Eastside Sprout Community Garden

Check it out.....a new community garden will soon be turning soil and getting started in the neighborhood. The garden is called the Eastside Sprout and is located on the grounds of the Ella Austin Community Center. The garden is being made possible through a grant from GreenSpaces Alliances. This will be a great opportunity to partner with not only the Ella but with Bowden Elementary School. The gardeners are getting excited and hope to have fall garden started by August. You can find a link to the Eastside Sprout Blog on this page on the Links to Explore. The garden space is a blank palette at the moment but come this fall the garden will be blooming!

Alamo Brewery Proposal

To view the summary of the Alamo Brewery proposal go to: http://www.neighborhoodlink.com/Dignowity_Hill and click on the Pages and Links tab.

Education Reform: Dignowity Style

We live across the street from Bowden Elementary School. The school used to be named Robert E Lee but somewhere along the way the name of the school changed to honor Artemisia Bowden, who was an African-American educator and long time administrator for St. Phillip's College. I find the irony of the names for the school delicious but that's another story for another time.

The real story for today is that the neighborhood association has made a commitment to partner with Bowden with the goal of developing a tutoring and mentoring program for the next school year. The neighborhood association has formed an Educational Leadership Committee made up of neighborhood residents with a passion for education and gifts to give to Bowden in way of time and skills. Bowden's principal, vice principal, and teachers are all on board in seeing this come to fruition. The parents of Bowden will also be engaged because they will be key in ensuring success in the classroom for their kids.

This effort is timely given the shortsightedness of our state legislature in cutting funding for our schools. We need to find away to get back to the notion of a community school in which a neighborhood has a vested interest in the educational success of our children. Our effort may be small but we think its a great start to making a dent in improving educational outcomes.

Brewery or Park?

This is interesting.......all of sudden the area around the Hays Street Bridge has become the focal point of two competing and very different visions. On one hand we have Eugene Simor who owns Alamo Brewery Company. He has brought forth a proposal to build a brewery on city owned land adjacent to the historic Hays Street bridge. His vision is to have a brewery that is not only brewery production operation but a tourist destination as well complete with a rooftop brew haus.

On the other hand we have a proposal from the good folks that were responsible for pushing the restoration of the Hays Street Bridge to use a city owned tract of land adjacent to the bridge for a park, a skate board park to be specific.

Where it gets really interesting is that the city owned land is coveted by both Mr. Simor and the good folks that want a park. The city owned land was donated to the city by the Dawson family when the bridge restoration was completed with an apparent understanding that the land would be used for a park. Well, after some digging around I found out that there is no stipulation written into the city ordinance that accepted the donation that the land would be reserved to used for a park.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. The idea of a brewery has some appeal because it could be a catalyst or spark in further revitalizing the neighborhood and bring much needed economic development to our corner of the world but there are some concerns from neighbors regarding traffic, noise and crowds in the area. On the other hand, a park would be nice, after all you can never have enough green spaces in the city but most likely would not generate any real economic development. What's a little mystifying is that the folks that are pushing for the park have yet to reach out to the residents and the neighborhood association...not good form! So the question is: does the community support an enterprise that could possibly spark a substantial wave of revitalization or do we go for a park that is dedicated to skateboarders?......Hmmmm.

Catching Up

Just trying to catch up since the last posting! I didn't realize it's been since Feb when we had the "big snow" that I've posted anything of worth!
Lots of stuff happening lately. We had some new sidewalks put in on Hays Street. Yeah.! It may sound a little trivial but I get excited when new concrete is poured!
The city has dollars for some capital improvements in our neighborhood and we want to spend those $$$$!
The historic street sign project was a success and we should have our signs in place this summer!
City elections are next week and it looks like our council woman will be serving another term. I just can't see how her opponent has a chance!
The San Antonio Independent School District Board elections are also on for next week. This should be interesting as the mayor has endorsed some of the candidates....hmmmm.
Met the nice folks that rehab the house on Nolan Street...nice job!!
Stay tuned as there are some interesting developments brewing for the neighborhood!

Snow in Dignowity!

We got a smattering of snow in San Antonio yesterday but it was the ice that caused some problems for folks heading off to work in the morning. Still, it was fun to see the white stuff in the neighborhood!

Historic Sign Fund Raising Update

The BBQ plate fund raising event was a great success! We raised over $2100! Thanks to all who contributed and help makes this a great event!