DOES IT LOOK LIKE $75,000 IN BCIC CASH HAS BEEN SPENT HERE? OWNER – FELICIA FRUIA-EDGE, ST. JOE GRAD – IS ASKING FOR ANOTHER $125,OOO FOR IT AND 409 13TH NEXT DOOR

Special to El Rrun-Rrun

Does that look like $75,000 of your sales tax money has been spent in that shell of a building listed on the BIG 2.0 grant awarded by the Brownsville Community Improvement Corporation on 409 E. Levee?

And would you sink another $125,000 of sales-tax generated public money on that investment?

On December 17, 2021 Felicia Fruia Edge – yeah, Luke Fruia's daughter – received $75,000 from the Musk Foundation then the money ran out. So like everyone else, she and her husband had to wait until the next round of money appeared.

Well, the Fruia-Edges are going to the BCIC well again tomorrow with a request for an additional $125,000, but with a different twist. This time they appear to want it for use in the 409 13th Street address for 409 Curio, a business on a two-story that has been in operation since Mark Clark had the 409 Gallery in 2005.

The BIG 2.0 grant guidelines say that there are "no exceptions" to the requirement that the recipient of the grant has 12 months to have the business up and running. Let's see. The grant for the Levee street address was issued on Dec. 17, 2021. Obviously, with the clock still ticking on the project grant, it has been a year and five months and they have not complied with the BCIC requirements.

There have been no completion of the project, and now the same applicant is trying to get another $125,000 and there isn't even a roof on the carcass of the 409 Levee site. In fact, there is no existing 409 address to begin with. It's  actually 1257 E. Levee. What's going on here?

What actually happened, insiders say, is that the initial $75,000 that were approved for the Levee Street property was used for the 409 13th Street instead. That building, with a short-term apartment upstairs, already has an occupancy permit. The $125,000, apparently, will be to do something with whatever you want to call those roofless archeological ruins on the corner.

The BCIC opened up the grant process again for the people who didn’t receive the full amount and required the March 20, 2023 deadline with no exceptions.

But if there's a bond between them and other grant recipients it's SJA.  (Fruia-Edge is a St. Joseph Academy alumnus and Pena's kids go there) So maybe those rules don’t apply here. Even through Fruia-Edge appears to be in obvious violation of the BCIC rules (which seem to change from day to day), CEO Peña has the "discretion" of placing the rules aside for her, but - apparently - not for other applicants.

If Fruia-Edge now gets approval for another $125,000 on this month’s meeting, it will make her the only participant to get the whopping full amount of $200,000. 

No one else who applied was approved and were told there was no more money as late as December 2022. 

They are such bods that Peña promoted 409 Curio on her personal Facebook page so everyone knows to go to a location that doesn’t have a restroom or a roof. In the post, she invites readers to go to 409 E. Levee "or visit at 409 E. 13th St." 

Clark had restored the building's two floors in 2005 and operated it until 2018 and left it fully functional when he moved to Corpus Christi. Fruia-Edge also bought the corner lot, which is really 1257 Levee, but and listed as 409 Levee when she got the $75,000. Now wants the additional $125,000. 

And you remember the 409 13th St. address which is really 1257 Levee. That's where Arturo "Turi" Treviño and commissioner Pedro Cardenas hosted the Geriatric Wrestling World Championship de Lucha Libre where they had all the cars towed because they parked illegally in a private parking lot caddy corner to the property. 

Same location. 

According to interim CEO Peña and the city permit department, in order to get the grant you must first activate the 1st floor and be fully operational and the second floor has to be used but has to have a sprinkler system and an elevator. 

The place has neither roof nor walls. It’s a POP UP second-hand store for the St. Joe buddies to hold their garage sales and call it vintage. But you can put lipstick on a pig and it is still a pig. It’s a ropa usada.

The BCIC announced the available money on March 3, 2023 – a Friday – in the evening, at 5:25 pm. Remember that the deadline on March 20, 2023 Monday at 12 noon. You had to have applied for the grant and have been approved by March 20,2023. 

That only gave everyone 10 business days to get everything together that included permits and an itemized project summary beforehand and to make an appointment with BCIC Community Development Manager Miriam Suarez and with Peña – the latter who just happened to have gone on vacation for Spring break March 11-March 20,2023. 

Her assistant Suarez took 2 days off for "personal time" on March 15-16. So how would anyone be able to submit anything if no one was there to receive it? 

Now over a month later the only person allowed and approved for the full grant is no other than Fruia- Edge. Her "edge" in this grant process may be that she is a St Joseph Academy alumni who graduated in the same class as Cardenas, Treviño, Nurith Galonsky,, Trey Martinez ( Tony Martinez's son), and Michael Limas.

As far as can be seen, the BCIC board and administration believe that only mere mortals have to follow the guidelines. The Rich are different and have the guidelines changed when it suits them and see the BIG 2.0 grants as their personal ATM compliments of the unwashed masses.