The City of San Antonio plans to compete for a piece of $4 billion in federal funding aimed at reconnecting historically disadvantaged communities that have been divided by highways or other transportation facilities.
If successful, the money would be used to craft and execute a plan to “overcome the barriers created by Interstate 37,” according to a presentation from the city.
“We are working on submitting a planning grant that will address one of the issues we’ve [talked] about for years, and that is how we can better connect downtown to the East Side,” Assistant City Manager Lori Houston told the City Council’s Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Tuesday.
The city’s first ask is for a roughly $3 million grant to craft a plan to reconnect the neighborhood to the rest of downtown, including a $500,000 budget for public input. That process would yield a conceptual design that the city could seek additional funding for from the Reconnecting Communities and Neighborhoods grant program.
“I want to stress that we are in the very early stages,” Houston said. “We felt that we better apply now, before we lose the opportunity for construction dollars in the future.”
East Side neighborhoods like Dignowity Hill and Denver Heights were first split from the rest of downtown when train tracks were put in at the turn of the century.
Despite significant pushback from residents, the addition of I-37 in 1978 further separated the area from the rest of the city and made traveling between the East Side and downtown on foot both dangerous and onerous.
“I’m extremely excited,” Councilman Jalen McKee-Rodriguez (D2) said of the decision to pursue the federal funding. “This community wants investment, and they want the city to use all avenues that we possibly can to secure funding and to show a clear intention to improve the lives of those who live on the East Side.”
Though city leaders have long sought such solutions, the availability of federal funding to begin the process is relatively new under the Biden Administration.
The U.S. Department of Transportation is combining funding from the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act and the 2023 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law into a single application process called the Reconnecting Communities and Neighborhoods grant program, which will be doled out between 2022 and 2026.
That program funds are intended for “removing, retrofitting or mitigating highways or other transportation facilities that create barriers to community connectivity.” It’s geared specifically toward improving access to jobs, education, health care and food in historically disadvantaged communities, according to the U.S.Department of Transportation.
“This country, by design in many ways, with malintent or benign neglect, has divided communities,” White House Senior Advisor and Infrastructure Coordinator Mitch Landrieu said in an interview at the Texas Tribune Festival Friday. “Now we’re actually trying to reverse that, so there’s a substantial amount of money” going to cities for projects that reconnect communities.
Landrieu pointed to a project in Denver as an example of how it can work. In that case, part of Interstate 70 was removed and buried underground, then covered with a soccer field and other amenities for the public.
“It was one community that was separated by this highway,” Landrieu said. “Now the community has been reconnected … because they don’t get killed when they’re walking across the street.”
San Antonio leaders have been working closely with the Biden administration on a host of infrastructure projects. Last year Landrieu publicly praised the city for its work identifying projects for the administration’s historic infrastructure investments.
But it’s unclear what options might be on the table for I-37, and Houston’s presentation to the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee provided few details.
That presentation came after a Texas Department of Transportation official laid out plans for billions of dollars in new double-decker highways in the San Antonio region.
The city’s presentation on the reconnecting the Eastside said leaders were seeking letters of support for the idea from groups like local chambers of commerce.
For McKee-Rodriguez’s part, he cautioned against doing further damage in vulnerable communities on the East Side that have already experienced “significant gentrification,” and said a variety of public input will be essential to delivering on the grant program’s goals.
“I hope that when we put together the stakeholder committee, if and when the funding is allocated, it’s not lopsided in favor of folk who stand to profit,” McKee-Rodriguez said. “I would much rather see a larger stakeholder group that consists of neighborhood leaders and community residents who have been there for decades.”
