclusion is correct.
Reading this first part of the article, I started thinking about my hometown Chicago's Millenium Park as a recent example of how an extensive improvement to a city's public space can be a tremendous boon to a city and its residents, despite the high up-front cost. If only we here in San Antonio could follow that example with even a fraction of that success. Apparently I wasn't the only one with those thoughts, as the article continues:
Sonny Collins, the river foundation's president, compared the improvements project with Chicago's Millennium Park, which has seen the value of surrounding land increase $1.4 billion, with increased tourism expected to bring in another $2.6 billion over the next decade.
That success will allow Chicago to pay off $285 million in bonds it issued to help pay for the park three to five years early, Collins said.
"The numbers are mind-boggling," he said. "We'd love to think we could emulate that."
The river foundation's job now is to emulate the successful private-giving campaign Chicago initiated to complement the public money spent on the park. Chicago raised $235 million for public art and other amenities within Millennium Park. Private money for the river project will go for enhanced landscaping, overlooks and public art.
Will San Antonio's corporate citizens do their part?
To see what is envisioned for the long neglected parts of our city's namesake river, see the San Antonio River Improvements Project website, where the illustrations accompanying this post came from.
This is an idea I've been excited about ever since first hearing about it years ago. This plan follows the century-old advice of legendary city planner Daniel Burnham (to throw in another Chicago reference): "Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men's blood and probably will not themselves be realized." It would be great to see this "no little" urban river plan begin to come to fruition sometime in the near future.
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