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.

And this week, we are starting with a look at everything there is to know that's going on at the Alamo right now.

With Alamo Plaza getting ready to open this summer.

Something cool inside the old chapel I'm pretty sure you've never seen before.

And before we get to that, I took my camera down there to show you the famous William Barret Travis victory or death letter.

And that was a plea for help written on the second day of the siege by the commanding officer.

It's only going to be down there for a few more days.

But while checking that out, I also found out about another letter to the Alamo defenders that they received just three days before the battle, a letter that's lost somewhere in Mexico.

But it's just one more thing that Alamo experts are working on right now.

We are really lucky to have the Travis letter on display here until March 24th.

He titled that to the people of Texas and all Americans in the world.

I am besieged by a thousand or more of the Mexicans under Santa Ana.

He talks about being bombarded for 24 hours and not losing a man.

But he uses these key phrases liberty, patriotism, everything dear to the American character, things that will touch the right buttons in the people living in Texas and in the United States.

He ends the letter with victory or death, a phrase that was used by George Washington at the Battle of Trenton.

So he's making that connection that the struggle they are having here in Texas is the same of that that they had with Great Britain 60 years earlier.

It's a really interesting thing because this letter, it's the second day of the siege.

And you can imagine he could probably hear the Mexican Army's bugle calls outside.

They're constantly being bombarded.

So he sends it by courier.

So one of our messengers leaves on horseback.

He rides straight to Gonzalez.

And then more copies are made.

And then it continues its journey through to the provisional government of Texas, which has been meeting to declare independence.

And they start making the decisions of what to do, how to mobilize.

People are coming.

The problem is, how do you get to the Alamo on foot or on horseback?

And if you are located anywhere outside of town, you're talking about a day's journey.

And so men start coming to the aid of the Alamo.

On March 1st, 32 men from the town of Gonzalez will arrive that boost morale.

More men are still arriving at the town of Gonzalez.

One of the things that there's another letter that that appears that most people don't don't see because it was translated into Spanish.

And it's a letter from a gentleman by the name of Williamson, better known as three legged Willie.

He had a wooden leg and he bent the leg that was not working back.

So they would count three legs.

And he was in East Texas with the rest of the government.

He was the friend of Travis, and he writes Travis a letter.

And that letter basically says, For God's sake, hold out men are help is on the way.

And this letter arrives here probably with James Butler Barnum around the 3rd of March.

And so when it arrives, there's still three days prior to the end.

They're still going to hold out as long as they can.

When the Alamo falls at the town of Gonzalez, with the force of about 400 men getting ready to march towards the Alamo, they'd you know, if they would have had another day, you know, maybe the story would be different.

You know, that letter telling them we're we're coming.

The fact that the Mexican army started important enough to ship it south, sent to Mexico City right after the Battle of the Alamo, the fact that the translated it immediately and posted it or printed it right underneath Santana's battle report.

So where is that letter?

That letter is somewhere in Mexico.

We're you know, we're not sure where it may be in the military archives.

That's one of our goals, is to be able to go down and not only go into the the general archive of Mexico, but also to do research in the military archives, trying to tell the full story into this tapestry that makes up our history.

And joining us right now is Kate Rogers, who is the executive director of the Alamo Trust that runs the Alamo and all that is going on down there on the renovations.

Thank you for joining us.

Now, this story of three legged Willie is not the main story there, but it's one of those things that you're still working on to put in the big visitor center and museum.

Yes.

Across the street from the Alamo.

So it's not just stuff you have in storage?

No, no.

And in fact, since we've been proceeding with the implementation of the Alamo Plan, you know, we acquired the Donald in Louisiana Collection, which is a beautiful Spanish colonial collection, almost equivalent in size to the Phil Collins collection.

So over 400 objects.

We also are working on the acquisition of a couple of other collections, really building out the full 300 year history, because a lot of what we had in the Alamo collection was mostly focused on the siege Texan period of Texas history.

But we'll have galleries that focus all the way on the indigenous period, the mission era, Mexican rule and the Texas revolution, and then what happened after the battle.

So the final gallery will actually be kind of fun and focused on the impact of the Alamo on popular culture.

So later this year, we're going to put out a public call.

So all those things that you have in your home that might be commemorative of the Alamo spoons, plates, lunchboxes, toy sets, all of those things.

And if you'd like to donate it to put it on display in the popular Culture Gallery.

We'd love to see what you've got.

And you're still working on the history.

Yes, Well, absolutely.

And that will be open across the street in 2027.

Yes.

But before that, pretty soon you have the education center that's on the old daughters of the Republic of Texas Library there on the grounds.

Yes.

So the Texas Cavaliers Education Center is scheduled to open in 2025.

It's under construction now, and that is partially in the building.

As you mentioned, that was the dream library.

But adjacent to that is Alamo Hall, which the daughters used as an event space starting in 1936.

Kind of interesting because that building was originally San Antonio Fire station number two, and it was renovated by the daughters during the WPA era under FDR.

So you can still see in the tiles of the floor the Work Progress Administration stamps that were used during the renovation.

So it's a really interesting little building with lots of great history education center aimed for kids.

But it's not just stuff that's right.

Now it's actually programmatic focus.

So they'll be an orientation theater so the kiddos can get a good overview of what they're about to see before they go out onto the grounds to explore.

There will be multiple classrooms where we can do different sorts of activities.

There's actually a steam lab where we can really focus on science, engineering, mathematics, which some people might think, Well, what does that have to do with history or the Alamo?

But if you think about archeology, conservation is actually a science in its own right.

You've got ballistics and physics associated with weaponry and cannons and so forth.

And then we were really excited because we're working with pre-K for essay on a dedicated early learner space.

So the experts at pre-K for essay are helping us to develop not only the physical space that the young children will will take part in and through play based learning.

But in addition to that, they're actually helping us with the curriculum.

And there's already a whole lot of demonstrations in the back.

Kids are excited.

we saw that and they're shooting in the demonstrations.

What else is opening up, I guess, before Fiesta, part of its opening.

So the Mission Gate and Loonette.

So the Mission Gate and Loonette are actually an interpretation and they're not designed to be a recreation of the original structures which were destroyed after the battle.

So the mission gate would have been the original entrance to Mission San Antonio de Valero, constructed in the mid 1740s.

The Loonette was actually added as a fortification by the Mexican army in 1835.

So really interesting part of the Alamo history, because we have to remember that the Mexican army first occupied the site as a military fort before the Texans took over in December.

So that part of the plaza will open up in what called Plaza de Valero, just south of there.

And part of the finger that's still going to be a while.

Well, opens this summer and we're actually working with the Tobin and the resident companies at the Tobin to do a really great family 4th of July celebration to open Plaza de Valera, which will be a community park.

It has a pavilion where we can do programing.

So think about bringing being able to come down, bring your family, have a nice picnic out on the lawn in front of the Bangor, enjoy the fireworks while the symphony play.

And Ernest Rodriguez that I talked to earlier, the historian curator, he was saying that instead of the reaction that people have now, is that it you want him to have?

What reaction?

Well, a lot of times I would say even already when people come down to the grounds, what we used to hear a lot is that it or I thought it would be much bigger.

Right.

Those are very common things you would hear walking around the grounds from visitors today.

What you hear is, my gosh, I had no idea that all of this was happening and going on.

Our goal is that if you think about the average time spent at the Alamo today or historically has been less than an hour, you know, people kind of come see and they don't come back frequently unless they have visitors, especially locals, visitors in town who want to see the Alamo in the future.

You'd be able to spend an entire day, if not more, taking in all the galleries, the 40 theater, the temporary exhibition that will be up inside the Ralston Family Collection Center.

So there'll be so many things to see and do and explore in the future.

And there's also going to be you're working on from the Alamo down to the River Walk.

There's already some fountains and things like that, but it's going to be totally redone.

Yeah, the Paseo del Alamo, which actually crosses through the Hyatt Hotel and intersects with the River Walk.

And that's a really important part of the story, too, because it's about the importance of water to the development of the Alamo.

That's what first attracted life to this part of San Antonio and established the community that we know today that is now the seventh largest city in the United States.

Back in the 1980s, local architect Boone Powell had the had the vision to make that connection between Alamo Plaza and the River Walk.

So we want to honor his original vision by keeping a more contemporary water feature down there.

But also, people love that aspect of the Alamo, so it's not going to be closed off.

Some people were worried about that, that it wasn't going to be connected in a big way.

But it is.

yes.

Yeah.

And in fact, the new water feature, you know, like I said, it'll be a little more sustainable than what's down there now.

Unfortunately, the water fountain that was down there now is no longer working.

And so we're going to replace it.

That's actually under construction now as well.

So there's a lot of construction going on.

What's the hardest part of all this?

I think, you know, this is not as straightforward as we're not building one building the visitor center, a museum.

There's all these different things going on simultaneously.

So managing the construction across the entire site, communication with the neighbors is obviously really important because it impacts traffic and businesses and so forth.

So I think that's one thing we really try to to get in front of at the Alamo Trust.

So people aren't surprised.

And when it's done and all done in 2027, it looks like it's going to be amazing.

Yes, it will be amazing.

Right?

160,000 square foot new museum with eight galleries telling the force the full story of the Alamo, the 40 Theater, as I mentioned, which will be the first of its kind, IMAX plus 40.

Again, taking you through the full history.

So I think it's going to be quite unexpected.

And our job is to deliver a world class experience, and that's what we intend to do.

And surprises like three legged Willie, too.

Exactly.

You never know what you're going to learn when you visit the Alamo.

Randi.

I was shocked.

Well, thank you very much.

Kate Rogers, executive director of the Alamo Trust.

Appreciate it.

Thank you.

There is a new effort here in San Antonio to prevent crime with a new office called the Office of Integrated Community Safety.

Here to tell us all about that is Jalen, Mickey Rodriguez, district two city councilman.

Thank you very much for coming in.

Thank you.

Now, this was your idea and it kind of morphed into what it is now.

What was your idea and what did it turn into?

Absolutely.

So the idea is essentially an Office of Crime and Recidivism Prevention.

So an office that works with all of our city departments looks for programs, existing and new programs that address the root causes of crime.

But in a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

So we got the Office of Integrated Community Safety.

And this is within another department.

What is it?

Well, it's going to be its own standing office under the city manager.

And what was your original idea to have a whole separate office for this and working on its own?

How many how many people are for sure.

And that's pretty much what it is.

So just like any other department, it sits underneath an assistant city manager.

It's going to have about eight staff members.

We have our Public Safety outcomes coordinator hired right now, and we have about seven more positions than what we felt.

When you talk about more positions, people think I owe more money, it's going to cost.

But these are actually positions that are in the city's budget right now.

So the past few years, through the budget management process I've been having, I've sort of transformed existing positions into things like Grant coordinators and the Public Safety Outcomes Coordinator, and we're moving some of the positions that would have been under the Good Neighbor program into this office consolidating.

And they're going to be working much more coordinated in this way.

What do you want to come out of it?

Why is this so important?

I think the biggest the biggest change is that historically, the city's reaction to crime has been very reactionary.

It hasn't been through a lens of prevention.

And so this is going to allow the city to shift the way that it operates, to focus on those root causes while we, of course, address and respond to crime.

And you also have several other initiatives that are coming to fruition right now at council.

Tell us about those.

Yes.

So today we had the governance committee meeting where three of my proposals were forwarded to different committees.

So the there was a proposal for a citywide traffic analysis that's going to be going into transportation and infrastructure, a teacher homebuyer incentive program, which is going to be going to our plan to be at planning and Community Development Committee and then historic cemeteries master Plan, which is going to be going to community health traffic study.

People would think, well, that should be going on all the time.

That goes on now and then.

It hasn't been used.

So the city does do traffic analysis and studies, but not proactively.

So oftentimes something has to happen repeatedly and the burden really falls on constituents to call in their concerns.

And often it's when something really tragic happens that something is done.

And so this will allow us to be a little bit more proactive.

And that's the vision.

Are you looking at, say, speeding up drives between red lights and having them coordinated, synchronized that way so you can just drive?

It's going to be partially about it's going to be about things like signage speeds.

It's going to also be about, you know, when we're doing our infrastructure projects, what are going to be the ways that we can handle this project and design this project in a way that impacts concerns that exist exist today.

What about the teacher homebuyers incentive?

What does that mean for a teacher?

So ideally it'll be a loan program where we get a teacher who is a first time homebuyer and they commit to working with a public school district for, say, five years.

And once they, you know, they match that time, then the loan is forgiven.

And really, this is to do our part in addressing the teacher shortage and the housing crisis.

At the same time, it's very, very challenging to retain teachers.

And so if we have an opportunity to incent that, then I think we should take that opportunity.

That opportunity, The timeline is what right now it's just it's going to the next step.

But it still could be how long?

For sure.

So it should be about I want to say the new process says that within 60 days the committee should be hearing the counter consideration requests.

From there, the committee will send it to either a session or in a session for consideration.

So you need like a term to get all your ideas, even to come this far?

No, ideally these one specifically and it's time so appropriately that they should be done with this process by the time we have our budget discussion.

So hopefully we'll be able to implement them this year.

And what about historic cemeteries on the east side in your district?

What what does that mean?

So for me and many people who drive along in the east Side, you see the cemeteries.

It's only recently we were able to get them repainted.

But there's so much love that needs to be done.

And we need we need to engage in a master planning process because it's been since 1990 was our last one, and we need to really be planning for this asset and for these gems to maintain for the future.

And this would be a place that our respect, you know, dignified people don't realize there's these number of cemeteries are historic.

The people that are there are important and it could be, I don't wanna say a tourist attraction, but it could be something of interest to a lot of people who've come to San Antonio.

It is.

And there's actually we get a lot of calls.

We at one point before they repainted the fence, we were getting a lot of calls were, hey, the the cemeteries look messed up.

And you know, this is somebody is this is many people's final resting place.

And it is of course, an attraction.

People go and they do they do tours and things through cemeteries in Buffalo soldiers and some of the historic people from the 1800s.

Absolutely.

And they're not being given the again, it's not being given the care and attention that the cemetery should be receiving.

All right.

Well, thank you very much and good luck with all those all those things you're working on.

Jalen McKee Rodriguez, Council District two.

Thanks.

Thank you.

On Reporters Roundtable this week, we're taking a look at the apartment market in and around San Antonio.

Whether it's good for renters or better for landlords.

Joining us to talk about this man who just wrote an article about that is Ramzi Abou Ghlioum who is a reporter for the San Antonio Business Journal.

Thanks for coming in.

I appreciate you having me.

First of all, if I'm looking at rent, is it a good time, a bad time, and why?

Well, I think now is probably going to be one of the better times in the last four or five years to be a renter.

And that's because there's so much supply coming online that a lot of a lot of developers are offering incentives and concessions.

And that's kind of what the article that I just wrote is about, which is that the so many people are offering incentives that they've actually affected the overall pricing of the market.

And so I think we looked at the average and it was about a one month free rent for most newly built apartments in San Antonio.

And we're actually we're leading all the major Texas markets and concessions.

So if you want to be a renter, a San Antonio is the place.

And is it downtown?

Is it what you call class-A?

That's more concessions, that's worth more coming on.

That's most of the most new builders are not going to build Class B product because most folks want a swimming pool and a dog park.

And all of these amenities that we've gotten used to and sort of modern apartment living and so and classic.

Yeah, most of the incentives are coming from class-A, so much so that they're actually siphoning from some Class B because if you're renting in a class B place and med center, for example, and you're paying 11 or 1200 dollars and then somebody comes along and says, hey, you know, we're offering two months of free rent and it's 1500 bucks for people who are in that transition phase who are like, I'm willing to shell out a few more hundred dollars for all of these incentives.

They might actually be scooped up from the Class B market.

And this is across the Southwest because some places rents are going up.

Yeah, it's it's anywhere where it's mostly happening across the Sunbelt.

So your Colorado is in Florida and a lot in Texas, mostly in Texas, I think.

And that is because this was there's so much migration, there's so much domestic migration into particularly Texas and Florida, that developers were just trying to churn out as many apartments as they could because the demand was so high, especially during the pandemic or around the pandemic time.

They figured more people working from home coming here.

People might have thought that, well, interest rates are going up, so I don't want to buy a house right now.

I want to get into an apartment.

And so there would be more people coming into apartments.

Yeah.

Is that not the case?

Somewhat.

Homebuilders are, of course, are going to fight for business.

So they're not sort of you know, they're not going down without a fight.

Might be a better way to put it, because homebuilders are also offering incentives.

So, again, if you're the person if you've got 20 or $30,000 in the bank, whatever you might have saved up for a down payment for a home, and you're like, interest rates are a little bit high.

If you go to a new homebuilder, they'll tell you, hey, interest is at 7%.

Well, buy down your interest rate to about 4% for one or two or three years.

And then at that point, people are anticipating that the Federal Reserve is going to start bringing down interest rates by late 20, by some time around 2025.

And so at that point, you can go ahead and refinance when your three years of that mortgage rate buy down that the builder offered you is about to expire, you then will hop over to a bank or credit union, whoever you get your financing through and say, all right, now I want to finance.

You might not get that 4% rate that the builder was able to give you, but you'll be out of some probably four out of 5% rate, which is, you know, you can I call it losing blood in the margins.

You can stand to lose a little bit of blood in the margins.

There typically.

And now for apartments in the building, do you see a slowdown in that?

Are builders saying, well, you know, or looking ahead, we're having trouble now, so we're going to put off building?

I think so.

I think that what it is, is that we've seen multifamily starts go down and starts are anytime somebody begins a new housing project, we call it a start.

And so multifamily starts.

Multifamily permitting at the city level has certainly gone down.

I've looked at that data personally myself and then some of the third party data gathering resources that I use.

I've also seen seeing the same thing.

So what some investors are doing is planning ahead and saying, Hey, we will, we're going to invest in this apartment building because we think that in three years or in four years, these are these are people with not just tens of millions, but hundreds of millions of dollars just sort of waiting on the side that they can put into whatever investment they want.

Who are saying that we think we know now is not a great time for an investor to be in the market.

But we think that if we get in to a really great location like downtown, like Stone Oak, like Alamo Heights, there's not a lot of apartments in Alamo Heights, but downtown and Stone Oak and sort of your northwest side, far west side, they're getting into those apartments early again because they can stand to lose a little bit of blood and wait out those three years when they think that values are going to go up, rents are going to go back up for precisely the reason that you just said.

And in those locations now you're talking about, you know, some people moving out or it's cheaper and sprawl.

Yeah, it terms of apartments as well as housing.

Absolutely.

And it's not just it's not just the residents who move to places where it's cheaper.

If you look at where development is happening, where most development is happening in San Antonio right now, it's the south side and the west side.

And that's because land is much cheaper out there and it's a lot easier for a developer to make the numbers work.

So because those buildings are out there, naturally people are going to tend to move out there as well.

All right.

Well, thanks very much.

Ramzi Abou Gallium.

Interesting look at the apartment.

You have to come back when things like that, like they always do.

I appreciate it.

Thanks for coming in.

Absolutely.

Thank you so much for having and thank you for joining us for this edition of On the Record.

You can see this show again or check out any previous shows.

You can also download the podcast at KLRN.org and we'll see you next on the record is brought to you by Steve and Adele Dufilho