Opposition from neighbors and nearby businesses on El Mio Drive prompted a local gun shop to roll back its request to rename the street as Nagel’s Crossing.
Now, the gun shop seeks a memorial designation on El Mio Drive instead.
The city’s development services department on Wednesday opened a planned community meeting by announcing that businesses and neighbors on El Mio drive would no longer have to change their addresses if the gun shop’s request for the designation is approved by City Council on Oct. 5 or Oct. 12.
The only change, the city said, would be the addition of two brown signs that say Bobby Nagel Memorial Drive on the El Mio street signs.
“Originally it was submitted as a street name change to change El Mio Drive to Nagel’s Crossing,” said Clayton Wallace, planning coordinator for the city’s development services department during the meeting. “At this point, with the opposition that’s been received, we are — in conjunction with Nagel’s — pivoting to a memorial designation for this street.”
“Essentially … this is going to be an overlay on top of the existing El Mio street name that won’t impact the day-to-day business of people on the street. It’s just going to be the symbolic, memorial aspect,” Wallace said.
About 15 people attended the meeting, including three business owners, nearby business employees and three people representing Nagel’s Gun Shop, including the store’s general manager, Bobby Nagel, Jr.
After the meeting, attendees had questions about the memorial designation.
“With the high level of crime in that area, I don’t know why we’re going to memorialize a gun shop,” said Kayla Mariotti, who works on El Mio Drive.
“It holds greater weight than just changing a street name, because you’re memorializing someone that owns a gun shop in an area where at 3 a.m., 4 a.m., we hear gunshots. It’s kind of bizarre, and you’re in a residential area,” she said, adding that there are schools nearby.
The gun shop’s shift to seeking memorial designation instead of a street name change won’t change or interrupt the approval process it is going through, since the processes are the same.
The item will go to planning commission on Wednesday, and the commission will present a recommendation to City Council on Oct. 5 as planned.
At the meeting, community members asked about the importance of the name, and why the shop chose El Mio and not Recoleta Road on the other side of the store.
“They’re still not telling us why we should accept this. The name Nagel’s stirs up controversy for us because we tell customers they can’t park there,” said Pony Alvarado, who works on El Mio Drive. “Now that I see there’s an opportunity to memorialize someone, who’s to say we don’t have someone?”
Melissa Ramirez, assistant director for the city’s development services department, stood up and clarified that any property owner has the ability to submit an application that will go through the normal process.
“The reason why would definitely come from the applicant,” she said.
“Again, we didn’t select it. This is the application that was submitted by Nagel’s for the street. We’re just processing it,” Wallace said.
The three people from Nagel’s Gun Shop at at the back of the room and remained silent until Wallace publicly asked if they’d like to address questions the community had.
A person from Nagel’s Gun Shop who did not want to give his name to the San Antonio Report said the store was not aware the way the original request would affect the community.
In recent days, business owners on El Mio Drive including the Bang Bang Bar, local paint store EAH San Antonio, Inc. and El Mio Townhomes said they would need to update payroll information to banks and re-register for state permits like liquor and electricity licenses if the street name change was approved.
Now that Nagel’s was aware of those stated challenges, the representative said the gun shop had changed its request to the memorial designation.
“We didn’t know that going into it. We tried to reach out to people to get how it would affect them and that was not a specific reason we were given early on,” they said. “If you look at our business, that is the main cross street, and the owner of the shop Bobby Nagel, always, his location he parked was on that street. The majority of our traffic from that intersection and often turn onto El Mio and turn into the shop.”
They added the business has operated on San Pedro successfully for 80 years.
“That’s enough of a reason for someone to be memorialized. That’s 80 years of taxes paid, 80 years of helping the community grow, 80 years of that street becoming more important as the years [pass],” they said.
“Our role as [city] staff, when we receive an application, is to make sure it goes through the necessary process,” Wallace said. “At the end of the day, this decision is going to be made by City Council. … That’s ultimately going to be up to them.”
