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Vision of Brownsville's Cultural District Questioned: Area Leader Says Development Needs Cohesive Architecture, Landscaping

Posted on: Sunday, 18 June 2006, 09:00 CDT

By The Brownsville Herald, Texas

Jun. 18--A corner detail shop and car lot have raised questions about how far Brownsville's arts-tourism corridor should go to control what visitors see.

Although the eight-year-old Mitte Cultural District encompasses the future Brownsville Museum of Fine Art, Gladys Porter Zoo, Dean Porter Park, Cameron County Courthouse, the Historic Brownsville Museum, the Old City Cemetery and Washington Park, what's nearby doubtless will influence what tourists think of Brownsville.

The zoo is the city's premier tourist attraction, drawing some 400,000 people annually.

But, the City Commission in March approved property owner Mike De Los Santos' request for a zoning change to allow him to sell cars and lease space for a car-detail business at Seventh and Ringgold streets. The detail shop was grandfathered; the car lot was not.

Teenagers hand washing cars would be a typical sight in other parts of town, but the cultural district's founders worry such activity is out of sync with the neighborhood's changing image.

"The vision is it comes together with cohesive architecture and cohesive landscaping ... where most of the tourist attractions in the city are located," said Reba Cardenas-McNair, president of the cultural district board of directors.

During the March commission meeting, City Commissioner Ricardo Longoria Jr. suggested cultural district officials were trying to control what happens in the area.

Reached later, Longoria reiterated his complaints.

"The people from the Mitte Cultural District want to control what goes around the area. There has to be a boundary," he said, calling the property owner and tenant hard-working people who simply wanted to make a living.

Longoria said the cultural arts district committee did a good job but had overstepped its authority.

"If you visit the (Brownsville Museum of Fine Arts), you won't even see that detail shop. You won't even see that car lot," he said.

Cardenas-McNair chuckled when asked if she and others were trying to control development.

"Well, obviously, we don't control it," she said, referring to the adverse zoning decision.

Cardenas-McNair instead explained her vision for the area and hope that businesses would cooperate.

"It makes a place where, literally, a person could spend not just a day but a couple of days," she said, noting the tens of millions of dollars the city, county and federal government have spent in the area in recent years.

"There's been a lot of improvements and a lot of investments, and what we're hoping is future investment in the area adopts a cohesive look with cohesive landscaping," she said.

The capstone of the district has been the $14-million renovation of the former Ringgold Park, completed last year. Now called Dean Porter Park, it is the jewel of the city's park system.

In addition to the 24.5-acre park's overhaul, Sam's Pool and the Camille Lightner Playhouse received facelifts, and the Children's Museum of Brownsville and Costumes of the Americas Museum opened in a new building along the resaca.

Larry Brown helped initiate the Historic Battlefield Trail and Southern Pacific Linear Park while he was the city's planning director. Now director of Brownsville/South Padre Island International Airport, he stays involved with the nine-mile project, which ends in front of the Reynaldo G. Garza and Filemon B. Vela United States Courthouse. It should be completed in about 15 months.

The linear park will include two-tiered landscaping and amphitheater near the federal courthouse, where there will be a monument with the names of veterans who were killed in action.

Property owners in and near the cultural district and the hike and bike trail soon could be sitting on some of the city's hottest land.

"It's my position that there will be new private sector investment there that will contribute the whole atmosphere," Brown said, careful not to name interested investors.

The city has easements on the sides of where railroad tracks once stood, but Brown predicted businesses, such as Jackson Feed & Seed, owned by Brownville Public Utilities Board Director Oscar Garcia, the Quonset hut-style Gutierrez Warehouse, owned by Dan Gutierrez, and the Sombrero Fest building would face pressure to sell.

"What you're going to see is a demand for a change in use," Brown said.

Closer to the federal courthouse is a doctor-owned office building that lawyers currently occupy.

The Texas Department of Transportation also is working to streamline access to the corridor.

TxDOT Area Engineer Arnold Cortez said crews were combining Sixth and Seventh streets into one intersection that would meet at the to-be-built McDavitt Street overpass.

He predicted the merger would be finished in eight to 12 months.

"Consolidating it to one location works out a lot better," he said of the many intersections that line the frontage road.

Sixth and Seventh streets are zoned for offices and restaurants.

On one side is the zoo; on the other is the Buena Vida neighborhood. Further up are homes, businesses and the Brownsville Police Department.

A 2003 report on Buena Vida from the University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College's Cross Border Center for Regional Development called the area "a transitional neighborhood" and an "incubator" in which newly arrived immigrants established a foothold.

In a block-by-block survey, researchers found the two main types of businesses there were service-oriented -- largely law related and automotive related.

Things appear to have changed little since 2003, but De Los Santos recalls growing up when Sixth and Seventh streets were arteries to downtown, and Buena Vida was more prosperous.

As such, De Los Santos said he was doing his part to revitalize the neighborhood and didn't understand the fracas over the car lot and car-detail businesses.

After all, he noted, he had operated a similar business on the corner for more than a decade. He currently has a car lot in North Brownsville.

"I hope we can encourage other businesses," he said.

rownsvilleherald.com

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Brownsville Herald, Texas

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

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OsakaHerc:2471,

Source: The Brownsville Herald

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