• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Home
    • Heron jobs
    • Editorial Independence Policy
    • Corrections & Clarifications
  • Who we are
  • About us
  • Newsletter signup
  • Donate
  • Our Business Supporters
    • Join Our Business Membership Program

San Antonio Heron

Telling the complete downtown story

  • Development
  • Housing
  • Neighborhoods
  • Food & Drink

Frustrations linger on Guadalupe Plaza fence

September 26, 2018 By Zendra Morales 5 Comments

FacebookTweetPrintEmail
Rick Uriegas, vice president of the nonprofit Action United for Entertainers & Diverse Artists, airs his concerns during a public meeting Tuesday night at the Plaza Guadalupe. BEN OLIVO | SAN ANTONIO HERON

In an attempt to begin to reactivate Guadalupe Plaza on the near West Side, which has had a fence surrounding it since 2016, the city and a nonprofit contracted to oversee the public space have opened it up once more from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily. Also, the city will begin to host movie nights at the plaza starting Oct. 12 with a screening of “Selena.”

The efforts are short-term solutions while the city continues to gather community input, which began with a public meeting in late August, for a more permanent plan that the city hopes to reach in December.

However, many of the more than 100 who attended a public meeting Tuesday night on the future of the plaza put city officials on the spot, asking why a chain-link fence, which has surrounded the plaza since August 2016, is still up.

The second meeting on the future of the Guadalupe Plaza on the near West Side on Tuesday night produced a constant dialogue that was sometimes heated among the more than 100 community members who attended.

The meeting, hosted by the city of San Antonio, was held on the plaza’s theater space, as attendees shared their personal history with the plaza.

More than 100 people attend a public meeting Tuesday night at Plaza Guadalupe, 1327 Guadalupe St. BEN OLIVO | SAN ANTONIO HERON
Plaza Guadalupe Movie Nights
Movies begin at 8 p.m. at Guadalupe Plaza, 1327 Guadalupe St.
» Oct. 12, “Selena”
» Oct. 26, “Coraline”
» Nov. 2, “Corpse Bride”
» Nov. 16, “Black Panther”
» Dec. 7, “Instructions Not Included”
» Dec. 21, “The Polar Express”

The fence was erected by the nonprofit Avenida Guadalupe Association, which holds the lease on the plaza, and six other city-owned properties in the vicinity, through 2029.

The fencing was first put up by AGA in 2016 as a temporary measure for a Diez y Seis de Septembre event, but stayed up to the keep out heroin addicts who would frequent the plaza, said Gabriel Velasquez, the association’s executive director.

“The heroin situation was off the chart,” Velasquez said.

In May 2017, the association was granted a certificate of appropriateness by the city to surround the plaza with a fence, even though the fence went up nine months prior. Some in the audience, mainly members of the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center, wondered why the fence is still up, considering the fact that the certificate expired four months ago in May.

“It is devastating that the solution to criminal activity is a fence,” said Sarah Gould, a local historian who was recently tapped to develop the Westside Community Museum, a project scheduled to open next year in the old Ruben’s Icehouse at Guadalupe and South Colorado streets, a stone’s throw from the plaza.

“There has to be a design solution that doesn’t make the community feel like criminals,” Gould said.

Veronica Garcia, interim assistant director of the Center City Development and Operations Department (CCDO), said the fence remains up because there was never a community input process, which the city is now in the middle of. The meetings so far, she says, have been inconclusive in terms of an agreement on the fence, and the plaza’s hours of operation.

For fiscal year 2019, the city provided the AGA, which began leasing the plaza in 2009, with $142,000 to help pay for salaries related to the management and maintenance of the plaza. Also included in the upcoming budget is $100,000 for programming and security, which the CCDO will manage.

The city does not charge the AGA rent on the lease.

In August 2017, the City Council awarded $304,500 in federal Community Development Block Grant funds for “plaza facility improvements,” which can include a fence, Garcia told attendees. On Sept. 30, the contract was renewed for another 90 days, and those funds will be used for whatever solution the community meetings produce, she said.

The plaza remains open 10 a.m.-6 p.m. daily, but can be closed for private events.

Two more meetings are scheduled for 6-8 p.m. Oct. 29 and Dec. 4, the locations of which have not been determined.

Margarita Elizarde (left), who was a bilingual teacher on the West Side for several years, speaks during the public meeting Tuesday night at Plaza Guadalupe. BEN OLIVO | SAN ANTONIO HERON

hello@saheron.com


2022 NewsMatch

Help the Heron UNLOCK $15,000 from a coalition of NewsMatch funders by Dec. 31.

Prefer to mail a check? Please make payable to:
San Antonio Heron
The Rand Building
110 E. Houston St. 7FL
San Antonio, Texas, 78205

FacebookTweetPrintEmail

Filed Under: Neighborhoods, West Side

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Mark says

    September 26, 2018 at 3:32 pm

    Ohhh so they put up a fence to keep undesirable people out? I guess fences do work. Wonder where else he could put a fence aka wall up to keep undesirables out…

    Reply
    • Andrew says

      September 27, 2018 at 12:06 pm

      A fence doesn’t do anything. It doesn’t stop drug usage it just moved it somewhere else.

      Reply
    • Steve says

      October 18, 2018 at 5:53 pm

      It doesn’t prevent narrow minded people from trying to make innuendos as you’re living proof of that, it would probably be mind blowing to learn that drugs being brought across the border didn’t take hold til the late 60’s when the US began training guerillas to be their henchmen in South America, or that 89% of terrorists use major airlines to fly in from European and other countries or that immigrants illegal or not bring in more money than what we’re made to believe???? Yup thought so

      Reply

Trackbacks

  1. Guadalupe Plaza conceptual to be released Dec. 4 - San Antonio Heron says:
    October 30, 2018 at 10:16 am

    […] Previously published Frustrations linger on Guadalupe Plaza fence […]

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

For security, use of Google's reCAPTCHA service is required which is subject to the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.

I agree to these terms.

Primary Sidebar

Share

  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

Support local journalism

If you care about San Antonio’s downtown and urban neighborhoods, consider supporting our 100% independent work with a donation.
Donate

Newsletter Signup

Deep Dives

How municipal bonds work, and a brief history of them in San Antonio

Olivo: How McKee-Rodriguez’s support for a luxury housing project helps shape the Decade of Downtown

The Lofts at River North are under construction at Broadway and Jones Avenue in July.

Analysis: It’s time to call BS on ‘workforce housing’

Copyright © 2023 San Antonio Heron · Site maintained by hmt3design.com

Share this ArticleLike this article? Email it to a friend!

Email sent!