On the record is brought to you by Steve and Adele Dufilho San Antonio is a fast growing, fast moving city with something new happening every day.

That's why each week we go on the record with Randy Beamer and the newsmakers who are driving this change.

Then we gather at the Reporters Roundtable to talk about the latest news stories with the journalist behind those stories.

Joining us now as we go on the Record with Randy Beamer.

Hi, everybody, and thank you for joining us for this edition of On the Record.

This week, We are talking about everything from some UTSA developments to what's going on down at the Alamo and on the southeast side, Brooks development down there is just expanding in a big way.

Joining us to talk about that first is Leo Gomez, who is president and CEO of Brooks, as well as the vice chair of the New Arboretum.

Yes, sir.

I've been here in San Antonio as well, on the southeast side.

First of all, there was a big development at Brooks recently with the Metropolitan Planning Organization approving a $9 million project there.

Tell us about that.

Well, we're really excited at Brooks.

We really believe in investing in the green space that makes a community a quality place to live, work and play.

We have built a park with ponds and trails system throughout the Brooks campus.

Years ago, the county helped us connect that park control system over the San Antonio River.

Through this award from the MPO will be able to extend our trail system to the East under the highway to connect with Salado Creek and eventually the arboretum of San Antonio.

Randi, among other things, that the money is going to help us do.

And if people haven't been down to that area before, you know, we always thought it was a closed post.

But you can get on, you can see everything.

What are some of the other things that are there now and that you're still hoping to get at this point?

Lorena We have a hospital, we have three high schools, we have a medical school, we have three hotels.

We have this trail system that connects to the San Antonio River.

We have restaurants, we have retail.

It's a community that is expanding and growing in South San Antonio.

I liken it to a town center and so a region, the southeast region of San Antonio.

If it had a town center, it's Brooks.

And it's also now, you say connected not just to the San Antonio River, but to the creek as well.

Absolutely.

Well, we will be connecting to Salado Creek and we're excited about what's important because first, why is that so important?

It is very it's two very important bodies in the history of San Antonio, the San Antonio River and Salado Creek.

A lot of history along them, a lot of tradition that comes with it.

And our culture on the South Side ties to those bodies of water in particular.

And we now have a community where South Siders can be proud to be a part of the South Side in San Antonio.

They always have been, but now they see that we are beginning to realize what people believed they could be on the south side of San Antonio.

And so connecting through this kind of infrastructure, through things like the World Heritage missions in the San Antonio River on the one side, and then Salado Creek on the other side with much history that goes back to the Battle of the Alamo and before and and then someday actually connecting to what will be the arboretum of San Antonio, that it will be welcoming close to a million visitors a year here.

And it's a really big development project in terms of it's kind of like on the mission reach scale because you can go into areas that, you know, there was a culvert you're talking about down there.

It's still going to be that, but it's not going to be just a ditch anymore that people are afraid of.

This is going to be one of those jewels of San Antonio.

Absolutely.

If you imagine the river and the river walk, there's the waterway and there's the wide sidewalks right along it.

That's what we're going to have under the highway, you know, So the culvert will be turned into more of a concrete creek that's a little wider.

More esthetics.

And then the wide trail system right next to it in a tunnel under the highway.

We've done the exact same thing to the west, where we go under pressure and we go under the railroad and connect with the San Antonio River at Mission, San Jose.

And then to be able to take the past that are south of there that today are crushed granite and pave them into, you know, ten foot wide concrete trails is part of this project as well.

Tell us about that arboretum because that's another project that people may have heard something about.

It's been in the news off and on.

What is an arboretum?

An arboretum Arbol in Spanish Arboretum is a place to honor the trees of your region.

And that's what we're going to do there.

We're going to it'll be a museum of trees, if you will, where we will have a collection of prominent trees that you see in south central Texas and where we will really honor heritage trees that are already on the site.

If you think about it, there are many trees in our community that have been here a few hundred years.

Maybe you go along the San Antonio River, you see some majestic cypress trees.

You go further south and you can find some pretty majestic heritage mesquite trees, believe it or not, live oaks we have throughout our community.

And so having a place where kiddos from through our community and others can go and learn about the flora of San Antonio in the tree form is what the arboretum will do.

We will do our very best and we intend to make it complimentary to the wonderful work being done at the Botanical Garden.

But if you will, botanical garden, if you use the 8020 rule is 80% flowers and plants, 20% trees, the arboretum will be the reverse.

Now, Henry Cisneros is one of the prime movers behind this prime mover.

You have to say that.

Yes, sir.

And it came up with this great idea.

It's a, by the way, Beacon Valley.

actually, it's the old Republic golf course.

So of course, I'm sorry.

And so that's been in disrepair.

We might have a lot of work to do now.

What's the timeline on this and where are you getting the money?

Well, first of all, thanks to the county, we have the first infusion of $7.3 million to begin addressing the infrastructure that's going to be needed to develop the arboretum.

That'll take a while.

The city has also committed funding to begin a nursery program on the property that will benefit all of San Antonio.

And then we are in earnest talking to folks in the private sector and the philanthropy community to begin raising money for general operations.

But this year what we're focused on is getting our master plan completed.

Once that master plan is completed, then we'll begin to prioritize what funding we need and for what projects.

And Arboretum doesn't open up overnight.

You know, in Chicago they have a great arboretum by the Morton Center, but it's been in existence for over 100 years in Dallas and Houston.

They have theirs, but they've been in existence well over ten years now, and it took more than ten years to fully develop.

Fortunately, our partnership with the county, the city and the private sector here in San Antonio, we think we'll have the grounds ready within a couple of years.

After the master planning process, people heard that, there's a nursery available with the city.

Am I going to be able to get trees out there?

That's the intent.

We will partner with the city to grow those trees and encourage people from throughout San Antonio to go and get trees and plant more trees, the better and stronger and wider.

The tree canopy in San Antonio, the better for all of us.

100 years ago there was a Parks commissioner who pushed palm trees, and that's why you see some on the east side still.

They put them down.

The down the main streets is that are you going to what kind of trees are you going to be able to get and how much you're going to have to pay for them?

Or how does it work?

If you find a tree anywhere in south central Texas all the way down to the Valley Corpus Christi, Austin, down to Laredo, you take that whole region, if you find a tree that's there with such a palm tree, a live oak, a red oak, you know, Monterey oak and, you know, mesquite trees and etc., you're going to find them at this arboretum.

Finally, you're a legend on the south Side.

BROOKS Thanks for talking about that.

But you have a little history with sports in San Antonio Spurs.

What do you think of how they're doing and when be and what do they need to do?

I think they're doing an incredible job of bringing San Antonio back together.

I, I joined the Spurs when we got Tim Duncan, and I remember what that did for our community and what that led to in terms of additional championship rings.

So I really think that's what's going on.

This is the next chapter of the Spurs.

It was David Robinson, Tim Duncan, and now when he's going to bring us together, like like we haven't.

And so you're betting on the Spurs.

But for next year, putting him on the spot sooner rather than later.

Well, thank you very much.

It's all Leo Gallegos with the last word on Brooks and the Spurs.

Thanks for coming in.

Thank you.

Just in time for the election year, we are talking polling, but polling right here in San Antonio, a new polling center at UTSA.

Here to tell us all about it is Brian Gervais, the director of the UTSA Center for Public Opinion Research.

Thank you very much for coming.

Thanks for having me.

Tell us about this, because when people think of polls, they think only of election where an election year and why would UTSA be polling?

But it's it's not what people might expect.

Well, we'll certainly do some election polling, but we want the center to be something well beyond that as well.

We're really interested in learning about the issues and concerns of Bear County voters, Bear County residents and San Antonio residents in general.

So we're thinking much bigger picture.

We want to build center that allows us to regularly poll and survey folks in the community, learn about the issues that are really concerning them, learning about what their priorities are in terms of of policies and really understanding the the difficulties they face on a regular basis so that local government can better respond to it so that other different organizations in the community are able to better understand the population so that researchers at UTSA and beyond are able to better study on folks in the community as well.

And so that's what we really see the center becoming a just a way of of being able to a variety of folks to be able to connect with and better understand residents.

And so you're not going to just be calling up people and saying, who are you for, Trump or Biden?

And by the way, how does it work in terms of do you call people up?

Is that still a thing or do you get the numbers?

That's a great question.

So we're going to be doing multimodal surveys, and so we'll still be doing sort of old school telephonic surveys.

We've got a big lab that's set up to conduct live interviews over the phone.

But we'll also be reaching out to voters electronically through email, through computer.

We're going to be emailing folks, inviting them to be part of our survey in a part of a larger panel.

And we'll also and we'll also be reaching out to people through snail mail and the mail as well, trying to recruit them to partake in our surveys to be a part of our panel as well.

So we're trying to reach people in a variety of different ways, making sure that we really get a representative sample of residents in our Department of political science professor.

What are you teaching kids?

What kind of majors get into this?

And then do they do the grunt work of calling people?

How's that work?

So.

That's a great question.

I'm actually teaching a class right now.

Maybe some of my students are watching this, probably political communication on public opinion and that course has a lab component.

And so the students in this class, they spend some time actually in our lab where we do live interviews, learning how to operate the software, learning about the best practices for conducting survey research, and really, I think taking information we're talking about in the classroom and that they're reading about in the textbook and actually learning how to apply it.

So it's a really an experiential learning experience.

And we think students get lots of value out of it.

We're coming up on a primary right now.

Are you doing any of that or are you going to do any of the presidential and some of the local races as well?

We're hoping to have a survey launched last week in February ahead of the March 5th primary, get some insight into voter's preferences regarding the election, not just the primary races here in San Antonio and in Texas and nationally, but also just getting some sense of what folks are thinking heading into the general elections in November.

And so you're going to be making these available to the candidates as well, because candidates right now, especially at the local level, cost them some money to get a poll done.

A lot of them don't.

Yeah, I don't we're not going to do political polling on behalf of candidates.

We really want to we're not going to be a partizan center by any means.

But certainly the data will make publicly available for anyone who wants it.

If I if you I get a call from from one of these young students, how long do I spend on that call and how deep do you get into what they think?

So we're going to make sure that our surveys aren't super long.

We know that people have lots of time constraints.

We don't want to keep people on the phone forever.

So lots of the live interviews we do, we try to keep to a minimum of 5 minutes, 5 to 10 minutes.

We'll probably be doing some surveys over the Internet on computers that will be a little bit longer in length and people can spend a little bit more time on it, but they can also engage in it and complete the survey when they want to.

Will they get an email about that or how will people get hooked up?

So we'll be emailing some folks, inviting them to participate.

Other folks will be inviting to participate or join our panel through the mail and then we'll be recruiting people through telephone as well, but also some, I guess, open ended kind of questions that doesn't have or don't have anything to do with elections.

Sure.

Absolutely.

And so I think that that's a really important element of what we want the center to be is that we want to learn about residents of the area in general, not just their political preferences, not just the political attitudes, but learn about what they care about and what needs to be addressed.

We look at other cities like San Antonio, take a city like Houston, has a variety of surveys and longitudinal panels that are conducted on their residents longitudinal meaning over time.

That's a big thing you want to get into.

Yes.

How San Antonio changes.

Yes, exactly right.

And so, you know, Harris County and Houston is served by these studies that are conducted on their residents.

It allows policymakers to address concerns and it allows researchers to better understand the problems that residents face.

San Antonio doesn't have anything like that now.

And we want to fill that gap.

We want to be able to provide ways of understanding San Antonio and Bear County residents and fill that hole that's been that's been there for some time.

People wonder about the accuracy of polls and especially over time with elections.

How accurate can you be when we hear that plus or minus three points or whatever?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think the issue with polling and accuracy is a super complicated one.

It depends on a whole lot of factors.

I think lots of surveys that are apolitical, nonpolitical are probably much more accurate in some ways and political polls just because there's different dynamics there.

Nonetheless, something I'm really excited about with our center is it is we're going to be trying to engage in new innovative techniques, sort of experimenting with different ways of connecting with people that are being left out of surveys of encouraging people to participate.

And that's the thing that I think is going to be really important are is why it's really important that we're having young people and students who are going to be, you know, at the heart of our center.

It's because they've got new ideas, they've got fresh eyes and fresh ideas and can think about ways of reaching folks like them.

And, you know, that's their one demographic.

Young people is one demographic that's been hard for polls to include and bring in.

Does anybody go door to door anymore?

Is that a thing?

There still is a door to door interviewing by some polling institutes.

It's very expensive.

It takes lots of logistics.

And and so I don't anticipate we'll be doing that any time soon.

So they don't get that much our credit from walking around.

Exactly.

And we pay our students to our student workers.

You know, they are compensated for the work they do.

Well, you think this is also going to be, you know, as a center at UTSA, a way to recruit people, kids who are interested in this kind of thing?

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

In fact, I'll even mention this right now, if you don't mind.

We're offering a fellowship for the next academic year, 2425.

It's a graduate master's fellowship where we're covering all tuitions and fees, providing a stipend and health insurance.

And we really want encourage people to apply and become of our program and join our center.

And, you know, you can learn more about that fellowship on our website, Google, UTSA, C por o r it's it's right there.

And so, yes, we absolutely want high quality students, students who are interested in public opinion and political communication to come and be a part of what we're doing.

All right.

Well, thank you very much.

Fascinating.

The new Center for polling.

If you get a call or from see por you want to apply for that fellowship.

Brian Servais, Polling Center and director of UTSA Center for Public Opinion Research.

Thank you very much for coming in.

Thank you.

And our Reporters roundtable.

If you haven't been down to the Alamo recently, they're still working on construction for that ongoing renovation project to the whole plaza.

And the latest is the Texas Historical Commission just okayed some somewhat controversial plans for the museum that's going to be in the buildings across Alamo Street.

Joining us to talk about that, the man who knows everything there is to know about the Alamo and more, Scott Huddleston, staff writer for the Express News and education, History and Preservation.

Thank you very much for coming in.

Now, you wrote the story recently about what the Texas Historical Commission looked at, what was a little controversial and what they finally approved for.

It's going to be the museum and the buildings across the way was the controversy.

So the focus was on the 1921 Woolworth Building and the issues of controversy were related to a couple of things that went beyond what they call the secretary of interior standards for, you know, preserving a historic structure.

So one of the things was the extensive demolition that's going to occur in the interior.

A lot of that building was severely compromised about 20 years ago.

And so they're going to when they built the tomb, the Tomb Raider 3D, right?

Yeah, because it went after the store closed.

Yeah.

Basement and up and all that.

Right.

It was basically an indoor amusement park.

And so they're going to have to remove the concrete columns and the floor slabs and replace it with the steel frame.

That's unavoidable, though.

The real issue of concern among the commissioners last week and this week and last weekend also was that they felt that the rooftop addition was too far beyond what's allowed under the standards and that it needed to be less obtrusive.

And the Alamo staff and the design team have pulled back on some of the materials moved that the the structure about eight feet back from the front wall facing the plaza and lowered its height by two feet.

So it would be less noticeable from the screen.

So the renderings we have here are earlier renderings and the new one, you know, the new design will be a little farther back.

There's a fourth because the buildings are three stories.

They had talked about a fourth and there's now also a fifth, fifth worry on the top, fifth story, fifth floor edition.

And basically, the Alamo Trust is saying we need to have this as an event space because it's going to generate about $2 million a year and help make this overall project self-sustaining financially.

Well, so what is in the fourth storey addition and that fifth story addition, what are they going to be?

Those will be upper floor galleries of the museum, and then the fifth floor will be the event space, you know, for special events that that groups can rent out and that kind of thing.

And under the Secretary of the Interior Standards, instead of the eight foot setback, it would require basically a 13 foot setback.

But Kate Rogers with the Alamo Trust was basically saying that would make this room, this area unusable because basically it would almost be like, I think, a hallway.

You know, it wouldn't function as an event.

Space would be enough space between the front of the building in the back of the building or in front of the addition of what?

So is it a rooftop?

Wasn't there talk of a restaurant slash bars event space so you could kind of sit overlooking the Alamo?

Right.

I think that that's still in the conceptual phase.

I don't know how they're going to use that, but they are going to have, you know, some kind of food service on the property.

And how close are they to having this museum and these event spaces open at this point?

What's the timeline?

And we're talking year 2027.

So it's still three years away.

But the other part of and you know, more on a more positive light, they are going to reconstruct part of the Woolworth lunch counter.

Apparently there were it's a serpentine style shaped lunch counter.

And of the four bays, they're going to reproduce two of them.

So basically half the lunch counter.

And that was very significant because it was one of the seven that was integrated peacefully and part.

Antonio Part of the civil rights movement.

Yeah.

That was unlike all the other lunch counters across the country.

And so that's going to be a big focus of this.

Right.

You know, how how big it will be part of the civil rights exhibit that will be free and open to the public on the first floor.

And you have an update on a story you had written last fall.

There's a little controversy over a a day that was focusing on the Mexican soldiers.

And they they put that off saying scheduling problems.

And then now it's not just on the Mexican soldiers, but on the Texans DIA del Sadr.

Yes, they were going to have that last year.

It's been rescheduled for May.

Okay.

And there's also coming up, a report on slavery that is going to the Alamo Trust.

And we're not sure how that'll be received by Andrew Togut, the author of Seeds of Empire, who wrote about basically the cotton industry being a driver in early Texas in the revolution.

So it'll be interesting.

The Alamo Trust has commissioned him to do a report on the role of slavery in the Texas Revolution and in the Alamo, because that's very controversial with some people who don't want the Alamo battle portrayed or, you know, the push for revolution is portrayed as a because of slavery.

Do we know what's going to be done with that, how it will be presented?

I mean, that's that's still to be determined.

I think that's going to be used in the interpretation and what's going to actually be presented in the museum exhibits.

But I you know, my personal feeling is that over the long term, there needs to be facilitation of dialog, more research along these cultural fault lines and just a commitment to to truth telling.

And we seem to have that on all sides.

The Alamo facade, they're also going to be working on that.

So if you go down and get your picture taken, we're not what will be behind you?

What kind of work?

Right.

There are conservation experts who are looking at the the detailing of the stone, where there's loss, where the mortar is weak and needs to be replaced.

They said that there were 42 different conditions on the facade.

And so basically they're they're carefully surveying the facade of the Alamo Church through April, and they're going to come back every year and do this over and over again and look at, you know, where does the stone need to be repaired, replaced, where does the mortar need to be replaced, that kind of thing.

Humidity is an ongoing problem, right.

For years.

Yeah.

You're going to have a lot to cover.

Thanks very much, Scott Huddleston, Staff Writer, Express-News, Education, history, preservation, all things Alamo.

Thanks for coming in.

Thank you, Robert.

And thank you for joining us for this edition of On the Record.

Remember, you can see this show again.

And Scott, you can download the podcast any time at KLRN.org Beamer.

We'll see you next on the record is brought to you by Steve and Adele Dufilho