 I'm Anissa Schell, I'm the Director of Zoning and Planning for District 1, I wanted to introduce myself and welcome everybody to our town hall for the Sunken Gardens Theater bond proposal. I have a couple of ground rules for everybody. The number one rule is to please keep your microphone muted when you are not speaking. We also ask that you please keep your questions on topic and concise to please be respectful of everyone on the call until there's time to speak. We have over 100 people signed in so far and I see more are joining so if everyone could just please stay focused that will help us get to everybody who has questions and concerns. In addition I want to make sure everyone is aware we are recording this meeting and we will be sharing the recording so please be aware of that. I want Carson Maldonado to please introduce herself. She's going to help me with capturing questions in the chat and then I will have everyone else introduce themselves as we go. Hi everybody I'm Carson Maldonado, I am the Director of Communications for District 1. I'll be monitoring the chat looking for questions and trying to help Anissa out through this process so I look forward to a good discussion. Thank you. I wanted to give each of our Council members that are here a minute or two to say a few words. So let's start with District 1 Councilman. Good evening everyone thanks for participating it's exciting to see so many people logging on right now and the purpose of this town hall is to give you all an opportunity to voice any of your concerns. We've heard a lot of concerns about this proposed sunken gardens theater project and we wanted to give you all an opportunity to share those concerns and the individuals for we wanted to give an opportunity to the individuals for proposing this project to be able to address those concerns and see if they could alleviate them and try and find out what is the appropriate project here that you know can best serve our community and so I'm glad that you all are here today. You know we'll talk more about the public input process soon but I'll hand it over to District 2 Councilman Jalen McKee Rodriguez. Thank you. Hello everybody I am so impressed by the burnout. I'll start by saying thank you so much to the district one of us for putting this all together getting the word I also want to thank you to all of the concerns and community members throughout the city who you know I was at the bond meetings and I saw you all come out full force and I've gotten your emails and the calls and the messages on all the social media so I just want to I just want you to know that I've heard you and I appreciate your participation and not democracy this decision-making process as a whole I think so often we've heard or that decisions are already made and I want this proof that you know we don't play balls like this and you know how people do problems because decisions are made. I think this is a real opportunity to hear the community members also get answers and questions and demands of the developer and of the applicant and these are public dollars this is five million dollars and public dollars that we're talking about and so I wanted to be something when we're voting and we're saying I'm excited about all the project list or I'm excited about most or I believe that you know projects on this list and voting on are going to better my community and so what I want us to get to today is an understanding of what would it take for this development for something garden theater to meet that qualification what would it take for people to say I'm support and so think of it not just I don't think anyone here wants things to stay exactly we don't expect no development no renovations to ever happen but we also don't expect to be given renderings and just assume that those are the evidence that we have to to I think we can accept change um please with with good in good faith you all again for having me thank you um I also want to introduce um Rossi uh Hussini from the public works department um Rossi is going to tell us a little bit about the bond process and what public input looks like um for bond projects not just this project but how um that works overall Rossi yeah thank you any sign good evening everyone I am Rossi Hussini director city engineer I have involved on a development and implementation of many for the last three decades over three decades I have been yes and Antonio I will be providing you what we have done so far and what we are going to do really from here on until May 7th when bond passes and then you become something and have community meeting and get really input from another community on all of the project not just on regarding the project and so on back to you I think sir thank you um just so everyone knows I'm trying to find the setting to mute it when people join the meeting I know that's causing some audio problems for people um please be with us as we look for that setting and um next I would like to ask the folks from the Breckenridge Conservancy to present their project proposal I know there's a lot of questions and so I ask you guys to please remain patient through this presentation so that um perhaps some of your questions will be answered by it and then if not we will get to those after the presentation thank you well good evening my name is Suzanne Scott can you hear me okay yes yes okay thank you um my name is Suzanne Scott and I am a member of the board of the Breckenridge Park Conservancy several board members that are joining us today that will be available to answer questions after our presentation thank you so much to Councilman Bravo and McKee Rodriguez for hosting this town hall tonight we really appreciate the opportunity to share the concept plans for the restoration enhancement of the sunken garden theater as part of a comprehensive effort really to improve the natural historical and cultural resources at Breckenridge Park but before sharing the presentation on the concepts for the sunken garden theater just wanted to take a couple of minutes to give a little bit of background on how we got here today the Breckenridge Park Conservancy was created in 2009 through a cooperative uh cooperative management agreement with the City of San Antonio to raise funds to benefit the park develop programming and support the evolution of plans and projects with our partners and generally to build community support for the well-being of the park over the years the Conservancy has um hosted programs and has been working with the City of San Antonio to complete capital improvement projects within the park the Conservancy cooperated with the city and the development of the city's master plan for Breckenridge Park in 2017 and that master plan involved a lot of stakeholders and came up with specific goals for the park and two of those specifically that are really related to the efforts that we're moving forward as part of the bond are improving water quality and restoring the natural features of the park and then also restoring and preserving cultural and historical features we took that master plan and then worked with the City of San Antonio to develop a cultural landscape report that kind of dug deeper into all the natural and cultural resources of the park and identified kind of the next steps we would need to go through to develop the natural and cultural aspects of the park and in both the master plan and the cultural landscape report the sunken garden theater was identified as a very important opportunity to enhance the use and enjoyment of the park's resources and to restore a very important cultural feature of the park in addition y'all may already be aware that this the Breckenridge Park Conservancy worked with the San Antonio River Authority and Bear County to move forward with the Bear County River Creek program which is was approved by Bear County as part of their budget process that's allocating more than $27 million to projects to improve water quality restore the river's ecosystem and add connection from the park to the blue hole that is known as the Spirit Beach all those projects have been working collaboratively with the City of San Antonio and the Breckenridge Park Conservancy. Most recently through the City bond process there are two funding proposals supporting park improvements including $2.5 million for the general park improvements and $5 million for the renovation of the sunken garden theater which is what we're here tonight to talk about. As part of that project in 2019 after the completion of the cultural landscape report the the City of San Antonio Parks and Recreation Department entered into an agreement with the Breckenridge Park Conservancy to complete a feasibility study on the sunken garden theater this feasibility study was really a scope that was comprehensive to look at multiple components including design operation management cost estimates all these components that you're going to be seeing just in a couple of minutes in this report today that was submitted to the City of San Antonio in August of 2020 and there were several presentations made of these results we did make a preliminary presentation to the River Road Neighborhood Association the Conservation Society the San Antonio Parks Foundation and the Zule Foundation and in preparation for the bond process the Breckenridge Park Conservancy did present the project publicly in in the late summer of 2021 for consideration for bond funding but I want to stress to you that the project design and operational plans and costs that you will see are conceptual and will benefit greatly from much more public engagement as these plans move forward it is our hope that the community will embrace the value of restoring and improving this historic venue at the sunken garden theater just with all the projects as Raju just mentioned all the projects in the bond once the funding is approved by the voters the real work to develop that project begins we are eager to work with the community and to collaborate with various stakeholders to advance these efforts to develop a place for enjoyment and celebration for all sanentomians and have another quality destination within Breckenridge Park I think together we can achieve a vision for the sunken garden theater that that stakeholders can embrace and develop together when the Breckenridge Park Conservancy was asked to conduct the feasibility study we did contract with an expert in the design and operation of entertainment venues and that but we also wanted someone that had an appreciation for the uniqueness of the sunken garden theater and its history and significance in the San Antonio cultural heritage we engaged Kurt Feldman who you will see on the presentation in just a couple of minutes he has dedicated his life to work on live entertainment venues for over 40 years he's built his career in and working his way up through every job in the business he was just an independent consultant that's helped us on this project he is not the developer or the operator those decisions have not been made he has worked on other beliefs here in San Antonio including the majestic and the Charlene McCombs empire theater so he does have experience from top to bottom on understanding how to develop these line live venue facilities so we have a video that we would like to be sharing with you as part of the presentation this evening I just wanted to start with giving you a little bit of background of how we got here today and we look forward to your feedback and engaging in more public input as we move forward with this project so I believe we have a video to show there's no sound on the video right now while they're addressing the sound I want to go ahead and let people know who've been asking about the public input process to date and so I wanted to let everyone know that we selected each council district selected three one committee members for the park community bond committee meetings and they had four meetings one on november 9th the 16th december 7th and december 14th and two of those meetings were dedicated to public input in addition to that our this our city council district one office hosted a a town hall or roundtable with our bond committee appointees so that they could hear directly from you all about any ideas or concerns that you had for projects so that they could carry your voice forward into the committee meetings so we our office provided the sunken garden theater bond proposal presentation to the river road neighborhood association on november 15th and we also offered to a presentation for the association on the proposal any any letters that we received from you all during the bond committee process for with the with the um citizen committee members we forwarded any of those emails from you to the committee members and what was originally proposed I guess asked for by the the developers who were proposing this project was 25 million dollars on october 13th city staff made a recommendation of 20 million dollars for this 1.2 billion dollar bond uh then after some input a revised staff recommendation was set at 10 million dollars and when it went to the citizens bond committee process the citizens bond committee members reduced that to five million dollars which is where the current uh suggestion is at this point so i just wanted to share that with you all while we're trying to figure out the sound thank you doris um do you want to give it another try i know we did do a test around earlier i apologize for the inconvenience but they did do a test around and it worked no problem let's just try it again and if not maybe somebody from your team could narrate yeah we could do that necessary people are eager to get to the q and a portion i completely understand i apologize doris can you bring up the the presentation please i can narrate this is kirk install it um doris do you have the link to share and then select the screen disappeared off my computer i'm looking for it i apologize kirk do you have the link can you just let me try let me try i'm i'm going to try to share just share please we just got to get going here i want to be respectful of the time of these people that have joined us this evening is that showing it's showing yes just no sound it's part of the cold there is fabric of san Antonio it has been here since 1930 and uh almost 92 years now and there have been generations of san Antonio that have uh grown up coming to uh listen to concerts uh at the southern garden area of my own father uh went to the very first performance from the san Antonio Symphony on june 12 1939 when he was 14 years old that was held here and uh he came here to see that and uh it is a dream of mine to be able to come to the first concert at a newly renovated southern garden theater this is such a a historical theater and an essential part of the renovation is going to be to preserve uh most historical features like these columns behind me and integrate them into a new state of the art performing arts venue we still feel like like this park is the gathering place for the entire community that it is that it is fitting that a venue of this quality in Bracken Ridge for the most significant cultural park in the United States and in order to preserve this historic venue for future generations investment has to be made and the money that it's spent to renovate this theater is going to pay dividends for more generations hello my name is Kirk Feldman president and CEO of kbf and associates the following video is going to give you some information related to the redevelopment plans for the sunken garden theater in san Antonio within the mission of the bracken rich park conservancy is the redevelopment of the sunken garden theater the venue will become a world-class outdoor performance theater the historically sensitive design first class amenities for artists and patrons and welcoming to the very best performing talents in the world the theater will attract visitors and san antonians alike nourishing souls with the vibrancy and fun of great music in a safe and beautiful environment the venue is centrally located in the heart of our city accessible to all the theater is located in bracken rich park bordered by alamos stadium to the northwest the japanese tea garden to the northeast and the park itself to the southeast and southwest the venue occupies approximately three acres in the 349 acre park the current conditions are substandard leaving the venue unusable to most professional touring attractions combined in 2018 and 2019 180 touring productions bypass san antonio for the lack of a proper facility besides the theater has suffered from nominal local usage substandard facilities inadequate staging and power outdated dressing room facilities temporary restroom and concessions facilities and non-compliance with ada codes in support of the revitalization efforts the conservancy commissioned a number of supporting studies affirming the need for a mid-sized venue self-sustaining operations ample parking traffic plans which can protect nearby neighborhood interests the cost of construction and substantial economic impact the proposed revitalization seeks to restore and renovate the sunken garden theater into a state-of-the-art outdoor theater the venue will feature 7,000 seats 5,900 of which are fixed seats and 1100 long seats an enclosed stage house a mass timber roof covering most of the city 48 to 60 annual concerts 185 to 230,000 annual attendance self-sustaining venue operation and diversified program for all san antonios in examining the current inventory of venues in san antonio it is notable that our city has no mid-sized venue shown here is the gap that exists between the four largest and four smallest venues it is this positioning that makes the redevelopment of this venue so compelling because of its central location which is easily accessible from all corners of our city the sunken garden theater is well situated to host a wide variety of attractions whether it's comedy latino r&b hip hop country pop rock or world music the venue will offer something for everyone the revitalization will provide for a historically sensitive design including a beautiful expanded menu entrance two landscaped concessions closures ample permanent restrooms permanent concessions facilities specialty food and beverage kiosks fixed seating undercover elevator and ramp access to the lawn a closed stage house enlarged and improved dressing room in a loading dock with bus parking an expanded entrance to the theater will serve to make ingress and egress safe and efficient the entrance will feature a wide entry plaza professional box office patron health screening touch free ticketing and led marquee displays the venue will further feature a mass timber room for both the seats and a closed stage house restoration of the grecian colonnade and historic structures a restored waterfall feature behind the stage a restored outbuilding house left tremendous sight lines led and writing fixtures throughout closed circuit image magnification of video screens and an 88 compliant layout additionally the design includes permanent concession stands in plazas on each side of the stage specialty food kiosks permanent restaurant facilities health and security facilities an elevated lawn seating area and the lawn concessions facilities the projected cost of construction includes 56.1 million dollars in construction costs 5.9 million dollars in soft costs for a grand total of 62 million dollars the budget includes 7.6 million in contingencies and escalation the economic impact of this project is profound the redevelopment of the something garden theater is projected to generate nearly 1000 full-time equivalent construction jobs generating an economic impact of 111 million dollars and 171 full-time equivalent jobs annually from operations with a annual impact of 18.2 million dollars combined the economic impact for the first 10 years will be 239 million dollars this includes retained local attendees no longer traveling to houston austin or dallas sea shows sound attenuation is an important area of focus for this project currently the something garden theater has no physical improvements that serve to moderate sound emissions accordingly the conservancy architect to provide a conceptual design that includes improvements known in the industry that have beneficial attributes to minimizing sound emissions the major design improvements include an enclosed concrete stage house mitigating 360 degree sound emissions currently occurring an absorptive roof over the audience seating area serving to compress and contain sound sound attenuation barrier located along alpine drive to further mitigate sound emissions absorption panels located on the rear wall of the venue designed to minimize slot back echo and a permanent sound mixing position to manage sound output successful and efficient traffic and parking management is important to both venue operations and nearby local neighborhoods a comprehensive traffic management plan consistently enforced for all theater events will be implemented in coordination with san antonio police department the park police and the san antonio zoo community input in this process is important the plan will seek to protect the river road neighborhood association via managed access and advanced notification new traffic patterns will create the primary park entry point at stadium drive away from the st. mary's and hillbrain streets intersections forced routes for ingress and egress will be utilized the citywide show by show communication campaign will direct attendees controlled and staggered parking lot loading and unloading will speed the process in conjunction with traffic management is the efficient loading of parking spaces available parking spaces within one third of a mile total 2976 additional nearby spaces including spaces served by shuttle raised this total to 5671 this is an abundant number of available spaces on average projected theater attendance will be approximately 3875 patrons 10 percent of these patrons will utilize riot sharing services such as uber attendants will vary show by show nearby here parking demand on average will be for 1200 parking spaces peak demand for parking at full capacity will be 2100 spaces the current inventory of parking spaces including the new 600 car garage located on to that and stadium drive affirms the ability to safely and efficiently park all theater patrons the redevelopment of some converted theater will be an asset to the entire community an economic generator and the source of fun-filled memories for generations to come you know this is the people's pocket it is the most popular park in the city of san Antonio and this is an amenity that sits inside of the park and we want to bring back the amenities that historically would hear the conservancy has is working hard to do sunken garden theater we're working hard on the original rock wall some of the buildings that are collapsing we're trying to make uh provide more more public space more places for people to be able to recreate so this is just part of the living back together a walk was already here we're not looking in in in bracken which park really at this particular point in time to do anything more and restore it's a fantastic park but it sees over 1.5 million visitors a year and frankly it's overlooked the conservancy wants this park to be a very very special place for all san antonnes we want to renovate all of the wonderful things we can this is one of our largest facilities and one of our largest single projects that are available so we need the support of the san antonnes to get behind this to get behind the arts to get behind the architecture of the facility itself to get behind that history we have the support of the city we're getting the support of the county that support the business interests and the conservancy and and charitable interests as well we need all of san antonnes to coalesce around this wonderful theater this park that everybody uses on a regular basis this is the people's park and we need the community to buy into the people's park to buy into its renovation buy into its rehabilitation and this is one very valuable thank you um before we get started on um taking questions and comments i just want to remind everyone of our ground rules ask that if you are using the chat for questions um that will definitely be helpful if you have comments um that can add to the discussion we want to hear that as well or see that in the chat as well um but please keep it respectful so that we can try to get to as many people as possible um i was hoping razi could take a minute and explain everybody uh what the input process looks like should the funding for this bond proposal be approved by the voters razi can you speak to that please can you hear me yes we are anticipating in february 10th which is two three weeks from now council to prove on these lists of the project is the community bond committee present to council in january 12 after the approval of course the bond will pass in first saturday hopefully first saturday in may we will do funding agreement with all of these party utsc sunken garden and others they are receiving funding from us it will be very detailed contract council will be reviewing and approving what will be the schedule of the project what's the cost of the project what's the benefit of this project for the community and council of course has to prove that one before really this project goes forward that's on sunken garden but of course we have a many projects other than really funding agreement on those projects public works department working with other department we advertise project hire consulting and after we hire a consultant we negotiate take the council to prove its recommendation after after council's approval on average project we have three meeting with communities two meeting during design development on one meeting during construction one of the reason on most of this project we have the scope very general of course during the bond process there was concern why scope is not detailed that was done in intentionally because not too many people attend those community meeting when we go to community we really hear from them what they like to really see on this project especially on park project and facility and we get very detailed input from them on very early stage of project development then we take back to them like 40 percent design 75 percent to make sure we are addressing their concern and after design is done we advertise for construction and we come after we have the contractor we come to neighborhood we call those meeting here we come introduce the contractor for community introduce the representative for the community and of course we start the project for construction and we usually provide update for community on that particular project monthly update where we are if we are especially planning to close the lane or do some other thing is going to affect the public traveling time I am I will be available until the end of this meeting to answer any question anybody may have thank you councilman run macky red rigas you have your I see that you've used the raise hand feature I want to point that out to everybody that might be the easiest way for us to take questions so if you see the setting it says reactions on my screen you can use that to raise your hand and if you have questions we would like to wait have you wait until you're called on with your hand raised and before we get to that councilman please go ahead thank you so much and you said thank you so much for the presentation I do want to address a question that was in the chat I want to make sure that we get an answer to that verbally will all the comments be able to be archived do we have anybody from it here that knows how that works well we're recording the meeting and I believe the comments will be recorded as well and I think there's also the ability for us to download it it is our intention to capture all of that okay if and when you're able to capture all of that all those questions and would not I would love if you would if you want to work with my staff to get answers to the questions and we can send responses I want to make sure that because I know there was a lot of comments a lot of feedback and so if I don't want to put that all on you so just know that my office is we want to we want to help that one of the concerns that I saw repeated multiple times there's going to be there's differing opinions on the design there's I just read a comment that someone said it's an unpopular opinion but they love the renderings I've seen other people who say it's absolutely dreadful and they want nothing no parts in that I think we're going to we're going to struggle if we focus entirely on design I think things like capacity are super those are things that you know we can have productive conversations about traffic what to do when there are especially when this is such a large large scale venue when events are happening here and they're also happening at the zoo or at the park or at anywhere else I see a lot of people want to know who's benefiting who's who's getting money under the table and I I do want it to be I want to reiterate a comment there that all the members of the Bracken-Earth Park Conservancy have no financial interest in the project I do think that it's a good idea to go over the finance the finances as they stand right now where is the where are you currently going to be getting money from in addition to this five million dollar ask and in addition to TERS just so people have an understanding of what it is that we're talking about now in a couple weeks what when council's voting it's not on the project itself it's not on the 63 million dollar budget it's on a portion of funding I also would love to hear an outline of what the what the future public engagement will look like if and when this is approved and how we can continue to address the concerns of the community I'm not sure if Frank is Frank going to be the one answering questions or Sarah or not Sarah. Jaylin I'll be glad to take the question about financial if you can communicate the proposed budget which includes a allocation for increased expenses and other unexpected is 63 million dollars five million dollars is in the bond proposal recommended by the bond committees and city and initial staff recommendation there is a proposal to allocate TERS funding to many of the city-owned facilities along Broadway from the Witte to the zoo to Bracken-Earth Park to some garden theaters and the botanical gardens that's that's a separate decision being made by the council at a later date in addition to that we're hoping that the bear county is considering a venue tax later in the year and we're hoping that we can have funds allocated by bear county in the amount of 25 million dollars which leads a shortfall of 13 million the Breckridge Park Conservancy has already raised over five million dollars for other projects associated with the park and they again have undertaken the task that they will try to raise that money the 13 million dollars and we'll also ask for things like consideration for naming rights if someone wants to name the facility and also that we expect the potential operator whoever that may be will bring some dollars to the table to help with the cost of construction thank you and the purpose of that question was so that all of you who are watching and participating I want you to know this what we're talking about right now is for the vote the five million dollars that city council is allocated currently for the bond but there are still other means in which opportunities to hold the developers accountable including TERS which is a city council it's city TERS and then the county there's also going to be other private funding and donations from that way but this is a small portion of the overall budget and so even if council were to say no on this five million I don't want you to think that that means that this project's not going to happen or that there's not still engagement that needs to take place please continue to be a part of the process but there are some wonderful comments in here and I I don't know if it's been outlined yet how that's going to be handled so I'll send it back to you Anissa okay thank you I appreciate everyone's patience I did confirm that all of the chat is being recorded not private messages but anything that is in the general to everyone chat gets logged with the recording so anything that we missed tonight or that we don't have time for we will come back to to get answers I'm going to start calling on some people that have their hands raised um please uh unmute yourself when I call you Mary I see that you have your hand up thank you very much for allowing me to make this comment I'll be as efficient as possible my name is Mary Sambaval I do live in the River Road area and just as an initial statement this is a proposal that transcends River Road it affects the entire city Miss Scott referred to reaching out to River Road for those of you who don't know we were approached in September of last year a size of this proposal this dimension which has been in the hands of the city and the conservancy for at least two years or more and was presented privately to politicians and other people before the public outreach uh does not constitute a meaningful opportunity to be heard this is a good start but I really hope that the two councilmen who sponsored this meeting realize now that much more opportunities need to be heard my main point is this and I address it to Mr. Feldman and Mr. Burning and the Conservancy as a whole the need is probably the most concerning argument that the conservancy puts forth the need for a mid-size venue is really called into question we know there's alternate venues already in existence that are not located in a delicate ecosystem 1500 feet from 3 000 animals and an urban core the real life amphitheaters just one of those and we are not we should not be required to accept that revenue is just constantly going to other cities those of us who know how concert performers choose their venues know that there's a myriad of reasons for choosing a venue is a country in western singer for example thinks he can three serial concerts in Dallas because there's more people buying his albums there it will be done there regardless of the venue there's tax incentives there's sound systems to consider there's negotiated discounts between the performers and the hosts uh and the sponsors with hotels it's not just size and we shouldn't be required to accept that that all these the data the little data that has been provided by the conservancy that we lost all that revenue I'm sorry that just that dog man huh um there's I'll be glad I think we can answer your question about the how venues are selected Kirk Feldman has operated the majestic empire built those facilities he was involved in operation 15 years and I think he can ask ask answer your question about how dates and why this 7 000 seed number was picked Kirk if you want to try that Mr. Bernie really respectfully can I just finish my comment and then I'm sorry I thought you were through I apologize sorry um the other concern is if you're in these are your words self-sustaining target of 60 concerts is not meant who suffers the loss will the promoters seeking will seek the city of san antonio to indemnify the loss and when you talk about uh and the example that's been published in the papers by people who are promoting this proposal that they've done uh the snoop dog concert with absolutely no reaction from or danger health of the animals we have animal behavior experts right here in texas at some of the finest vet schools who need to do a full impact study of the effect of sound um finally I say once again this is a citywide proposal I know you reached out to just particular stakeholders but more meetings like this have to be celebrated so that everybody can be heard and this this issue can be fully ventilated before those bond deadlines come up understand we're not naysayers who just want to put this and kill this proposal obviously we know sunken garden needs to be rehabilitated but if this were put on pause and a more thorough uh and broad and expansive impact study was done and citizens were had access to these uh purported studies and we could scrutinize them in depth that's the way to do a meaningful outreach to the community thank you for letting me talk thank you uh frank did you want to respond to this is Kirk Feldman can you hear me yes good evening everyone thank you for your time um the first question that was addressed was the the inventory of venues I believe and um we have a number of venues in san antonio but the truth is the top four which are the um the stadium the 18 t center the uh real life amphitheater and the joe and erie freeman coliseum are all 10 000 or greater in capacity the real life amphitheater just for clarity has 8 000 fixed seats and it has 12 000 launch seats so it's a 20 000 seat capacity and yes the toben center will do shows out there from time to time to show that they just announced um played the atn t center last time and it would never play the sunken garden theater because the capacity is too small so we are seeking a venue capacity that will allow us to be competitive in attracting professional great touring shows to our community and in doing so have the ability to book those shows into the venue because of its size so size is important an artist doesn't want to have to play two nights in one market if you can only play one because time is a commodity for the artist just as well so we need to be competitive and that's in principle the reason why the venue capacity is set in the middle ordering the lowest venues with the highest venues thank you um i'm gonna call on the next person before i do that i want to remind everyone we are looking at the chat and answering questions in the chat um also that we have about 180 people on this and it is already um 10 minutes to seven so i just want to remind you to please be as concise as possible in your questions so that we can get to as many people as possible next i'm calling on rosa salinas thank you in 25 words we live in monivista about two miles from the sunken garden and when concerts are held there there is something about the local geology or topography or something that makes it an acoustical horn pointed right at our bedroom if we go to a larger venue that does concerts in the 45 to 60 a year range i think i'm gonna have to move out so please when you're talking about noise abatement and look at further than tulita street uh look at monivista as well thank you perky you want to address that question well the uh method of addressing it at this stage was to provide for specific improvements they were enumerated in the video that would serve to contain the sound keeping in mind that there are none of these improvements today so it's our goal to to improve the situation not to make it worse and so it is it is true that the number of events will be larger than in the past but in order to um in order to be able to renovate the theater in a manner which will be self-sustaining which is important um that keep it from deteriorating once again after an investment we needed to have the ability to be competitive in the entertainment industry attracting the artists to this market that will help drive the economics of the venue thank you next time we're going to call on susan strong thanks i'm just going to re-ask the question that mary asked but i didn't hear an answer which is and goes to the economics of this venue if the operator if the operator doesn't make enough money as happened i guess with the alamodome and the toyota center um the toyota field um who is responsible at that point is the city and the county in other words the taxpayers going to have to come in and pay the operating and maintenance costs on this facility and what are those operating and maintenance costs that you're building into your projections thank you mr on this is frank bernie i'll try to answer that question um the city of san antonio who owns this facility is going to sit down with bpc if we are able to get full funding and work out the entire process for selecting an operator for this facility uh it may be there are several large international groups that book tours like this and part of the agreement that won't we will be seeking to negotiate with them is that they will have to cover the full costs for operation and maintenance of the facility on a long-term basis um that's the number one priority of the brekkins park and servicing that when we sit and negotiate it we want to make sure that there is a a funding source to take care of this project for uh its life and that's going to be one of our top priorities in the in our negotiations with these operators we believe that based upon prior experience uh in other similar situations that the operator will consider this an opportunity to come in uh and will guarantee those costs which will uh reduce the cost for maintaining the facility uh by the city of san antonio we're also hoping that it'll generate some funds for bpc so we can use the money for other projects in the park such as historic preservation and other things that are on our they were identified in the cultural land study thank you can you share your projections with us of what you project the maintenance and operating cost to be and and whether that is going to be covered by 10 capacity concerts a year which is what your parking plan says frank i can speak to that um we have not negotiated a deal yet so the cost will be borne 100 by the operator of the facility the operator of the facility will have to show financial wherewithal to be able to support the ongoing operating costs in order to be able to get the contract to run the building so we will have a situation where all those costs will be covered and the city will not have to furthermore we would intend to establish a preservation fund at the theater where a portion of each ticket would go into a fund to ensure the long-term capital maintenance and repair of the facility thank you next i'm calling on Mimi Quintanilla okay um first i have three points to make first at the presentation to river road on september 15th it was stated by a bpc representative that a hundred to two hundred thousand dollars would go back to the bpc and the park for usage for the wear and tear that's going on the park that's actually a pittance that won't even buy enough grass seed to do any good um that in no way mitigates the additional wear and tear on the park and i don't want to hear that it's not been negotiated because mr bernie that's what you stated very clearly at the meeting on september 15th so you must have that in your mind it's going to take far more than that to regenerate a park that has already publicly been admitted to be in decline the additional bear and tear the additional parking the additional trash is going to have a negative impact on the park and i haven't heard any amount of money that would go back to the brackenridge park conservancy to do its work a hundred to two hundred thousand is laughable yearly for the kind of usage that's going to be happening secondly and this is a different point um the traffic study that was just recently i just recently was able to access um all of the traffic plans to mitigate any impact on river road have been tried uh and they have been tried over the years using the spring break 2020 as the benchmark is pretty much null and void because covid had already started so i would use the one from 2019 and before when brackenridge river road neighbors were not even able to get into our own neighborhood um because the police wouldn't allow us to come back in thirdly i was on the original tours advisory tours advisory committee and the priorities there were things like sidewalks lights bike lanes infrastructure and it seems to me that that is now being um redirected to the concessions and the tenants in the park rather than to the more general areas that it was intended to address in the original tours agreement when the citizens got behind that um thank you for letting me speak thank you Mimi um i'm going to call on Carlos Rodriguez thank you very much and thank you for this event it's it's truly important i think my question some of my questions were already formulated and perhaps answered to an extent and i wish to formulate this question to councilman bravo and councilman maquis Rodriguez who alluded to the content of my question and that is that the city council agenda of Thursday this week has publicly been has just been publicized and it includes an item which relates to the consideration of an ordinance that modifies the composition of the midtown tours board of directors and amends the tears project and finance plans i suspect because the current master plan of the midtown 31 tours does not include a redevelopment of the sunken garden theater and my question is will you councilman bravo and you councilman maquis Rodriguez if in fact you have been given access to the proposed amendments to the tours project and finance plans that have not been publicized to the residents of san antonio will you commit to vote against the proposed ordinance until it assures city council and the residents of san antonio that the midtown tours board will include members who are residents of the community within that zone instead of only city employees and representatives of the conservancy and the with museum which is the proposal that is up in the agenda for Thursdays i'll go ahead and address this first thank you for your for your question godless um i have yet to be briefed i'm being briefed tomorrow by city staff on that proposal um you know one of the things i'm interested in doing is pushing that issue back because um city council has yet to have a full council wide discussion since the new council members uh councilman maquis Rodriguez myself philosophy agron and terry castillo since we all got on council has not had a conversation about what um what is the purpose of the tours and how do we measure success and i'd like to have that conversation before we extend any of the tours and uh i don't know that i i couldn't answer your question as to whether or not there's any potential turf funding for uh being proposed for this project i'll tell you i am so tentatively i'm supportive of uh the midtown tours extension i'm supportive of that for a number of the tours um i would be supportive of a delay and i'll tell you that in conversations that i've had and briefings i've had about the midtown tours it's not necessarily about an individual project and i think it's going to be a different kind of tours than one like the inner city tours where it does require um i'm not going to say require community stakeholders i think all of them should come should require community stakeholders i'll be clear about that um i think there's going to have to be a conversation about what the makeup of the midtown tour tours is because it's going to be going to city-owned facilities it's not going to be the kind where any any random developer can come in and say oh i want money for this project it's going to be specifically for um these city-owned facilities within this boundary and so i'm i'm even inclined to say that i think there's less room for corruption and exploitation in that way i don't see a problem with including community members as a part of it i just think that sometimes depending on who is appointed so who is making the appointments to these boards sometimes that makes it to where so i'll say that my predecessor appointed the members of the tours prior to me and when i came in everybody on the inner city tours was pretty much a developer that's possible if a council person can decide who's on the on the tours board and i don't know if that's i don't think that's going to be the case with uh the midtown tours but if a if a delay is proposed i will support that i don't know yet that i can commit to not voting to extend the tours because i do still see a need in places like the waiting music it largely areas in my district that i do think these facilities that are city-owned facilities need the support i would struggle to vote no but i will be supporting a delay until i can get that kind of until i can get those commitments and answers from the city so let me just add i guess for clarification for anyone who didn't know i just typed into the chat that tours stands for tax increment re-investment zone and so no matter who's made up whoever is appointed to those tours whether there's neighborhood residents or local business owners uh or you know city staff no matter who would who's on those tours anything that they pose and pass ultimately has to go to city council and be approved so you always have the opportunity to hold to have conversations with your council members and hold your council members accountable for anything that any projects that do go through there i will also add real quick because there was some of the there was some conversation about sound and lots of concerns about sound and it's my understanding that we have uh now have technology that didn't exist you know years in the past that's that sound systems are able to be designed not just with that sound attenuation backwards but with the actual speakers can be designed to contain the sound better and so it's not you're using speakers that instead of projecting the sound as far as possible that are directing the sound into a more contained space so that we should be able to reduce the sound level no matter the size of the capacity whether it's the same size capacity or if it's increased we should be able to reduce the amount of sound now if it's sound of crowds cheering um at your house that's not going to change but if it's the sound the amplified sound that should be able to be reduced and you know one thing that we could do is also um possibly work with the noise whisper who are working with on the noise ordinance sound uh the noise ordinance sound noise ordinance task force um who has uh through his work was able to reduce noise complaints in austin by over 70 percent and sometimes it was just a simple solution like at a huge you know at a big venue like stubs in austin i think it was a few thousand there i think that was two or three thousand people um all they did is they took those tower speakers and they tilted them down towards the ground more and all of a sudden neighbors who live very far away were able to stopped um make noise complaints because they weren't hearing that sound at their at their house anymore and so technology exists to be able to reduce to reduce the sound i think that is one of our easier uh concerns the one of the easiest concerns of yours to be able to address um i'm really interested in hearing more from uh those who are proposing this project about what they're going to do for how many concerts they're going to have a year um how many you know what how are they going to handle parking and traffic congestion so thank you could i ask a question um i'm i'm going through and uh calling on people who've raised their hand um i'm not sure who was just speaking but um i we have a queue going and so the next person i was going to call on is michael march banks thank you very much this is michael march i'm actually not going to be speaking quite as long because i just spent out the traffic study was released and i haven't had time to look at it my issues is with this is one from taxpayer dollars and everything else and many people mentioned red rocks including i of but it's much further away but my concern i think was really addressed by me as well is we have seen in spring breaks eastern everything else incredible traffic backing up on 281 north and southbound and this has done impact just us areas people that have to go from one side of the city to the other now i have to go to basi or down to grason to cut across and get around anytime there's a major event and any of these events they are basically blocking the things up you can't get through even if you can get to the neighborhood you can't get through and the ingress and egress just do not allow it from an engineering point of view there's only two lanes you know one each direction and all the parking lots there's really one way up this way sideways and that there's really only two ways you can get into these things and since the parking lots that you're talking about are in series you know you get somebody to come into this one it's going to back up so they can't get to the next one at and t works because they have multiple lanes to get it around there they also have wide lanes where you can get people in multiple ones the parking lots are not set the same most parking lots can take a maximum of 600 people if they have prepaid parking that's 10 a second and see if you look at what's going on now it just doesn't work i don't see and i'm have to look at your traffic say i don't see how those numbers can work even just this last martin luther king day when we had the zoo had their little special because of betty white dine we could not get across on to hildebrand from mulberry because it was totally blocked up with people and that's people going to an all day event this is stretched out all day the zoo takes a maximum of 9 or 10 000 people a day they don't even reach it during spring break when it backs up on the highways and that again it's all day it's not complaining that's into one to two hours i just don't see from an engineering point of view or any kind of design point of view how you can do it because police don't work the traffic designs don't work and you're going to be really hurting a lot of people on this one i just like said noise the pavement i believe in renovation but it just this kind of venue at this size it's we don't have an infrastructure in place for it and like i said i'll look at this traffic study and call me again but you can't base it on the covid time period you have to base it on something before anybody that says otherwise we're going to be eating it and basically the people that are designing this lives because we've had wrecks from that road rage and everything else if you do this on sterile it's like this whole easter spring break and everything else like that huge traffic on steroids and i don't want to be some two things but just you know it's really going to affect that and that's assuming there are no other events so that means no other events at the zoo at night time events nothing going on at santone stadium there's just not the infrastructure there in place for this kind of venue at that kind of concentration in my opinion but again like i said i'll look at the state again and write the numbers but just looking at it you just can't make the comparison thank you this is rose silphid district two what i'd like to say to everybody is that not only is this going to affect district one it's going to affect district two manky park government hill and west fort because a lot of those people are going to be coming through our neighborhoods and it's already our neighbors are repacked with a lot of development already in our neighborhood and that really needs to be taken into consideration more community input really is needed here on how it's going to affect all 10 districts because we all use that park utilize it we know that the amphitheater needs help uh of rehabilitation that is that's a number number one factor but again community input is important because we're also not taking into consideration those poor families that are low on low income that come into the park to bring their children in there how are they going to get in and out with all these venues so i want the both councilman district one and district two to take that consideration we're talking about people people that have uh that are uh and not revenue but people that are coming into that park uh to enjoy their families that really needs to be taken consideration and more community input if this does go through get more community input and get more uh feedback out there because that's not that's not happening here and we should not let this pass through city council without getting more community input thank you rose thank you um next i'm going to call on mary johnson thank you i'm so glad we're having this meeting um this project without a doubt needs to be scaled back um most people don't understand that a bond is funded from property taxes so all i see is escalating property taxes and rising rents so get that point out of the way another point is that when i was in the bond committee hearing our neighborhood presented and many other neighborhoods presented because we have severe flooding issues so we were told that no we didn't get the money and we could go seek the money somewhere else so i guess i'm going to turn that back on this is like let them go seek the money somewhere else and let's use that money to to fix up our flooding uh neighborhoods now um i just don't get you know all of our neighborhoods that are on here speaking to these problems that are going to be caused by this giant venue we know our areas we know our neighborhoods we know where the stress points are and this is not going to work in this size and scale um when i was listening to the uh npr show on it today the people that were on there i didn't catch your names but they were so condescending they made it sound like river road was the only neighborhood about you know what 200 people they were the only ones that were upset well all of our interceding neighborhoods that are around this are going to be affected by it and we're all angry and upset that we haven't been asked about anything concerning this and this you know michael brought up those points about the emergency you know what about the emergency vehicles getting through there this is just um all i see is another taxpayer albatross around our necks and it's ironic that we have two noise ordinances going right now and here we are planning our city management and mayor and council are planning this and it's like it's almost like y'all are tone deaf you know pardon the pun it's like we're trying to fix the noise that we already have and a crowd you know i understand okay there's new technology but the crowd and the crowd noise are a huge part of the problem st mary's is a mess right now and you know let's let's fix those problems before we go creating another one thank you mary um i want to remind everyone i'm just going to do a quick time check at seven fifteen i want to remind you to please keep your comments as concise as possible so we can continue to hear from everyone the next person that had their hand raised was grace rose gonzales everyone can you hear me hello hello yes we can hear you go ahead grace grace we can't hear you anymore well can you yeah somebody okay okay so um a couple of things one i was uh i was at one point i was on a bond committee uh the last one i think it was what 2017 i can't remember one prior to this one and the reality when we sat on the bond as a bond committee member one of the questions was was it shovel ready right and that was a that was a term that we were using a lot about bonds uh bond projects that were in front of us which meant had they gone through the vetting did they have the funding did they have all the partnerships did they have there was like a checklist and a matrix that we went through to make sure that it was a viable project this one that tells me that you're asking for five million and then you still need 25 million from bear county 13 million is outstanding and all of this other you know it's like well it's like it's too nebulous not to not to mention that it was embedded by neighborhoods not to mention that the the plans are just you know just outrageously big for the for the scale yes it needs renovation what can we get for five million what can we do for five million maybe this project needs to be phased this is the kind of conversation that we would have had on the bond committee like can we face this project did they do their due diligence where are the letters of support we always had letters of support i mean i'm not seeing any support here i will tell you that there's a petition of a thousand five hundred people that signed other the the brown berets put up saying that this is you know this is not a good project um you know because it hasn't been vetted so i'm just i'm just going to go back to saying where can we where can we recover this and maybe phase a project maybe take the things that need to be fixed and get those things fixed and upgraded and then look at what we can do later but right now there's there i know that there was a 41 million dollar project that the link project downtown that the county had already put money in and it got zero dollars on the bond as matching and i think they were only asking for five so here we have no dollars but we're going to give them five and we have 41 million dollars and we don't give them anything so i i as a bond as as a past bond committee member i can't reconcile all of that i really don't and that's all i have to say thank you thank you um next i just address real quick that my understanding from the city manager's office is that if this issue if this issue is approved and put on the bond and approved by the voters that city staff are going to write the bond language such that if if the black marriage park concerns he doesn't raise all of the money for this project that that they're not going to get a penny of this five million dollars so that they have to raise their end of the deal first and that and you know and that's that's a good safeguard but you know one one thing is why don't we have that that uh safeguard upfront why don't we have the money up front and see what we can do or scope a project that does that does renovate what we need to do because it's deteriorating and we know it i mean it's not like none of us know it all the city council districts use that and like i said 1,500 people signed that petition there was quite a lot of people that have otherwise we wouldn't have had this venue that you all put together only before only because of the pushback those i would say and i'm going to say as a past bond committee member they didn't do their due diligence and ask the right questions and those are the questions i would have asked had i been on that bond committee thank you thank you grace rose out of the councilman mckay Rodriguez thank you um there are some questions that i keep seeing repeated in the chat that i'm not hearing answers for necessarily um number one what design reviews have been done and what room is there for continued review of design and community engagement councilman this is nick holis the chair of the bracken ridge conservancy um again thank you for convening this um i think the thing that i'm taking away from this or the thing that is reality is listening to what razi had to say he went through about i think 2,300 different steps before this thing ever gets built and i think there's a lot of work that needs to go into what's going on here but in order to front up for the bond dollars as the previous person just think described you've actually got to come with some concepts um so the reality here is i think we've got an awful long way to go both in funding terms i think in terms of community engagement um and i lord both of you for pulling this opportunity together to get people um discussing things one thing that i would ask can people ask questions rather than make comments and then to your your point councilman we can start answering the questions as opposed to just dealing with people's comments so so can we do that and then then we can possibly get to the root of some of these issues that are important to everybody thank you i appreciate that so what i heard was that um in order for something like this to happen you have to come with some sort of design but it is not the final design and there is a lot of room for growth and change and community engagement that's what i heard is that accurate that's absolutely correct as i said we are so early in this um it's this this thing is probably not done to 25 26 um and we've got many many milestones that we have to make and frankly um it's this is a great start to get this all the stuff get it out and add um but there are many many more steps that the city has in place to make sure that projects just don't get rushed through the other comment that i would make we keep using the term developer bracket rich park is not a developer we are not a a for-profit organization that's out there looking to make a buck we are working with the city of san antonia we are working with with the um the office of the of the manager who works with the parks department we're now engaging um now that we're closer to sort of a commitment on a bond we're engaging with the public we're putting out all of the studies that we have we're working together to try and move something forward on behalf of the city and the citizens of san antonia we are not a developer a non-profit with our goal in mind is to give the best possible use of that facility to everyone in this community for years to come thank you i appreciate it i'll keep it this is let me add a little regarding the shovel ready project project this size you don't really make shovel ready for many reasons first of all you don't know if you're going to fund this one secondly you don't know if they're going to fund how much they're going to fund thirdly you really don't know also bond is going to be passed project this size you have some rendering you start the conversation and they have done so far well i uh rosie i i agree with you but just agree because i'm sorry excuse me grazers we have about five or six more people in the queue with their hands up and it's already i know but i just want to just address that show already three and so we need to let others have a chance to but a project this large should have had more homework that's all thank you real quick before we move on to the next set of people one of the things that i'm going to be asking you for that i'm looking for is going to be another set of plans that include a reduction in size i think that's something that we hear very consistently right now is that people feel that one of the renderings do not show an accurate portrayal of what it is that is going to be developed and so i want to know that what we're looking at is what we're getting and what that sounds like to me is that what people want is less capacity i would like to know about the parking situation travel what accommodations need to be made as far as infrastructure goes what the city's plan is because infrastructure is a part of the bond and i want to see what master plan exists as it relates to that because parking and travel and the danger that exists when you have a lot of vehicles on the road has now been uh brought up a number of times as well as sound the third bit is design review i would like to know if there was if there was a historical design expert who was a part of the design and what feedback someone like that would provide but that's a few of the things i also would like to see a set of um future dates being saved pretty much for continued engagement i don't want this to be the last time and i don't want everyone to think this is over the day of vote happens whether it's a no or a yes jill do you want those answered right now or do you want us to send you a written response um let's get those answers now so people can hear it okay as to historic obviously we have consulted with historic folks our architect is in the middle of rebuilding down around beautiful downtown theater on the river walk and has has a lot of experience with historic adaptations we realize that we're going to have to go through the city's hdrc and hpo it's the city property we'll have to satisfy all of their concerns as well as the texas historic commission because this is on the list of historic places and so we'll have to go to thc as well to get their approval for this project i think we've made it very clear we're in the preliminary stages of this project and you it's kind of the chicken egg you've got to start with some plan so you have an idea of what kind of budget you're going to have and what will work there and that's where we are in this process and as chairman nigg just mentioned we welcome all the input we can get on this project we want it to be a win-win for the community and something that everybody treasures so we'll be we'll be glad to provide you all any information you need thank you and i'm so sorry to continue to hug can you also please reiterate what you've heard from the people here today the concerns that have been brought up the changes that have that people are asking for and the concerns that you hear that you think are most pressing do you have some hours no just serious obviously we are worried about i mean the things the same things we've been hearing are the exact same things that records park of service has been focusing on noise impact traffic impact how to get people in and out of that facility is it too is the size of the project too large for this project okay is it too large for records park those same issues the breakers park conservancy has been working through of them for several years to try to come up with the best possible plan and we we encourage everyone to provide more input to us so we can have a project that everybody celebrates thank you we have about five or six more people queued up that had raised their hands it is seven twenty seven i don't want to cut us off so i'm going to ask that once i call on you if you have a question please state your question and if if you just want to share your concerns i would prefer if you put it in the chat that would be more helpful so that we can address that afterward but a direct question is going to be probably most time conscientious right now next is margaret leads i have a question would the venue be designated an entertainment center with the 85 decibel allowance at this particular point in time it's premature for us to even think about that we've got to do some we've got to do the noise studies we have a benchmark at the moment of what the current theater does and then we have to see how the new theater or projections um or digital projections on what that looks like in terms of keeping it under those levels or at levels that sit inside the current ordinance today um as far as future ordinances concerned they would need to be negotiated um with the community otherwise this hope this whole thing won't work if the theater cannot operate within the noise envelope that the citizens of san antonio are prepared to deal with thank you i see that there you know we are at the the end of the meeting but there are over 161 people there are 161 participants still on here i'm willing to stay and hear more of your questions and concerns if you know i don't know if uh members of the bracken ridge park and sergan tear are willing to but if not i'm willing to stay here and be able to continue to document your questions and concerns just to make sure that everyone has a chance to ask a question yeah maria i'm more than happy to sit here i've been working on this thing with the bracken ridge conservancy in the city for almost four years so um a few hours here working with the citizens of san antonio it's uh there's something we'd be very very engaged in and the more we learn today the better off we'll be in the future okay thank you um i have next on the list blokita salavan hi everyone um one of the um concerns that i have is the frequency of events so we're talking about two to three events per week uh at a minimum between april and october and you know a lot of the concerns that have been listed and people have brought forward i think um our concerns that those of us that live in the surrounding area can can live with if it's every once in a while but two to three times a week um is it's it's not something that we can really live with it's just so many events and i so my question is really um what would it take to reduce that number um and i know there's concerns about the financial viability of this venue um i think that it was stated that it um the venue needed 60 48 to 60 events per year to make it financially viable which i think is concerning um it makes me wonder you know what happens if that target isn't achieved but um could you talk a little bit about the frequency of events um at how how concerned is everyone about that number and also um what does this mean for the inequity issues that this creates within the city um we have a cultural heritage to protect there are low income park visitors who would not be able to visit the park the way that they do now with uh relative ease because there would be limited parking limited access for them two to three times a week and during daylight savings hours that includes daytime hours for them so if um if you could please talk a little bit about that i'd really appreciate it thank you well i'm gonna ask her to do that but as far as the your last comment laquita most people aren't taking the children to the park at eight and nine o'clock at night um the the nature of these shows is they're going to be the parking we're trying to obviously integrate with our visitors during the day and this is our visitors later on in the evening so in terms of crowding out the existing visitors to the park i i think with as many spaces as the parking plan is defined that we're in good shape there i think that's something that we can all feel confident in as to the mechanics and the financial aspects of running a theater i'm going to kick that out of the Kirk right now he can feel that question sure with regards to the number of events we provided a range um because we were looking at the activity levels in other markets in Texas Houston Austin San Antonio and um we were looking at the investment that was going to come from the private sector and we wanted to be able to represent to the state and to the nation that this was really one of the top tier venues in the nation and um so the variety and the quantity of events um and the genres of those events all feed that narrative and so it needs to draw a wide variety of attractions so that someone from every council district can say you know what i love going there it's a great venue and not only that but we need to be able to attract the shows to fill that schedule so that's basically where the 48 to 60 came from could it operate slightly less or more market conditions will dictate that and um and i would think that that would be a flexible number we could expect to see vary from year to year based on the activity in the industry right i think one of the other concerns that i keep hearing is that we don't want to lumber the tax base of San Antonio with a failing venture can you describe the um study that was done in order to um establish this in fact would be a popular and financially sound venture um well at a very high level of the uh study indicated that yes in fact the venue could be self-sustaining now self-sustaining means it doesn't carry any debt in operations so the operator would have his own debt to carry but the venue would be made um and constructed so that there was no ongoing debt service requirement beyond that the operator would be involved with paying rent to the conservancy and the rent we discussed earlier would go towards things like helping to fray some of the costs and also helping fund some other projects thank you um lori abney is he are you raising your hand yes so i i guess my question is for nick um have you all been in contact with the center for conservation and and research in the with the San Antonio zoo i know it's Becky Mosher Hodges who's the manager for that center have you had communications with her on how this will impact the animals in the zoo uh no we've spoken um well i guess with her boss and uh i think he came out publicly recently in an article i saw suggesting that sort of had little to no impact on the animals at the zoo what is his name i'm sorry lori i let me just interrupt real quick i saw that tim morrow uh who's ceo or executive director of the zoo was on earlier tim are you still with us he's not but frank ruttenberg is he's the current chairman of the zoo um frank would you would you like to field that certainly i i've asked the same questions of uh tim morrow and uh to the young lady who was speaking that tim is the is the executive director of the zoo uh and he has indicated to me that he's spoken with all of our animal care specialists he should have no impact whatsoever on the animal on the animals in the animal care all right at what time will concerts end have we anyone mentioned that frank is sorry excuse me frank um do you want to handle that um i was going to mean frank burning yeah frank you want to have sure i'd be glad to um let me try to answer it i mean you're talking about um certain times of year you're not going to be able to have events you know you're not going to have it during the middle of january more than likely you may not even be able to have it in uh in august if it gets too hot uh in september or october you you want to try to avoid any conflicts with alamo stadium and so it depends in terms of the hours of operation it depends on what time of the year you're going to have the event uh i would anticipate you know sometimes events might start depending on what kind of concert is it may start at six or seven others will start at eight but every the events will change throughout the year depending upon the weather and and you know what what what the anticipated you know what's going to be like at that point time when you start i didn't hear an end time though just just for the record i didn't hear an end time okay can you help that then you're i believe 10 30 it's a standard you'd find fairly consistently across the state of texas i'm sorry was that 10 o'clock 10 30 10 30 okay thank you and and on the conservation with the zoo where can we find out more about that um is it tim morrow uh who would be in charge of that mr bravo or i would like to know more in more detail how how it's not going to impact our animals that would be tim burrow yes okay i guess i'll have to find okay thank you laury if you want to send me or any of our staff members in the private chat your email address we can try to get you contact information for the zoo and send it to you i'm in contact with becky mosher hodges she's uh the manager but i guess tim is the main okay thank you laury i have your email address of course as well so i'm happy to connect you thank you um next on uh in the queue i have um rumor roomy or rumor roomy is that someone's screen name hello that's me okay i can hear you hello uh i live in about san pedro park springs area and just we're coming out of coven 19 just barely and we have so much homelessness going on in the city and just going downtown or near the brackenbridge area you can see people that are hungry out in the cold right now and the fact that our city hasn't done anything to help with that but we're putting so much money in infrastructure for an amphitheater that so many people do not want happening just for tourist dollars is very pathetic and very sad i don't really have a question just well thank you yeah do you have you don't have a question thank you bye thank you um i think i see david leal are you raising your hand yeah i live in one of these stuff in my question it's a little bit answered a little bit about the uh design of the project is you know this was originally the a japanese tea house a japanese second gardens and i don't see any more gardens anymore you know it looks like you know we have this is the only uh uh building the marketplace that i know it has any kind of japanese culture and so i think we should need to be to preserve what the the original family you know they ended up taking it away from the original business and then when i was it when i was a boy it was uh they changed the name to the chinese second garden and so the i think it's very important that we keep it pretty much the way it is keep the gardens as the as an historical uh uh structure you know and so are you gonna change the design to include uh japanese mentally japanese architecture into the what you're doing but it's back in david just a point you're talking about the japanese tea garden which is in the next quarry over that we have we're not having anything to do with changing the tea garden this particular facility never hosted the tea garden it was not any in any way shape will form a japanese art form uh it was a it was an open air theater in the other um in the other quarry that existed next to the japanese tea garden so please do not be concerned that we're going to be impacting the tea garden well i've very i've never heard this this other this other auditorium but what what shape is the is the uh original japanese tea house or garden and the tea garden has been renovated and it's in fabulous shape and i would encourage you to take a trip in there it's it's absolutely gorgeous okay well it's it's still a thing because i had to try to get some at least i'm some kind of cultural thing into the architecture rather than having like any other building that you have in across the united states well the goal the goal of the the uh the mass timber roof and and the organic nature of that roof rather than hard structures and steel it is a nod to what you're describing and that's that was what the architects intent was and i think if you look at the lighting uh in the reds and the hues which speak to the japanese lanterns and things which we were conscious of wanting to speak to the as i said to the japanese garden which is in the in the quarry next door okay very thank you thank you uh next i have Bianca Maldonado good evening thank you for the opportunity to ask a question and provide some comments i guess my first question really goes to city staff on this because this is designated a citywide project yet there has not been in my opinion citywide public input so how do you classify a citywide project is it just based on potentially anybody citywide would attend an event um in this location and then my second question is um when you develop a project from a staff recommendation historically park projects go through the city's park committee so that they're publicly vetted and there's the opportunity to provide public input so we could have a robust public discussion of over 180 people before it becomes a staff recommendation and all this information would be more publicly available um what are the steps the city has taken to ensure that there's a public input component prior to the bond i guess it's my second question my third question is at what point does the city decide that they're going to attend a press conference to announce a project before it had the opportunity for public input for the bond cycle um that's my third question and my fourth question is what studies has the city done for infrastructure there's so much that's being done for vision zero and ped mobility and safety of individuals entering and exiting this park as specifically mobility within the park is the question for the conservancy for safety purposes and then my last and final comment uh would be the perfect storm would be when SAISD has an event the zoo has an event and there's a public concert going on um imagine the life safety issue you pose to the surrounding neighborhoods who would not be able to have fire and EMS access thank you okay Bianca so i'll start with five and i think the city can answer the prior four um we're going to be scheduling around both the zoo and the alamo stadium um to your point we certainly um from the um from the patron's point of view we don't want those clashes because it's it's going to deter from their enjoyment of what's going on as well so that's why the the numbers of events are limited to what we've described i did the math the other day there is 80 percent of the time assuming we had 50 paid for events and 25 community events a total of 75 events of which 25 the community would represent that the theater is empty 80 percent of the time so razi could you possibly handle the other four in terms of um the community process by which the city makes its decisions unfortunately razi had to leave at 7 30 but rojello uh is on the call from public works and he should be able to answer those questions rojello are you there okay um we looks like we lost our public works uh representative thanks for taking my questions i do appreciate it i just think there is a clear um concern with process and procedure um thank you yes um i do want to just remind everyone that there was opportunity for public input during the bond process at the bond meetings as well as um our office hosted a town hall i know the d2 office also hosted a town hall um so i want to reiterate that and bianca we have your questions and we will um provide answers to i can give them to you directly and then um we will also be compiling a list that will try to answer as many questions and address as many concerns as possible that we will send out to everyone so thank you uh next for um to speak is graciella hi my name is graciella sanchez and i am one of the 30 bond members in the parks of uh section this past year so um i also want to say that as the director of the esperanza peace and justice center we have used sunken gardens to collaboratively in 1990 to bring in tracy chapman and in 2009 to bring in lila downs and i love that sunken gardens theater and i and while using it and before and after you know i desire for that theater to be renovated and i would love it to be done in the way that this japanese gardens was renovated that really didn't change out the whole thing and i also wanted to say that this process for the bond was shorter than the 2017 bond i think we had a whole month less and we were angry because we you know we didn't get started until mid october or late october um and i also want to let you know that the district five representatives all voted to zero out the sunken garden theater proposal as did other districts but we were there was pushback from city staff and we were told essentially that there was no way it was going to go to zero that this was a city facility and so there would be many but i do think because of the pushback from many of the bond members it went from 10 million to 5 million so it was the only bond parks project that came before the bond committee with any with people speaking out against it all other folks came in speaking loudly to support their projects this was the only one that got negative and of course there were a few people that spoke but many more comments um in the speak whatever it's called speak up so you know i just you know all those questions from the the architectural design i mean i saw it on this in the newspaper and i hated it and i said it in front of everybody in that bond committee and i think even the chairs of the bond committee who's an architect also did not like it but all the concerns you had around traffic around tearing down of you know cutting down of trees um just i think that's been raised so i just wanted to be very clear that many of us were against it as well and we heard you and so i just wanted to state that do you have a question Graciela we can answer for you have you become the moderator don't be assholes okay sorry um excuse me uh we are also taking comments in addition to questions so um there's no need to moderate that outside of our process um i had a couple more people in the queue i had rolly wood thank you oh can you hear me we can hear you now rolly thank you yeah i i just want to be real brief i'm a past chair of river road neighborhood association and i have been involved in the traffic planning for easter and spring break and with the zoo and parks and city and council people and it does not always go smoothly and um i think that it does cause problems and there are things that you just it's a lot to control for that could be an event at the alamo don't the police are called away you know there's just a lot of factors uh and i just think that with uh the existing parking you can't assume that it's all going to be empty you know and it's so diverse there's not a centralized area of parking and i just don't see and i'm all for renovation of the theater but i just don't see how with the existing parking and infrastructure it could you know hold a support of seven thousand uh person theater that's that's basically what i wanted to say and i guess see thank the conservancy for being here and then i do think i look briefly today this morning at the special event assessment that i had someone gave me and i would like to say that i think that the noise does need further study and i would certainly like the neighborhood to be involved that's when that's done thank you so much thank you rolly um i had lucy wilson next i just wanted to make a comment i didn't realize how special we were when we were invited to host uh the unveiling of this in our neighborhood back in september we started trying in august and everyone scheduled didn't work we always bring things to our whole neighborhood so we tried to have it on a board meeting night and that didn't work so we had it another time but what i realized was that not too long after it began to become evident that we were the only neighborhood that had been uh privileged to have the presentation made to us and so we began to share uh with montevista and some other neighborhoods the fact that you know we had detailed information beyond what was just appearing in the newspaper and so um i think we had the privilege of beginning to uh have some public uh input begin to happen and i just uh i just think that something's wrong when we don't give people an opportunity to know what's happening that's going to really impact their lives and and i really appreciate the councilman having this this opportunity for people to exchange ideas tonight i think it's critical critical uh to the success of anything that we do in in our public places oftentimes you hear brackenridge park described as sacred ground and it is for so many people and we have to honor sacred ground by also honoring the people that make it sacred as well as the environment and that's been river roads purpose ever since we were incorporated our our commitment was to the park and to the neighborhoods not just our own thank you for hearing me i want to hop in real quick and address some things that rocella and lucy had mentioned and you know you were talking about you know you all did say things about how this park is special and about people who've musicians who've come and play there in the past i i wanted to let share with you all that very first concert i ever remember going to in my life was to see santana at uh at sunken garden theater when i my parents took me when i was a kid and i remember that uh the smoke smelled a little funny there at that concert so some of you more senior participants in this uh who may have been there you weren't smoking cigarettes um but uh graciel also um mentioned that this has been a shorter process than previous bonds your that's true uh and i was talking to somebody about that previously and they were saying you know the city has gotten a late start this kind on doing the bond process and there are people who are very concerned that you know if you don't move fast enough we won't be able to they won't be able to um put it on the ballot and be able to um you know get information out to the voters in order to be able to pass the bond and so that's that's something i think that's a factor that's maybe driving this at the pace that it is i think it's really important that that we're hearing from you all tonight and continue to hear from you all wherever we end up you know whether this doesn't end up on the bond or whether it you know whether it does or doesn't to make sure that your voice is heard in shaping uh what is the what we can come to it for consensus on what should be an appropriate project here uh then finally i just want to say that somebody uh there was some discussion in the chat about appointees and who did councilman mckay rodriguez and i appoint and whether or not they voted for this project or not to to put keep this project on the bond i can say for myself that i didn't give any direction to my bond appointees we spent a lot of time trying to make sure that we had a diverse group of appointees and that brought a lot of different things to to the table and then we let them do their thing because if i as the council member was giving uh the citizen uh committee members uh marching orders then there's no sense in having a public input process and so i just wanted to point that out and i'll hand it back over to anisa thank you thank you councilman um i only see a couple more hands up uh from folks who have already spoken did you have any other you know short comments that you wanted to to to share or are those raised hands left over from before um i i just see mary and susan mary sandball and susan strun so i just had one brief question which is whether or not a lot of people in the chat have been commenting on how misleading or how the renderings don't show a 5900 seat facility and we did notice that there was a site plan in the video could we get a copy of that site plan and so we could see actually the overlay of of how this facility is going to fit in the site and just for your information if you can see me over my shoulder this is i could share my screen but this is an overlay of the 5900 foot 5900 seat uh greek theater in la with sunken gardens with no lawn and you can see that it fills the entire space out to the you know out to the end of sunken gardens so i just i point this out only to say that i'm concerned that we are going to have a huge facility that is fixed seating and very little lawn space to have these other events that we've been talking about or to see people who want to sit on the lawn and um you know have less expensive tickets for the lawn that's all my name is elisha garlock and i i can't be the raising the hand thing i tried to do it earlier but i did have a question uh gone for the conservancy or everyone actually and when are they going to actually include the public and the decisions that they are making because there seems to be a norm of things like that it comes out after the fact the river wall the trees that are going to be taken down 80 to 100 of the heritage oaks we barely got the plan the agenda this well i got it today so but nobody knows that they're going to take out all those heritage oaks they say to fix the wall but also if you've been in the park over the last week they've been removing trees and vegetation that is meant as an effort to deter the egrets and herons from nesting the other plan is that they want to have the usda come into our city parks actually citywide and destroy nest with viable eggs and possibly kill some birds and nobody knows about it because our parks isn't talking to people and the conservancy if they're over the parks and stewards of the parks what i've seen over the last five years is neglect of the park the bathroom by the play station or what is it the ball field has holes in the roof and then the the wood is rotting there was steps on the footbridge that were cracked and finally they fell over and they fixed it after a year two years uh you have flooding during during rainstorms that comes over the sidewalks you know along the river there are repairs that should be like a daily thing like come on we we fix our house when we find things that are broken but you talk about the park is in disrepair but you've been there for how many years and you watched i'm watching or we're watching as nature is being destroyed you want to chase away the egrets and the herons which four of which need conservation are we looking at things like this are we involving the public and decisions in our parks that will affect the quality of life will affect our wildlife will affect the environment and the public because we're all connected we share in the web of life and so i would like to know winners well the conservancy is going to include the public before the fact not after the fact like it seems this is going on and and also with our parks and our council people the public needs to be involved in actions that will impact our environment in our parks you know you say that's not going to affect the animals animals are sensitive to noise you might research some of how their noise like sounds to them people that are going to be you know more people more trash there's going to be an impact to say that altering the habitat is not going to affect anybody is kind of like not really very realistic but also if you're talking about keeping the historical value of the park you would keep some of the historical you know the the walls or whatever but you're trying to alter stuff to make it modern but that's great to an extent but how can it be a historical park if you're altering the footprint so are you going to going forward change the way you do things and include the public and not hide stuff because when i asked in november for the plans for the river wall y'all said ask the parks people but you are the stewards of the park are you going to start talking to the public and sharing the plans that people are asking for in advance so that we have a a understanding of everything not just you know one side every when you when you share stuff or you research stuff or you try to work with the public it needs to be both sides everything you know we can hear the good and the bad but it gives us the option to make a decision based on facts research and an environmental assessment things like that should happen before the fact not after miss garlock my name is frank bernie i have heard i've been involved in most discussions i've never heard any discussion about destruction of any trees and they've been cutting trees for the last three weeks i actually have the photos in the video let me finish it and and secondly this is this is city property nothing can be done this property without the city of san antonio approving it and so i'm certain that the city is going to require that any construction comply with its existing ordinances and they have to give approval for any type of plans on this property councilman mckay rudry as i said that you raised your hand yes thank you so much i do have to get ready to go in a second but i wanted to i feel as i have an application to share where i'm at at the moment and what i think the path forward is and what lens through which i'll be making a decision in a couple weeks and i think number one big goal is going to be making sure that the bond passes i've said that from the get go we want something we want as many people to feel confident in the bond as possible we want people to feel as though the bond and something that they're paying into is going to be benefiting their community and i want as little outrage as possible i just want that to be clear so when we were having conversations about the you know the animal testing and biomed and all these other facilities that had a lot of similar outrage and were pulled um that that's a factor in my mind what i see my two options being is one you know there's there could be a motion to move the five million dollars away from something you can garden um to something else we do as a city still need to maintain the facility so regardless there has to be a plan for how we renovate and i think a renovation has got to happen so no matter what that has to be a part of any path forward number two would be voting yes to the bond as is and whatever changes happen with five million dollars allocated for sunken garden but there being a commitment to want a reduction in capacity because it's that seems like one of the non-negotiables right now is that the capacity is way too much right now as well as continued community engagement as it relates to the design which has been something that is a possibility right now it's been stated a number of times that community can be involved and i want to see several meetings i don't want to see just one and i don't want to see it happen every time there's a vote and i'll take i'll take a bit of responsibility is that i feel as though um it's easy to be frustrated if say i'm a city staff or i'm a city official or a council person and um i'm frustrated that it's two weeks into two weeks away from a vote and we have to now have a meeting and people feel upset um and it feels last minute but it's not the community's fault there's a number of people here who have been at the bond meetings um and if people don't feel as though they were made aware of this project and if they don't feel like they were aware of the design that's not on the community that is on city that is on the city council that's on all of us and so um just know that whatever path forward ends up happening you have my commitment to work with all of you because i know even though maybe all of you don't get to vote for me because i represent district two for those of you who are in district one or in other districts i still represent you my vote still impacts you and so i i don't take that lightly um so i really appreciate all of you for being here i know this isn't easy to spend two hours of your time in a sometimes contentious setting and so i really appreciate you guys who have put yourself out there for this and just know that i'm hearing i'm listening and me and my team are going to be working with councilman bravo and other council members to find a solution to this because there has to be one thank you councilman bravo did you have anything you wanted to say sure i say share a lot of uh the sentiments that councilman mckay rodriguez just uh shared with you all i'm really grateful for everybody participating this is a great turnout and i think that speaks a lot uh and i i'm glad i thought i saw assistant city manager rod sanchez on here earlier so i'm glad he was able to hear some of this um so that you know they can easily get elevated to the city manager's office um and you know i still have a lot of questions um before i'm ready to support a project like this um and i'm grateful to you all for bringing these these concerns to me right they the concerns about traffic the concerns about congestion uh about parking um and so i you know i'm not sure what the path forward is yet um i'm going to sit down and and review all this will continue to take your input um you know i'm i'm personally wondering is there a possibility of you know this is through the park spawn committee and is there an opportunity to maybe um make this just a general five million dollar um use for because i think there's a lot of agreement that that there does need to be work and renovation there it's just we need more public input to decide what is the appropriate size for this project and um and get other input on it and so is it possible to maybe move forward with a some broad language on a five five million dollars in park improvement which could go towards sunken garden theater renovation or if we can't get to consensus on that then it could be other improvements in the park uh which wouldn't be a bad thing to invest in that park um so i'm gonna i'm still gonna you know stay open to exploring different options um and you know we're gonna continue this conversation um beyond just this bond so thank you very much everybody for your participation thank you so much everyone and coming to attend this meeting we have recorded it and all of the comments will be captured in that recording um our office will work with the district two office to go through them all and make sure that all questions and concerns get answered to the best of our abilities if they weren't answered tonight allowed um we really appreciate your patience as we try to moderate this we had at least 182 participants at one point there there may have been more but that's the highest i saw it go um we're really really grateful for this input and we're happy to hear all of the feedback that you've been providing to our offices um councilman do either of you have anything else you'd like to say to wrap it up great job and so you did amazing as a moderator and thank you to everybody who came out i really appreciate and um we'll be looking to get your get responses to you on all the questions in the chat um that maybe didn't get addressed thank you