A development was quietly approved by a city committee and permitted by staffers in a controversial sliver of San Antonio’s downtown. It’s a shocking turn of events, as a city councilwoman was working to have the property donated as parkland.
For months, signs adorned the front lawns of incensed Lavaca residents on the eastern edge of downtown, condemning plans for a gas station and Little Caesar’s at the entrance to their neighborhood. Eventually, amid fierce community pushback and District 1 Councilwoman Sukh Kaur’s intervention, the developer withdrew the request.
“There’s just a lot of competing interests and some conflicts of interest with things like quality of life and traffic management with that kind of development amidst homes like that,” Lavaca Neighborhood Association President Melissa Stendahl told MySA at the time.
More than a year later, a new development – a shopping center of sorts – has cleared the Historic Design and Review Commission with little fanfare, despite the councilwoman’s continued efforts to convert the former commercial refueling station into a park…