After several months of discussion with developers, neighborhood advocates, and staff from the Office of Historic Preservation, the City of San Antonio has effectively dropped a proposal to implement development restrictions surrounding several popular sites.
Expanding the viewshed ordinance that currently protects the Alamo and the four Southside missions was an unpopular idea among developers and urban planners, but preservationists saw it as a way to protect other iconic views of San Antonio – especially activists who want to prevent the development of land next to the historic Hays Street Bridge.
Two out of the four sites initially recommended for possible protection in April – San Fernando Cathedral in Main Plaza and the Tower Life building downtown – couldn’t realistically benefit from implementation of the viewshed ordinance, OHP Director Shanon Shea Miller said Tuesday. For the other two – the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Little Flower as seen from across Woodlawn Lake and the historic Hays Street Bridge in the East Side – new zoning rules and design guidelines would instead be the right tool to guard against development, Miller said.
“Viewshed is still a tool in the toolshed,” Miller told Council members at the Arts, Culture, and Heritage Committee meeting Tuesday. “But the viewshed [ordinance] is not the best tool for either of those sites.”
On Thursday, City Council is likely to approve a measure that will start the process of developing a zoning overlay district for Woodlawn Park that would limit the height of new buildings and preserve views of the basilica as seen from across Woodlawn Lake. The five-member committee was supportive of that, though Councilman Cruz Shaw (D2) was absent from the vote.
The Woodlawn Park process was prioritized at the request of Councilwoman Ana Sandoval (D7), whose district includes the park, in light of the park’s 100th anniversary this year. Sandoval does not sit on the committee and did not attend the meeting.
“I think this is a smart approach,” said Councilman Roberto Treviño (D1). “[Zoning] overlay is going to be a good fit.”
Miller said the City will convene other stakeholders for a conversation about how best to protect Hays Street Bridge and similar cultural sites, but any new rules would not apply to the five-story apartment complex already approved for the adjacent vacant lot.
It’s possible, she told the Rivard Report, that process could involve adjusting the City’s Downtown Design Guide to take into consideration building heights around historic or cultural sites.
“We will be, over the next several months, looking at updates to the Downtown Design Guide,” she said, “so we think that it might be the most appropriate way to handle Hays Street Bridge.”
City Council was slated to consider the sites for viewshed protection this summer, but a technical advisory committee ultimately agreed with City staff that it couldn’t apply as expected, Miller said.
“You came in gangbusters with a really big idea and upset a lot of folks and you came back, started a listening tour … and you came back [to the committee] with something that was the right fit,” said Councilman Greg Brockhouse (D6).
The San Fernando Cathedral is surrounded by land that is already developed save for one plot that will be part of the University of Texas at San Antonio’s expanded downtown campus. A 40-story building would have to be built there to interfere with views of the cathedral, Miller said, and that’s highly unlikely under the university’s plans.
The advisory committee found that no one could agree on which view should be protected for the Tower Life building, she said. “There’s just no consensus in the community.”
Graciela Sánchez, executive director of the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center, said she was frustrated that the proposals never made it to a Council vote and that there’s no timeline presented for the process surrounding Hays Street Bridge.
“We have no power,” she said. “We waited forever … then [City staff] just made a decision [to drop it].”
Esperanza is associated with the Hays Street Bridge Restoration Group, which is awaiting a Texas Supreme Court decision on a case related to the City’s sale of the land. Sánchez said if the court rules in favor of the group, that could open the door to stopping the apartment complex. The City’s attorneys and others have said that door is firmly closed.
To my knowledge the first Alamo Viewshed Ordinance was passed sometime around 2000. I believe many should be engaged in changes in addition to whomever are mentioned as Urbnn Planners and Developers. Was this by committee, staff, HCRC or a unilateral decision?
The ordinance was minimal, and likely needs to be kept with additional language added for further protection.
Again our illustrious City Council puts the interests of developers over the people.
The Council should be re-named to the Gentrification
Council.
City caves in to developers AGAIN.
Great news! The logic, brought out in the article, echoes what I was understanding when different players described the effort. The view either didn’t need protecting or how can anyone decide what single view was “the one” to protect. The Austin example for the Capital view was up to over 30 view sheds to protect it. The OHP presentation noted that only a few view sheds would be done because of their high cost connected to the level of engineering documentation involved. Nothing was making sense. So glad that logic prevailed.
Despite the good news of no view shed regulation, I still feel like views are important. I talking about anyone’s views around the city of iconic structures like the Hemisfair Tower/fireworks, Pioneer Mill castle, Tower Life building or the all inclusive view of the city skyline as examples. Anyone owning property with views like these would lose value if say a hotel were built that changed their view from the skyline to a neighbors window/patio. When the article noted that “New zoning rules and design guidelines would instead be the right tool to guard against development”, I could only hope that the rules and guidelines could be used by anyone/any community to defend their right to the value of existing views against the added benefits to the community from any new development. The next Hays Street Bridge saga is inevitable, and will lean to developers, if existing property owners don’
It’s a mistake to think of viewshed protections as protecting the views for particular private properties, as then every little home and every little castle could then absurdly seek blanket suppression of any development on the horizon. Austin’s 30 capitol view corridors are instructive, for they instead protect narrowly defined sightline corridors between the capitol and public sites, typically between civic landmarks, city parks, and terminating street vistas. The aim is not protect the view of the capitol dome from any random location, but to protect meaningful civic or public sightlines, such as from the capitol dome to the UT mall. This helps decide which view is “‘the one’ to protect”: the view from my house or my popular bus stop intersection to the state capitol are not as publically significant as the view of the state capitol from the French Legation state historical site. This focused use with a public good standard also helps avoid the bottomless pit of process clashes of My-Perceived-Property-Rights versus Your-Real-Property-Rights over what can be seen on the far horizon line.
It’s also a mistake to misuse viewshed protections, already themselves a legal curtailing of the private property rights of others, as a manipulative means to somehow short-circuit development. Viewshed protections, as the name implies, should only be used with the intent to actually protect viewsheds. Often this will indeed dovetail with blocking development in effect, but it is cynical to think of this as a battle axe in some sort of War on Developers such that in order to effect a block on development we need to suddenly concoct a viewshed.
Personally, I think not pursuing the proposed viewshed protections are a mistake. While I understand that historical civic landmark San Fernando Cathedral is already effectively protected by the historically prserved civic buildings around it, I would rather that protection be formally codified both as a preemptive protection and as a experience guideline for other viewsheds. The historical landmark Tower Life Building would benefit from narrow corridors from scenic public viewing locations, particularly downriver along the San Antonio River and its bridges. The historical landmark Basilica of the National Shrine of the Little Flower would have benefitted from the type of radial viewshed currently applied to the World Heritage Site missions. The historically preserved Hays Street Bridge I’m more ambivalent about, for a building moratorium on anything within a 360° viewing arc to or from the bridge over a rail zone, which had been suggested in that controversy, is absurd, while crafting a blanket viewshed in order to battle gentrification by proxy is a misuse of the design tool. However, protecting a viewing angle of downtown from the bridge deck, a popular civic space, can and should be realistically done.
Sad that Councman Shaw just happens to be absent on a crucial vote in his district. How very spinless.