 I'd like to introduce Diego Bernal and thank him for everything he's done as he begins a second annual state of the center city Thank you, Lori. I think I got mic'd up. Yeah I'm mic'd up now. Can you guys hear me? No Now you can hear me. Oh, I've got to turn it on, right? How about now? Better. Oh, right Well, that was very serious. Look, first of all, if you didn't have your name called raise your hand Somebody clap for these folks Thank you guys for being here. Thank you to the Hispanic Chamber. The briscoe is a beautiful venue the tri-chairs. I Also want to take a minute to thank the staff of the briscoe who are helping us do all this incredible stuff And also if you guys could please give a hand to the men and women who are cooking and serving our food I'd appreciate it very much you know when we when we say that Great cities have great downtowns in our mind. It means that some there's something very cool, right? Something neat and hip You guys are way too dressed up So for the man in the audience, I'm gonna ask you to unbutton your top button with me, please Because that's not cool We've got a packed presentation. I'm gonna go as quickly as I can First I want to thank everybody who's been a part of what's happening downtown. I want to especially thank my staff I have an incredible staff if you guys could stand up They do tremendous work. I'm also saying sorry because and this is a good problem to have there's no possible way I can fit everything in here Everything happening downtown in the center city cannot be fit into a 45 minute presentation We have 152 slides to go through and that is a fraction of what is happening downtown. So bear with me first of all, I Want to point out that downtown is not just downtown and the center city is not just downtown The center city is downtown and the surrounding neighborhoods, and I am equally responsible for those neighborhoods as I am downtown, but Probably more than anybody in the room. I am tasked with trying to get someone Who is considering staying here Who is considering leaving San Antonio or who is from somewhere else and considering coming to San Antonio this Is not a discussion necessarily of our economic Growth policies it is not a discussion of our tax credit policies is not a discussion of our fee waivers It is not a discussion of how we leverage assets for catalytic projects All of which are important But when I'm talking to those folks, that's not what they're interested in This is a fraction of my pitch When I'm trying to convince them to come or to stay or return or consider This is what I'm talking to them about I'm gonna get off this stage. It's weird This will sort of be like my Clint Eastwood talking to an empty chair thing So we focus on inner-city neighborhood just as much as downtown This is the intersection of Bassie and Blanco with the terrible series of right angles We're turning that into a nice s if you know the area You know what an investment that is and you also know that those folks have been waiting for that kind of change for a long time I have a laser pointer here. You see it on this side. I live right here This is Bassie road only about a quarter of Bassie road has ever had sidewalks. They now have full sidewalks for the entire Mile we're wanting to show neighborhoods that have felt neglected for a long time that we care about them Here's a good picture of five points probably one of our most neglected neighborhoods You'll see the house with the columns in the red roof Same house red roof These are folks that for a long time felt like the city forgot them and part of building a strong downtown is Making good on that argument that a strong downtown benefits the surrounding neighborhoods We're trying to make sure that that's a real commitment The most important thing for the staff and I right now are our center city parks right now We have 13 park projects that are either underway or breaking ground. I'll show you a few This is Delview Park. This is a walking trail. We're putting in we haven't added the concrete yet But it goes around the perimeter of the park. This is a park. That's right in the middle of a neighborhood the old-school kind Same thing with Los Los Angeles Heights Park there There was a slope of land a basketball court and a little sign that said here lies Los Angeles Heights Park And there's no park there for 20 years You'll see that we're adding a proper playground a walking path a water fountain and a little fence with the kids Don't roll out into the freeway The inner city doesn't have a lot of parkland. We don't have a lot of green space So here and Neil elementary. We're taking their play area. Excuse me guys We're taking their play area We turn it to a soccer field and we added a walking trail around the perimeter. So after hours the community can use that space Here's the walking trail. We're doing the same thing at Higgs Carter King across the street are three or four empty lots I think the city term for that is blight and We're turning that also into a Playground and a park that the community can use after hours One of my favorites San Pedro Park. Did you guys know that's the second oldest park in the entire country? We could be better to it. So our first plan there is to put about 1.7 million dollars into it to create a mile long walking trail We'll break ground on that probably in november. It'll look something like this. There'll be a light every 25 feet So it is something that the community can use at all hours. Here's the light plan great little walls on the corner We want to encourage people to move to the center city to enjoy the center city to feel like it's a place So they can live and not just visit. I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Lattie Place, which is a county project you guys know on Fredericksburg there used to be a Chinese food place a blockbuster the pull guy was there where I bought a lot of comic books and records They've now destroyed that and they're turning it into Two or three soccer fields a retention pond and a walking trail in that area. There are no parks Once the county once the county builds it the city will take it over and be in charge of maintenance It's a it's a very important project. Of course moving downtown Columbus park is taking shape. You can see improvements there. We've also added it to our christmas light program So every corner of downtown and the inner city we're trying to get some attention there Travis park reopens on march 31st 300 thousand dollars and investment going in there and then of course the granddaddy of parks Hemisphere we're breaking ground in the play escape very soon That is essentially five acres of public art that doubles as a playground That should be open in early 2015 Now let's go over downtown and most of you are here to talk about downtown I'm looking for anybody who didn't undo their button There you go About 18,000 residents and growing 65,000 employees and growing an 11 billion dollar impact to the city 25 million Visitors a year that's like australia and some of its island friends coming through downtown every year And yes, you can measure downtown by the things that we're building So we'll talk about for that for a minute the Tobin center for the performing arts is underway. It's incredible on the outside There'll be a giant screen where people can view the performances if there's an overflow. They've got a I don't have to call it a robo floor That can reconfigure itself Depending on the kind of event they're having in other words picture seats and then the seats coming upside down and having a flat surface They can do that several times over Let me go back to that for a minute When you go there and you get a tour there's a little gap. It's about a about it's about an inch thick That gap represents a a break between one building and the next the buildings are built right next to each other But they don't touch because the engineers I think they're called Acousticians They worry that if the buildings touch the vibration from one performance will affect what's happening in the other building So it looks like one complex, but there's an inch between them It's amazing. And of course if you're looking for places to live if you're looking for Developmental velocity. We have that the river house on the river near sama in the spring of 2015 1130 Broadway in the winter of 2015 the pearl is adding both residential units and a hotel Let me talk to you about the hotel for a minute the hotel. It's a hotel But the bottom floor is going to be used. I'm coming over here to the little cavernous part of the room the I'm tipped. Are these the cheap seats? I don't know So In in the hotel the bottom floor is going to be used Like a lounge so the public can come in get a drink get a cup of coffee Sit there with the laptop and do work the point is If all of our hotels adopted that model If the rooms were for the visitors, but the bottom floor could be used For visitors and locals whether you take your restaurant or your bar and you turn it outward Not only were downtown probably offered 50 more than it does now But we could relieve some of that tension between locals and hotels Locals should be excited when there's something new coming downtown if there's something there for them that turns outward So I would encourage and invite all of our hotel folks to consider that model St. Anthony hotel is doing it right not only on the bottom floor in their multi-million dollar Renovation will there be a swanky bar, but up top on the roof is another swanky bar I probably won't be allowed inside. Ray Saldana will have no problem getting in From hotel rooms to dorm rooms. I don't know if you guys know this But the Tobin the Tobin lofts near sack are fully furnished housing units. Let's count them out for a minute uiw trinity utsa sack the culinary institute the southwest school of art we are Blowing up we are covered in students and our downtown needs to understand and attract those students We have more students more college students in san Antonio than we do in austin And you wouldn't know that going through our downtown. So one of the next frontiers for us is capturing that energy Also speaking of student housing I will talk about city policies for a second These are what I call iconic eyesores the peanut factory on the west side is becoming student housing and that should open in september of 2014 The merchant size do you guys know this? Where's JJ Lopez? Where is he? There he is So across from tuckers where JJ DJs is merchants ice Merchant size is an iconic eyesore that's been on the east side for a long time And through the leadership of ivy taylor It's becoming that and by the way You know how many touchdowns as ivy brought for San Antonio she's amazing and this is a testament to her incredibly hard work We've got we've got our our number one champion for small businesses Establishing their headquarters in the center city aside from that. It's going to act as a community center And there's going to be a cafe Run by miss kowalski where people can learn how to run a business It's amazing That same partner is going to work with the city for cafe commerce, which is the city's best effort We offer incentives to developers We offer incentives to big companies to come here But we need to make sure we put our best foot forward so that entrepreneurs And business owners can grow their business and that's what that is and we're proud to partner with xg on this San Antonio is a family place There is a state of the art one of a kind children's museum being built on broadway Uh These are very interesting renderings. It's what I got. It's sort of like they exist in this mythical enchanted force with no buildings The duet in Narnia But when I talk to people about families, if they're not ready to talk about kids, we can talk about beer There's beer coming and a brewery coming to the inner city Going back to kids a 400 million dollar investment chris's San Antonio's children's hospital I talked to the folks that i'm trying to convince to come here about the perilous journey to a downtown grocery store What about the grocery store? Look, let me just answer this real quick You can get deodorant Q-tips toenail clippers. It's going to be a real grocery store It's not it's not going to be just prepared foods. It's going to be a real grocery store that serves real people in real neighborhoods The southwest school of art is planning some tremendous improvements, but what excites me about this This is what I tell of the folks is that they're about to offer the first bfa in all of texas So i'm more excited about meeting this first class of students These students that all of our hopes and dreams and their hopes and needs are wrapped up into This improvement is important But the fact that we have the first class in the entire state coming to our city means a great deal So the build out is important, but it's it's less interesting to me than the students The Alameda theater is being completely rebuilt once the paragon of latino art and culture It is under a serious renovation But also it is the home to an incredible high school the henry fort academy the i think jessica is here somewhere She's somewhere But the henry fort academy is a performing arts and art academy for kids all the kids that got picked on like me in High school. They've all got their own high school now and they're all the cool kids. It's amazing The Aztec theater has also come back to life. This is an iconic theater that we almost forgot about It's an incredible space. It's beautiful. Uh i dj there in october. It was awesome. You missed it Everybody's getting in on the action. Univision is now Broadcasting from downtown the river walk is undergoing millions of dollars in improvement. In fact the river walk itself is growing The bear county river expansion is An incredible project that actually is probably going to get done pretty quickly And then the city of course is stepping up with the expansion of the henry futon's convention center Not only is it shiny and beautiful not only is there art Not only is it very green But it also put us in the top 10 of convention and ballroom spaces in the entire united states san Antonio is stepping up To be a leader in its offerings all right We've talked about the incarnate word medical school. Here's a rendering. I'm not sure it will look like that in the end Let me tell you why this is so important You know that this is a partnership between s eisd and uiw Right now fox tech is just a magnet. There's not enough students in the intended zone to fill fox tech So i believe that the incarnate word medical school will turn fox tech into the john hopkins of high school offerings in san Antonio And also think about this You guys know where edison high school is and then there's a Weedier middle school I want to feel tall for a second Edison and weir also have health career tracks The relationship between the district and uiw not only will fortify and strengthen fox tech It will provide resources faculty equipment and curriculum to edison And to weir which means more than any street repair more than any sidewalk more than any graffiti cleanup or stray dog collection. I can do They have made those schools More attractive to people looking to move into the inner city number one And number two you are giving those neighborhood kids an opportunity they would never have otherwise We have to ensure that this project happens And if I can make a quick pitch for centro that project will not have taken place But for central they have absolutely proven themselves to be real Glue and a magnet that holds the city together brings different players together and holds on to them before A deal is done and we need that kind of help and they've done a great job This happened yesterday We're going to do it I heard someone say the other day. Oh, I've seen this before I've heard about these committees before I don't really think it's going to happen It'll just be another case of us spinning our wheels They are wrong First of all, we're not it's not a reboot We're building on an incredible amount of work that happened in 1994 number one and number two I'd like to talk to you a little bit about alan hentman alan hentman Is the architect of the us capital appointed by president clinton in 1997 and served for 11 years He was responsible for growing the footprint of the capital by 70% He was involved in the national gardens. He was involved in the pro harbour memorial He was involved in the gettysburg memorial That is the level of reverence that we are shooting for we are shooting for national and international reverence You have not seen that before and we will get it done Yeah That's all right And when i'm selling downtown on folks, I admit We have a ways to go we'd be lying to ourselves if we didn't acknowledge Some of the problems that we have downtown and yes, there's been a fair amount of development on the outskirts of downtown But that development is making its way to the To the core you guys know this building right That's happening You guys know this building To me, this is sort of the tent pole of all the things wrong with downtown that we need to fix I don't have a good rendering But the same group that's doing the first one that I just showed you is doing this I wish I had a success story for you on this one. I don't We have an empty building problem downtown and I will say Whatever the political consequences that this is not okay Our city is not a safe deposit box for your investments. That is not what a downtown is for And it is shameful That we've got 30 buildings or more just like that So in april or may the city will roll out our most aggressive empty building policy that we've ever seen and It will address not just Empty buildings downtown But empty and dilapidated homes in our inner city and also all the district in those neighborhoods as well You guys know as well as I do you can't have a strong neighborhood. Forget it downtown You can't have a strong neighborhood with a bunch of empty and abandoned homes there So that policy will address both This is a picture of my pets. We got real serious for a minute You guys can lighten up I'm gonna get a drink of water. We'll have two minutes of music real quick Everybody got a chance to eat and started their cheesecake So when I'm talking to folks, you know, they're excited to buy that but You know when you're talking when you're talking to a student or a recent grad or someone who's considering Los Angeles or New York or Chicago It's hard to say. Yeah, there's a big apartment complex coming in 2015. That's why you should be here They're not super excited by that I am but they're not And so I think that a lot of us make the mistake of looking up Looking to the skyline and whether or not it's changing to determine whether or not There's real momentum downtown and I think we should look down At our folks at all the things happening in our city that really are I believe the primary contributors to the momentum that we see in our urban core Geek them is the unofficial capital of downtown it is if you don't know it's a A ymca for geeks It's a it's a workspace where they can Find each other work with one another create great partnerships and businesses There are four success stories that I want to talk about very quickly True ability is a business that came from geek them where Folks can Take an exam that assesses their technical abilities and then employers can access Their scores and find the employees they need par level creates analytics for folks who are I don't know what the right word is. I guess they they own Several vending machines, but it allows them to save time and money So that they can either refill or restock or lay off and not waste time checking them one at a time Silver Fox studios is an all-encompassing digital multimedia studio and doable is a PR graphic design web design company all of them are thriving businesses now and all of them Started off or had a strong presence at geek them Geek them is moving to the ran building in april of 2014. I'm a geek them member I have an office there. You guys may not know this, but all the offices are named after old video games There's no number So someone asks what office you're in you say i'm in super mario I'm in legend of zelda and the music you've been listening to is my music and before Yeah, it is good. Yeah Give it a good listen. It'll change your life But after I got elected I had stopped making music almost completely. I was too busy And I didn't know how I was going to make more but when I moved to geek them all that energy all that creativity All the bright minds that led me to to get that itch again. So my friend Ernest and I got together During the council break. We took 10 days. We were there almost 24 hours loading up on free dr Pepper and trail mix And we finished our last record which we put out in october that will change your life And it's also available online for free I love this tweet And in in many ways it summarizes the overall message of today Do you guys agree? There are lots of things to do downtown Loop is a new organization for young professionals lordy hueson actually has a leadership position there The awesome foundation are a bunch of folks who have events all around town But they also give money to ideas and initiatives. They want to support Poodle pinche is the it's the hot list it is I had to say it um It's the hot list anything happening downtown in the court Whether it's art or music cocktail Food you can find it there and the 8020 foundation is a real true bonafide philanthropy Focused almost entirely on downtown and urbanizing san Antonio And of course you can go to the big places if you want to find out what's happening Here's a great picture of the dome We've got sports there soccer baseball utsa football boxing In my run my dry run of this I kept calling it the the canelo fight Which sort of shows my my preference. So I'm just calling it the boxing match right now George straight 73 Thousand people went to that concert. They broke a record for the dome Look one direction is coming. It's a big deal apparently I'd also argue if you take a where's where's councilman crier. Can you stand up please? Do you guys doubt that this kid looks like a young version of councilman crier? And let me let me point this out even though it didn't all it didn't all happen downtown Kendrick lemar drake Kanye west Jay z one direction lady gaga and jesse timberlake are all coming to our city in a matter of months or have come That signifies to me a cultural shift in our city that we have not seen before I guarantee that three to four years ago that would not have happened There are great things happening in our city and these are the sorts of things that I think signify that Of course, you've got fiesta the biggest party in the world That's my fiesta medal the texas folk-like festivals the asian festival The volley The a&m educational and cultural resource center The zonal cultural the point i'm trying to make with these slides is this We're a city that's comprised of a variety of different cultures and instead of being insular instead of having events by the group for the group The groups have events and they share it with the rest of us and we show up When you go to the volley or the asian festival, it's all of us when you go to fiesta It's all of us. This is part of our calling card We are becoming a city that is more and more comfortable one with the differences between us and two We see them as things that we should celebrate. We see the differences between us as things that enrich Our lives and create rich relationships And i'm proud of us for that We've got this awesome place The Broadway reach is a the collection of great. I'm close to the speaker. I sound loud in my own ears This is a collection of of great assets that also Have figured out a way where you can have one singular experience Although they're individual the witty the mcnay botanical gardens brachmage park The neutrons museum the museum of art If you're healthy, clearly i'm not if you are or want to get Ciclovia is i think a bona fide success. It is a new tradition in our city councilman via gran Worked very very hard to bring ciclovia south. It is now going to start In district one go through district five and then down to the mission reach Where it'll expose lots of folks who don't live on the south side To probably one of the crown jewels of our city and that is the mission reach I want to thank the councilman for her hard work on that Thank you councilwoman for taking it out of my district. I appreciate that Main plaza is another open space. You can see that nearby. There's a tremendous There's a mural Funded by the lynda pace foundation, but even main plaza the the literal heart of our city There's there are things happening there. There's a music festival. There's bikebeat Every month and probably more than that. There's something happening there. There's a great, um green lantern shirt here that i'm excited about More on the green lantern later but These are not structures. These are not buildings These are not things that contribute to the skyline But these are the things that when i'm talking to someone else to say, oh, maybe san Antonio's not as lame as I thought Maybe I had it all wrong I talked to them about luminaria or what that means for local artists I talked about chalk it up for local and super local artists like these kids I wanted to include this slide because this is chalk That to me demonstrates In one slide the real depth of the talent pool that we have In our city We bring international art to our city art slam is a Alternative art program or or event where it's it's aerosol and urban art My point here being that there is literally something for everybody Pecha kucha is sort of what i'm doing now. It's 20 slides Each slide. It's 20 seconds You should go if you haven't been because that is where you see the true talent in our city They I think the lineup's about 10 people to do it about every three months And and people stand up there and sort of talk about their life their project their novel their movie their initiative It really pulls the curtains back on all of the great things happening In our city at the individual level. We've got a new festival The Other Los Muertos Art music dance Boo, it's a it's a great day of the dead commemoration. We have HLA at the pearl Which brings about 3 000 people on that tju one of my favorite mcs is coming in just a just a little bit The maverick music festival is brand new is an incredible success Gary Clark and girl in the coma were there this past year this year the lineup is even better The sama art party is sort of a san antonio's best Effort at creating a great gatsby atmosphere. You can run around the grounds of the museum of art There is the book festival A little more demure But the level But the level I'm being that that wasn't a slight it's just different If you look at the lineup of authors that they were bringing in they are world-class Bestselling authors every year last year was their first year. I expect this year to be twice as large We have the coffee festival Which I can see my mom clapping for that Acknowledging her one true vice and addiction You can have coffee served from all kinds of different coffee shops in town and also try coffee from around the world You can also get coffee served to you by Ron Nuremberg's evil twin apparently We've got the cocktail conference That's that's not a mistake slide. That's actually what I remember of it Where you've got the bartenders on one side and vendors on the other really Focusing on and and showcasing the new cocktail culture that we have in our town Two minutes of music we're almost done. We're getting there I know you're saying that wasn't two minutes, but I want to get you guys out of here on time. Uh I um I know there's an elephant in the room. I know there is I was responsible for Pushing and shepherding something through in our city That brought a lot of attention people from san Antonio and outside san Antonio came They packed and lined up around city buildings to get in and they identified themselves and their allegiances based on different colors And I would be remiss and dishonest if I didn't mention it I cannot tell you how excited I am about kamikon Kamikon the first event here in san Antonio brought 35 000 people and they had to cut people off in the middle of the day On saturday because of overflow. I expect this Next year or this year actually to be closer to 40 or 50 We've locked them down downtown this year next year. I'm not positive, but I'm 90 sure We'll get them here on halloween weekend, which will be insane Uh, this is me in my green lantern jacket talking to neil adams Neal adams in my mind is one of the greatest storytellers of my childhood. He signed my green lantern stamp Which was great It's also it's also a place where people dress up like their favorite comic book hero or villain. They also do Movie and television villains our mayor got a head start this year dressing up like his favorite bond villain Yeah Yeah I can just hear him now Sorry But also when i'm talking to when i'm talking to people about downtown I do say that the city takes risks that we do participate and try to make things better Downtown tuesday is an experiment to bring people downtown. It's free parking on tuesday night The least sexy night of the week according to the business owners there anything that we can do to bring More people more foot traffic We'll try Another good example of that is the open Initiative run out of lory's office where we take empty buildings and allow entrepreneurs a chance rent free to try out their business And see what the appetite is we were surprised at the demand and the success of this and we should probably not we should probably We are doing it again Our food truck endeavor has been a wild success one. There are over 70 food trucks In not in san antonio in the san antonio food truck association And two because of that momentum Stop that man Click click click get off me all right But the the food truck association just landed The national food truck convention in san antonio in november So that should demonstrate What we're doing here And this is the end You know in the past you've had someone come to town Or some of your friends have said i'm bored. What is there to do? There's nothing to do So in very quick order without talking about each one i'm just going to flip through Some of the other things that are happening downtown especially places to eat Most of them are new This doesn't discount water burger Or your favorite tacaria. This is in addition to All those places that you already know and love The new sip downtown That's across the street from the friendly spot It's becoming a barbecue spot pretty soon. I think jody newman's here. There she is It's her project That's where old chino latino was This is my Equation for surviving city hall tuckers which JJ Lopez Who is now the head of care to you has had a four-year residency as i believe the best dj in san antonio jj You're awesome You'll agree that the list is long high tones I looked at it here because to me it's the spiritual successor of salute When you go there and you open the doors you hear san antonio blaring out of there And it's an important it's an important part of the the landscape in our city All right in closing This is a picture of our mlk march I believe the mlk march is the best example Of the best of who we are we are a city that know how to come together And support each other the center city in particular is a place Where all of san antonio comes together downtown in particular is everybody's neighborhood It is everybody's front door the center city is a place where people who even have wild differences Can find common ground He doesn't know I use that In closing Aside from thanking you for your attendance and your attention I would ask that When you come across people in your life Who are considering staying considering leaving Or are from somewhere else and want to come here that you in some part Make this pitch with me at some point i'll do one of these where I do talk about incentives and policies But what's more important is What's happening downtown sure it can be measured by things that we're building and we acknowledge our challenges But really it's all of you and the people who live here Who are making downtown in the center city come back to life And I love Being the councilman because I get to hear about all of it But really as a resident of the center city a lifetime resident of the center city I really have to say thank you for all of the effort and the risk that people are taking To make our downtown the center city great. Thank you so much for being here. Thanks a lot