San Antonio River Improvements Project

Urbanization project to transform waterway

mysanantonio.com Web Posted: 08/06/2007 11:33 AM CDT

Mike Greenberg
Express-News Senior Critic

Before the great yellow beasts scrape away the banks, and the stonemasons and landscapers manicure them, there's still a short time to glimpse what little remains, within the city limits, of the San Antonio River in its near-natural state.

From a few bridges north of downtown — Grayson Street, Newell, Jones Avenue — you can peer down into the narrow stream, nearly hidden by overhanging anaqua, huisache, pecans and oaks, tall grasses and water lilies. Here the river and its banks are quiet, dark and lush — and still, but for the occasional flight of an egret or night heron.

A more intimate acquaintance with this primeval beauty is reserved to the intrepid, or the desperate: There are signs, here and there, of temporary habitation.

Once the Urban Segment of the Museum Reach of the San Antonio River Improvements Project is completed in about two years, this stretch of the river will be accessible to all by foot, wheelchair and tourist barge.

But will it still be the river?

To a degree, the question is pointless. Even this part of the river, nearly the last (within the city) that hasn't been domesticated by flood-control measures or bordering parklands, long ago lost the natural context that contributes to a river's life and the changeability that is every living river's hallmark. Asphalt streets and parking lots, concrete retaining walls and metal industrial buildings perch atop the steep banks, sometimes within 40 feet of the water's edge.

The river and its neighborhood have been two separate systems, unrelated except by their mutual antagonism.

The improvement project resolves the conflict in the urban system's favor — the only practical and honest option.

Ford, Powell & Carson Architects and Planners led the design team for the Urban Segment, and the landscape architecture firm was the CFZ Group (Coltrane Fernandez Zavala), both of San Antonio.

The Urban Segment runs from Lexington Avenue to Josephine Street and passes behind the San Antonio Museum of Art. This is the third phase of a long-term project to transform the river into a continuous park corridor all the way from Hildebrand Avenue on the north to Mission Espada on the south.

(The proposed Park Segment of the Museum Reach, from Josephine Street through Brackenridge Park to Hildebrand, slightly downstream of the river's nominal source at the Blue Hole, is still in its planning phase and has not been funded.)

The design for the Urban Segment retains the general contours of the natural channel but widens and stabilizes it. The irregular edges and the most abrupt meanders are smoothed into soft curves.

Many existing trees near the top of the banks are being retained, where space allows. In a few places a narrow strip of understory — the low vegetation below the tree canopy — is also being left undisturbed.

Most of the plant life will be new.

The landscape plan shows a considerable number of bald cypresses, one of the most characteristic native riverbank trees in this area, as a kind of memento of the long-vanished natural river. Mountain laurels and crape myrtles, native to Texas but more typical of dry areas than of riverbanks, make frequent appearances. Naturalized aliens include California fan palms.

A profusion of low-lying plant materials, mostly segregated from each other, evokes the park and garden rather than the natural river bank. There are fields of honeysuckle, lantana, jasmine, liriope and dwarf Indian hawthorne, and patches of turf grass as well.

The hardscape features build on the romantic, picturesque look established on the original River Walk by its designer, Robert H.H. Hugman.

The curvaceous new walkways are generally set into the sloping banks several feet above the water but drop down to meet barge docks.

Each of the many entrances from the street has its own distinctive design for stairways and ramps — the latter are all carefully integrated with the landscaping so they never seem to be afterthoughts.

Several streets dead-end at the river, and some of these sites will turn into pocket parks with ramps or stairs. At Avenue A, across the river from the art museum, a ramp snakes downward through an arrangement of palms to an artificial marsh planted with an assortment of water lilies.

Another artificial marsh is designed into the east bank downstream of Jones Avenue. Both marshes could be considered miniature versions of the Sunken Garden in BrackenridgePark.

Pedestrians along the river will experience a varied rhythm of visually calm and eventful stretches.

Among the major features, starting at the downstream end:

• Hugman Dam. Slightly upstream from Lexington Avenue and the terminus of the original River Walk, Hugman created a low, picturesque stone dam, with a studiedly casual arrangement of boulders along the spillway. A portion of that dam will be cut out, equalizing the water level on both sides, to allow barge traffic to pass. The material that's removed will be reused on the site.
  
  
• Lock and dam. The dam just north of Brooklyn Avenue will raise the water level 8.5 feet. A pair of locks, with a footbridge passing above them, will allow barges to ply the river as far upstream as a turning basin near Grayson Street.
  
  
• Roy Smith Street Bridge. When the Lone Star Brewery was transformed into the San Antonio Museum of Art, a steel truss bridge connecting the upper levels of the structure's two towers was removed. That bridge, still intact and sound, will be put to use again as a footbridge crossing the river at the dead end of Roy Smith Street, just downstream of the river's dark passage under I-35.
  
  
• Camden Street park and grotto. For those who brave that passage on the west bank, a reward comes in the form of an artificial grotto, with the walkway cutting behind the dripping water. Opposite the grotto, a tiny triangle of land at the intersection of Camden and Newell Streets becomes a pocket park with an entry to the river. A narrow strip of land east of Camden Street becomes a safe harbor that can keep three barges out of harm's way during floods.
  
  
• Amphitheater. The river attains a big climax behind the Pearl Brewery redevelopment. A performance stage will be set within the waterway, and terraced seating will be provided on the Pearl property.

The waterway widens to create an irregular turning basin for barges just upstream of the stage.

The navigable stream ends at a naturalistic stone dam inspired by the Hugman Dam but given a few extra shots of drama. The dam, which raises the upstream water level about three feet, is punctuated by little islands, to be planted with palm sedge and bald cypress trees, and the water flowing over it is to be directed into little cascades. The whole ensemble can be viewed from a walkway crossing the river just upstream of the dam

Aptly, given the site, the dam recalls Pearl Beer's old advertising art touting the brewer's artesian water "from the country of 1100 springs."

The last block of the redesign, between Grayson and Josephine streets, is fairly basic. The walkways end at the flood-control tunnel inlet park on Josephine.

Although much work remains to be done on the design of the proposed Park Segment, a couple of ideas are worth mentioning here.

The most incongruous intrusion in Brackenridge Park is the Catalpa Drainage, a wide, straight, concrete-lined ditch that runs behind Lions Field. Preliminary concept drawings show the transformation of that channel into a naturalistic stream connecting a series of small lakes.

Where the river meanders sharply just upstream of the Witte Museum, Witte president Marise McDermott hopes that the redesign will restore an original wetland as a complement to the museum's proposed Center for Rivers and Aquifers.

Along the Urban Segment, the scale and intensive design of the new entry features, and their sheer number, anticipate the emerging shift of nearby land uses from predominantly industrial and commercial to mixed use with a strong residential component.

The Pearl Brewery redevelopment, already well under way, is one example. Several other projects, on a smaller but still significant scale, are being planned. The downstream half of the Urban Segment passes through the River North district, recently designated a tax-increment reinvestment zone by the City Council.

Thus the whole area is poised to become very urban indeed, with a mix of apartments, retail, hotels and offices putting a lot more pedestrian activity on the streets.

The Urban Segment is well designed to support that urban vitality and carry it down to river level.

There is much to be said, of course, for the semi-natural river that will be lost, but there is also much to be said for civilized urbanity.

mgreenberg@express-news.net | Express-News publish date Aug. 5, 2007