We came upon this cement truck unloading its cargo in the building bought out by the city on the western fringe of Market Square.
The city workers were courteous enough to allow us to take a peek inside the building that once housed the Los Pescadores Bar, a popular hangout for downtown drinkers. By chance we knew the owners of the business before. But we never knew that outside the back door, in the rear, there is a quaint little patio with a palm tree, a lemon tree and even a tree of pahuas, a relative of the avocado tree.The city – through its BetterBlock program – has begun to work on the inside of the building, fortifying the foundations and floors with cement, as is shown in this picture.
The plan, if we are to believe the map in the Better Block document, is to place a police substation there and to establish a music school of youth on the corner of Washington and 11th Street (see map, click to enlarge).
The buildings in the picture are located at the lower left hand side of the plan pictured on the site plan. About the only other business left on the half block is Los Reyes Restaurant that is owned by the proprietors of the land. All others were tenants that had to move out, including the popular G&A Restaurant and Rene's watch repair shop next to where the police substation is planned.Most of the plans will depend on the acquisition of funds to revitalize the area so it will be of necessity a slow development. Until then, don't expect great changes coming to downtown soon. But as the saying goes, the longest journey begins with one small step.
5 comments:
Congratulations, Dallas. Your never-ending quest to become "world class" has finally paid off. Not in the sense that Dallas will now be mentioned in the same breath as London and Paris or transformed into a international tourist hotspot. But you have finally succeeded in scrubbing off the redness the rest of the world assumes is covering the back of your neck. Proof: Dallas is the "least country city in Texas," according to a study by the real estate website Estately, which ranked the nation's 50 most populous cities based on the percentage of people with Facebook interests like "rodeo" and "pickup trucks" and ran the results through an extensive peer-review process. (That's how these gimmicky real estate blogs work, right?) Nationally, Dallas was in the middle of the pack in every category but pickups (No. 4). We wear fewer cowboy boots than Milwaukee; we like country music less than Portland; we watch NASCAR less than Denver. More important, Dallas was far less country than Houston (16), Arlington (11), El Paso (5), and San Antonio (2). Fort Worth, naturally, is the most country, getting high marks for cowboy boots, rodeo and sweet tea. We'll leave it to you to decide whether or not this is something to celebrate. But there is definitely something special about a place that's equally unattractive to both NASCAR fans and hipsters.
In Brownsville we have Bicycle Trails, we are the World's Capital of Bicycling. What else do you want.
Da Mayor , disguised as Squanto, will developed injun trails for the Aborigines and Pioneers. This, a secret Memo from the National Security Agency. He will attend next meeting wearing moccasins and deer Bermuda outfit.
Sorry Guys, Better Block was a temporary event that was held on May 19th 2012 hosted by the city of brownsville. http://betterblock.org/brownsville-better-block-set-for-may-19th/
The site plan shown was the layout for that event, not the design for the market square area.
Keep up the super sleuth work!
Da Mayor.was disguised as a brick layer. My grandmother said, you mean "un albañil"!
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