Many folks interested in San Antonio’s downtown development are familiar by now with the rapid changes happening across the Eastside – housing prices on the rise, a new business popping up every week, and shifting demographics. That process of neighborhood change is a complex rearrangement of community structure, one that yields winners and losers.
The question of how to make the transition as inclusive as possible is a complicated one that the Rivard Report explored last year in the special feature Place Changing: Dignowity Hill.
San Antonio Credit Union (SACU) is one business taking an enlightened approach toward its expansion into the near-Eastside. Working with community planners Concordia out of New Orleans, SACU has developed a community co-design process that engages neighborhood residents early and often in conversation about the role of a financial institution in their community.
The process ensures that new branch locations are sensitive to local issues and appropriately tailored to their context. A prototype of the co-design process wrapped up in Southtown earlier this year.
On Wednesday, August 31 from 5:30-8 p.m., SACU will host a free community dinner to begin a public conversation about their new branch location on the Eastside.
The currently vacant Embassy Church International at 1731 E Houston Street will have free food and drink and a community discussion led by Concordia. The dinner will provide Eastside residents a rare peek inside one the area’s many soon-to-be-activated vacant buildings.
Click here to RSVP before the free dinner fills up.
