heritageby Hendrik Slegtenhorst

San Antonio, TexasThe Economic Benefit of Urban

Heritage Preservation

Urban heritage retained and heritage reclaimed are both heritage sustained. Heritage gives individuals a direct sense of the attributes that constitute their ur-ban context; and, in the form of visible presence, heritage enriches the visual rationale that enriches living cities.

Suzana Vukić, writing about the ef-fects of gentrification and development on Montreal’s Griffintown, concludes that, “preserving heritage is about much more than simply not choosing to tear down homes and structures with histor-ical value, [but] also about maintaining the surroundings and neighbourhoods of these heritage sites and properties.”

In the preservation of urban heri-tage, this approach may be applied with care and success through vision and political leadership. Implemented properly, heritage planning and urban preservation can potentially offer tre-mendous benefits for the community, including:

► strengthening the tax base by retain-ing or re-purposing historic struc-tures;

► inducing job creation, through res-toration projects that require more human labour and a greater range of trades skills and building materials than those required for modern con-struction projects;

► encouraging tourism; ► contributing to economic devel-opment and investment in cultural resources; and

► creating a distinctive local character.

HENDRIK SLEGTENHORST is the author of Caravaggio’s Dagger (Iguana Books, 2013), with executive experience in both the local government and heritage sectors. He lives in Edmonton, Alberta. Hendrik can be reached via <www.cul-turalrites.com>.

Mission San José – a still-practicing Franciscan church – dates from 1768, and is the largest of the five historical missions. The church and its attached community were restored in the 1930s, and now com-prise a national park. Photo: H. Slegtenhorst.

A Heritage Case Study

These benefits are manifestly, almost spectacularly, visible in the case of City of San Antonio, Texas.

San Antonio, in southwest Texas, was founded some 300 years ago, set-tled by Canary Islanders as early as 1691. The mission that became the Ala-mo was founded in 1718.

At a political level, San Antonio has actively promoted urban restoration for some 90 years. Its current strategic historic preservation plan extends this long-time vision with an explicit intent to broaden the value and attractiveness

of urban preservation throughout the entire civic community, and hence be of even more increasing benefit to citizens’ quality of life. The new plan concen-trates on planning, zoning, economic development, retention of historical resources, incentives, and the twinned

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functions of education and advocacy. In addition, council adopted comprehen-sive guidelines for historic design as recently as November 2012.

The city has 27 designated historic districts, plus six river improvement overlays, including the River Walk, discussed below. The consolidated city budget is $2.3 billion. Historic preserva-tion is a municipal department.

River Walk

The San Antonio River flows through the centre of the city. The most prominent example of urban preserva-tion in San Antonio is its River Walk along that river. A public park owned by the city, the River Walk is set below street level, and is a pedestrian way of some 3.5 miles in the downtown, along both banks of the river.

Its origin derived in the late 1920s from a coalition of conservationists, local government, and business who understood how great the value of the river was to city growth. Its first 21 blocks’ section was completed during World War II. The effect was a highly positive transformation of the down-town through the introduction of guided preservation that permitted both com-mercial and residential applications, and beautification, conceived to be both highly attractive and environmentally progressive. The River Walk now draws five million visitors annually and pro-duces an annual economic impact of $8 billion.

The River Walk was extended in 1968, the 250th anniversary of the founding of San Antonio, from near the Alamo to the convention centre. The impact delivered national prominence and the development of what was to become the most frequented tourist des-tinations in the State of Texas. The Al-amo is the second. A Museum Reach of 1.33 miles, to the San Antonio Museum of Art and the historic Pearl Brewery site, was added in 2009. Eight miles of Mission Reach have also been added, passing through the King William His-torical District, and with portals to four of the historic missions: Concepción, San José, San Juan, and Espada.

The façade of the entrance of the Alamo, once a Franciscan mission, now restored as an historic site and shrine. In the midst of downtown, the grounds are attractive, extensive, and well-managed. Photo: H. Slegtenhorst.

The Ursuline campus of the Southwest School of Art, housing the ceramics and fibres studios of this national leader in arts education, is located along the Rio San Antonio in the former 1851 convent and academy. Photo: H. Slegtenhorst.

A downtown segment of the River Walk, where exists the greatest, most developed concentration of com-merce. Servicing is by barge. The bridges are many and each is unique. Photo: Gloria Steel.

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and, contributes more than $300 million in taxes and fees to all local govern-ments – over half of which goes to the City of San Antonio. In other words, about a million dollars of revenue are generated daily on over $30 million in economic activity per day. These figures are 50 percent over the preceding de-cade, and triple the decade before that.

Perhaps the most remarkable histor-ical preservation, though, is in the city’s buses. Every first front-facing seat on the left of the bus is yellow instead of the usual blue, and carries a dedication to Rosa Parks.

Long-term Commitment

San Antonio, Texas, has deliberately and consciously chosen to marry the paths of historical preservation and ur-ban prosperity. The foundation for this attraction is heritage preservation and very long-term political thinking and commitment, begun 90 years ago, to what is good and great in the creative human mind. MW

Historic Churches and King William Historical District

The King William Historical Dis-trict, once considered the most eccentric neighbourhood in the U.S., was San Antonio’s first designated historical district, and is now on the National Register. Named by 19th century Ger-man settlers after Kaiser Wilhelm, it was San Antonio’s first suburb, referred to unceremoniously by other residents as Sauerkraut Bend. Its restoration be-gan in the 1960s, rescuing the 25-block neighbourhood from lengthy decline. For the last quarter century, it has again flourished.

In addition to the River Walk and the ancient Franciscan missions, the city has retained an important number of its heritage churches, not only the Cathe-dral of San Fernando at the founding plaza of the city, but also the Lieder-kranz church on East Commerce Street, and St. Mary’s by the river. Also along the river, one finds the exceedingly fine Ursuline convent, now one of the cam-puses of the Southwest School of Art.

Tourism and Hospitality

Downtown, the massive Gonzalez Convention Centre is built across the River Walk, and has become an aston-ishingly lucrative economic factor in the city. To give a sense of the impor-tance that can be attached to civic life enriched and augmented by heritage, inclusive of the arts, one can look at the Texas Orchestra Directors’ Association, which met when I was there in July 2013, at the Convention Centre. There were 500 delegates (including numer-ous teachers at all levels of the educa-tional system) and, incredibly, 8000 young musicians, all participating. The exhibit floor of the convention centre was awash in sheet and digital music. The convention centre hosts 300 events annually, and attracts delegates from across the globe.

San Antonio is visited by 28 million people annually. The hospitality indus-try generates over $12 billion in eco-nomic activity; employs over 100,000 individuals (one-eighth of the workers in the San Antonio metropolitan area);

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