THE HUMAN COST OF DOWNTOWN B'VILLE GENTRIFICATION

By Juan Montoya

During the bottoms of the pandemic-fueled economic recession in downtown Brownsville, I made it a point to take my dry cleaning to L and M Dry Cleaners and Alterations on 934 E. Adams.

I'm retired, so I really didn't need my clothes washed and ironed. I could do that myself. But I could see that the dry cleaners – run by an elderly couple and their son, los Guzman – were struggling to stay open. Their three employees labored in the back of the cleaners washing and ironing the clothing of the store's loyal customers. As the pandemic lengthened, they could have fired them. But they didn't. So supporting this small business during the pandemic was a no-brainer.

They had been eking out a living for so long that even the schools of the Brownsville Independent School District brought their flags to be washed and cleaned. They were a part of the community. Then the influx of capital (grants) and the millions Elon Musk and the Brownsville Community Improvement Corporation  (BCIC) poured into downtown  created a frenzy of real-estate speculation.

The price of real estate zoomed through the roof. Downtown is no longer a place for honest, hard-working people. It has become a feeding trough for speculators and shysters. Old-time restaurants and cantinas which gave downtown its color have been driven out. Unless you are ready to plunk down close to $5 for a beer or close to $10 for a mixed drink or a high-brow glass of wine, don't even walk in the door. And forget about conjunto music.  

Then, just in the last month and a half, the cleaners closed. The reason wasn't because the elderly couple were tired, or retired. Their son told what had happened.

"The son of the owner (the late George Saenz) came in one day and told my dad that unless he had $300,000 to buy the store, he had a month to get out and vacate the building because he was going to try to sell it," he said.

"My dad was on medication and he pleaded with the owner's son to give him some time to remove all the equipment and service all the orders we had, but the guy refused. He said he could extend it only half a month and told him to get out in 45 days. My dad said he might need a little more time. The guy turns around and tells him that it sounded like a personal problem to him. I felt like punching him for talking to my dad like that. But he told us, after all those years, to get out."

 And so the son was placed in charge of removing all the washing, ironing, and dry cleaning machinery, laying off the workers, and cleaning the place up.

The abrupt change in their lives took its toll. His mother took ill. And his dad, under the pressure of a life-changing trauma, also took ill...and died. After surviving the pandemic and  weathering economic downturns, this killed him.

Peace be with him y que en paz descanse.

Those of us who patronized the little mom-and-pop dry cleaners downtown were surprised when we arrived with our clothing only find out that the couple –  who were always, always serviceable and courteous and knew us by our name – were no longer there and only a cavernous, empty, building could be seen through the large iron-barred, plate-glass storefront.

I only found out about it yesterday when I ran into their son and he told me the story. He is angry and missing his father. And he worries about his mother, whose life revolved around the business. I will miss her cheery greeting when I walked in the door. "Hola, senor Montoya!" 

We weren't just their customers. They were our friends, our neighbors.

The price of progress? For whom? Not for this hard-working family and their employees. Perhaps for some real-estate speculator who will flip the property and turn the store into an upscale night club or bistro that only a select few can afford. 

But is there a price that one can place on the life of everyday folks or the people they employed?

Gentrification, indeed.