San Antonio River Walk Improvement Project

[edge_gordon]

Lovely. Next maybe they can make beer ($6 each!!??) and food affordable there.

For my part, I'll avoid it.
It's a ripoff of the little Central Texas natural streams I loved so much, growing up. Concrete rocks and all.

I would hate it, if this replica was all that was left, in 20 years.

It's some kind of Disney ripoff.. no fish.. unnatural.. stolen water.

Meanwhile, six dollar beer is good enough reason to avoid any place.
Go to Market Square. Purple Line bus will get you there, if you're too footless to walk half a mile from downtown.

Edge

[ryneone]

Originally Posted by edge_gordon

Lovely. Next maybe they can make beer ($6 each!!??) and food affordable there.

For my part, I'll avoid it.
It's a ripoff of the little Central Texas natural streams I loved so much, growing up. Concrete rocks and all.

I would hate it, if this replica was all that was left, in 20 years.

It's some kind of Disney ripoff.. no fish.. unnatural.. stolen water.

Meanwhile, six dollar beer is good enough reason to avoid any place.
Go to Market Square. Purple Line bus will get you there, if you're too footless to walk half a mile from downtown.

Edge

Well for one it is an URBAN river not really trying to be one of those pristine hill country streams. It is a unique environment that people will and have paid for. It is not for everyone as we can you see you don't enjoy it but don't say it is a rip off of something.

[benandgrace]

So is food higher along the riverwalk at most of the restaurants or just a few of them?

[Sweetie Pie]

There just better be a bike path! IMOHO!!!

[googie2525]

Originally Posted by benandgrace

So is food higher along the riverwalk at most of the restaurants or just a few of them?

Most of the restaurants on the RW are of the Chili's variety (price wise), so no, I wouldn't call the majority of Riverwalk eateries expensive by any means (unless you consider Chili's expenive that is). Of course places like Biga and Bohahans are pretty pricey, but they'd be pricey anywhere in San Antonio - and the food is excellent in both cases.

[royal744]

Many years ago during the '70s and before, San Antonio had a bit of an inferiority complex. It had been the premier city of Texas at one time and then lost that pole position to both Dallas and Houston. Even then, it always had the Alamo and it always had the Spanish Colonial Missions of San Antonio, the largest collection of 18th century Spanish Missions anywhere in the country, ranged along the San Antonio River.

San Antonio sort of slept until 1965-67 when a group of citizens banded together and had the audacious idea to start a world's fair called Hemisfair68. Taken alone, Hemisfair lost money (but not too much), but it started a downtown renaissance that has gone on for forty years and shows no sign of stopping.

It turns out that while Houston and Dallas were tearing down everything of any historical value, San Antonio and its pioneering Conservation Society were saving very nearly everything of value. Where the other cities today realize that they have erased the past, San Antonio oozes with history and reclaimed buildings in what is surely becoming the greatest downtown in the entire southern tier of the country.

Many cities in this country have rivers that run through them, but no city has the Riverwalk as San Antonio has its Riverwalk. Other cities have copied this Riverwalk but none measure up in the quality of experience. Few realize that one of the reasons the Riverwalk is so successful is that it is not strictly a commercial enterprise - it has quiet park-like areas as well as intensely developed areas, but verywhere it is lined with historic buildings. It has hardly beern a static development. Begun in the 1930s as a WPA project under then-mayor Maverick, the major portions of it were finished in the Horseshoe Bend area just before the US entered World War II.

The original design work had been done earlier by a young architect by the name of Henry H. Hugman and was fancifully entitled "The Shops of Aragon and Castile" (or something close to that), and envisioned Venice-like canals with gondolas. Hugman presented his design - which he had done for free and completely on his own initiative - to City Council where it was well received but where, for lack of funding, it fell on ears deafened by empty pockets. Still, Hugman never received the acclaim that he so richly deserved in the years following his effort, but everyone now knows that he was the starting pistol that keeps on firing.

It should be acknowledged at this point that Hugman would not have had a river to project his ideas onto had it not been for the San Antonio Conservation Society (SACS). SACS was most instrumental in keeping the San Antonio River from being paved over and used as a meandering, linear parking lot, which businesses downtown claimed that they needed. The slogan most often heard was, "Don't Kill the Goose that Laid the Golden Egg". Considering that at the time, before there was a Riverwalk, the San Antonio River wa little more than an occasionally swampy drainage ditch, this was Far-sighted with a capital "F". So thank you, Conservation Society!

One of the reasons the San Antonio Riverwalk is so successful, some have theorized, is that it is about as wide as the main walkways in your average shopping mall. This means that one can see across it and watch people's faces and just plain sit and 'people watch', a favorite activity along the Riverwalk.

As part of Hemisfair 68, a new channel was cut to east and a new lagoon built as part of the Performing Arts Center and the new San Antonio Convention Center which were part of the Hemisfair development, both examples of the immediate and long-lasting benefits of the world's fair. During the 90s, a new channel was dug from the convention center channel to form yet another lagoon and turning basin to the north, which basin formed the centerpiece of Rivercenter Mall. During the 80's, as part of the San Antonio Hyatt development along the Horsoe Bend, another passage was cut to form the base of the Hyatt's Atrium at river level. The cut goes through the Hyatt and forms a dramatic water garden that ascends by stages up to Alamo Plaza, thus linking for the first time The Alamo and the San Antonio River.

Today, in 2008, the City is extending the landscape an amenity-filled corridors to both the south (Mission Reach) and to the north (Museum Reach). The lesson: do what you do best, and keep on doing it. Developments along the northern reach are already sprouting up like mushrooms and this will not stop anytime soon.

San Antonio no longer has an inferiority complex. It knows it is a great city that is continuously improving. In other Texas cities, hotel rates drop on the weekends, while here in San Antonio they go through the roof on weekends. This is no accident. People just want to be here. And it is one of the best getaways there is.

Like many great urban efforts, this has been a long time coming, an overnight success that has taken the better part of a century so far. Mayors, City Managers, the San Antonio River Authority and numerous agency and oversight groups have had and continue to have a hand in guiding the River into the 21st century. Too many people to list deserve credit for this, but it all began with NOT paving it over and turning it into a drainage culvert.

Millions of people from all over the world come here to see this unique and outstanding city.

- Roy Lowey-Ball, AIA