SAN ANTONIO – For nearly a century, the San Antonio River Walk has been the lifeblood of the city.<\/p>\n
But ever since the pandemic, foot traffic has been hard to come by.<\/p>\n
Terry Corless, owner of the Mad Dogs Restaurant Group, said it was not just the pandemic that slowed down business.<\/p>\n
He points to city construction, outdated city codes and a lack of investment in technology as additional challenges.<\/p>\n
“I’m not doing the numbers I was doing 15 to 20 years ago,” Corless said. “We’re really being hammered in every direction. And we’ve seen pretty much consistently, sales and traffic have been going down.”<\/p>\n
Corless added that many businesses on the River Walk are down 13-15% this year even after the Final Four spiked business in April. <\/p>\n
Trish DeBerry, president and CEO of Centro San Antonio, said the city has gone too long without rethinking its approach.<\/p>\n
“It is the responsibility of the city to take a look regularly and say, ‘Hey, what more can we be doing?’ We haven’t had a strategic framework plan for the Riverwalk and improvements for 16 years, 17 years,” DeBerry said.<\/p>\n
That could soon be changing.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, the San Antonio City Council will receive a briefing on a new strategic plan for the River Walk.<\/p>\n
Shanon Miller, director of the Office of Historic Preservation, said the city will be reviewing codes and regulations while also considering beautification, lighting, wayfinding, technology and other improvements.<\/p>\n
“It’s time to kind of refocus and look at what else we should be the priorities on the Riverwalk,” Miller said. “It’s important that we continue to invest in the Riverwalk, because it is such an important cultural asset.”<\/p>\n
Corless said he feels city leaders are finally listening.<\/p>\n
“The Riverwalk is the goose that lays the golden egg,” he said. “We mustn’t kill that goose, and I think that’s the truth. We need to continue to develop and sort support it, because it is not something that will go on indefinitely, unless we’re feeding it.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN ANTONIO – For nearly a century, the San Antonio River Walk has been the lifeblood of the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":267916,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5133],"tags":[5229,139573,139574,60040,268,7825,16293,7202,7203,55997,358,3187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-268897","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-antonio","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-city-construction","10":"tag-cultural-asset","11":"tag-foot-traffic","12":"tag-investment","13":"tag-pandemic","14":"tag-river-walk","15":"tag-san-antonio","16":"tag-sanantonio","17":"tag-strategic-plan","18":"tag-texas","19":"tag-tx","20":"tag-united-states","21":"tag-united-states-of-america","22":"tag-unitedstates","23":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","24":"tag-us","25":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115298386938528825","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=268897"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268897\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/267916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=268897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=268897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=268897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}