If the 92 entries in the Build Your Own Broadway ideas competition were transformed into billboards enticing commuters, there would be enough creative material to place one submission every 60 yards along the 2.7-mile stretch from Hildebrand Avenue to Houston Street. For passersby, it would be like watching a movie of what could be rather than the more mundane reality of their daily commute.
The quantity and quality of the submissions in the $20,000 BYOBroadway ideas competition and the hundreds of people who have signed up for today’s event at the Pearl Stable represent clear evidence of people’s desire to see the city’s best known north-south street transformed into a destination boulevard.
While six finalists vie for first place awards in three categories at the Pearl Stable Wednesday, March 30, 6:30-8:30 p.m., audience members will be asked to select the People’s Choice Award winner from all the rest of the entries.
Here is your first chance to see them all. Click here to visit the Rivard Report’s Place Changing site to view all the entries. Special thanks to Allison Hu and Nicolas Rivard at Overland Partners for managing the ideas competition, the entries, and posting them to the Place Changing site.
The six finalists who will take to the Pearl Stage this evening were selected by a jury of cultural and civic leaders.
“I’m excited, and all the jurors are hyped up about tonight’s event,” said Darryl Byrd, the jury chairman and managing partner at ULTRAte Consulting. “This competition at its foundation is all about inviting citizens to get engaged, to solicit their creative answers to the question: What can Broadway look like? BYOBroadway is an exercise in civic engagement. It’s meant to compliment the more practical design work that will come down the road. The fuel powering this city forward to become a great city is going to be the citizens themselves. It’s going to take all of us to get to greatness.”
In addition to Byrd serving as chairman of the ideas competition jury, members include:Sherry Kafka Wagner, writer and journalist; Brian Dillard, cybersecurity worker and Dignowity Hill Neighborhood Association president; Marina Alderete Gavito, executive director of Tech Bloc; Kevin Peckham, executive director of Choose San Antonio; Mary Heathcott, executive director of Blue Star Art Museum; Cruz Ortiz, artist and teacher; Roberto Prestigiacomo, associate professor of human communication and theatre at Trinity University and director of AtticRep at the Tobin Center for the Performing Arts; Marise McDermott, CEO of the Witte Museum; Gini Garcia, founder of Garcia Art Glass; Uchennaya Ogba, inbound marketing strategist with Bethany East PR; Vanessa Lacoss Hurd, CEO of the DoSeum; and Suhail Arastu, development director for Musical Bridges Around the World.
Tickets to the event are expected to sell out. Click here to purchase.
Top image: Daniel Alvarado’s submission for the BYOBroadway competition, “The Under-Space Savannah.”
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Jury Names Six BYOBroadway Finalists
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Broadway: A Street Still aWaiting Public Investment
