SAN ANTONIO – The heart of downtown, the San Antonio River Walk, is getting a possible upgrade.
The City of San Antonio has proposed a plan to attract more people to the area, and officials are looking for public input.
Bill Lyons is the owner of Casa Rio, a restaurant that has been on the River Walk since 1946. His top concerns are parking, crowds and homeless people.
“The locals, number one, don’t like to pay for parking,” Lyons said. “And number two, they don’t want to stand in a line. And a lot of times they come down here when everything’s crowded. We’ve got a big convention in town. And they just say, ‘Oh, I’m not going back downtown again. It’s just too crowded.’”
Kathy Kennedy is a local who lives downtown. She said it’s the prices of parking keeping locals away.
“It’s $20 for an hour sometimes,” Kennedy said. “I mean, the average income is, what, $65,000 to $75,000 in San Antonio? Not six figures. So the problem that San Antonians have is that the city has to look at who they are. Why they would want to come and how they can afford to come. But the city not looking at them unless they’ve got six-figure incomes.”
Khalood Bojanowski is a tourist from Detroit. She said she loves visiting the River Walk when she visits family.
“I like the atmosphere, Bojanowski said. “I like all the restaurants. It’s just beautiful.”
She said changes could be made to make more available affordable parking and have less of the constant construction.
“Yeah, the construction is really bad,” Bojanowski said. “And the parking, there’s no parking.”
Parking, construction and more parking was the main concern from business owners, locals and tourists on how to improve the River Walk and attract more people.
It’s the kind of input that the city is looking for as they create the Strategic River Walk Masterplan over the next year. The goal is to get more tourists, locals and attractions to the area.
“Our numbers are all down,” William Grinnan, the general manager for the Republic of Texas restaurant said. “And we have to get back to the basics. And the basics is putting heads in beds.”
The Republic of Texas restaurant on the River Walk is another longtime business, recently celebrating 50 years on the River Walk.
Grinnan said tourists should be the number one priority. That’s where he said they get 90% of their business from.
Several things are being considered, like improving parking, making it more comfortable in summer months with added shade or misters and finding ways to attract more businesses.
“There’s been some requests by business owners to look at,” said Shanon Miller, director of the Office of Historic Preservation, who is leading the efforts to put a team together for this. “The ability to have, like, amplified music or live music on patios. Looking at technology that might be available for menu boards, for example.”
San Antonio’s historic River Walk attracts more than 14 million visitors per year and generates roughly $3.5 billion in annual economic activity.
The Office of Historic Preservation, in partnership with the River Walk Business Owners Group, Visit San Antonio, the Conservation Society and others developed a scope of work for a new strategic plan. the Office of Historic Preservation staff administers the River Walk Capital Improvements Advisory Board (RWCIAB).
“A lot times when residents have guests, they bring them to the River Walk to show it off,” Miller said. “But they may not come as regularly as we would like for them to, and those are the kind of questions we want to get to the bottom of.”
Miller said anyone who has a proposal for River Walk improvements can submit it to the city. The deadline is Oct. 9th. A campaign will take place over the next month to get public input.
By November, a committee will be in place to take that input, and work on the improvement plan over the next year.
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