Once bitten, twice shy.
Earlier this month, prominent San Antonio business owners — some still smarting from long-delayed construction on the North St. Mary's Strip — tweeted out fears that VIA Metropolitan Transit's new Advanced Rapid Transit Plan may end in similar disaster.
VIA's proposed Green Line will be the transit authority's first Advanced Rapid Transit, or ART, service. At a total cost of $446.3 million, the route would ferry passengers from San Antonio International Airport down San Pedro Avenue, through the heart of downtown, down Southtown's St Mary's Street, then to the South Side.
"I have a really bad feeling about this based on prior performance," Mr. Juicy owner Andrew Weissman wrote on X, the platform previously called Twitter. "Please pray for small businesses along this corridor during construction."
Longtime restaurateur Weissman's burger joint lies along VIA's proposed Green Line route on San Pedro Avenue.
San Antonio restaurant mogul Chad Carey, whose restaurants Double Standard and Hands Down also lie close to the Green Line, tweeted that he wouldn't trust San Antonio City Manager Erik Walsh and Mayor Ron Nirenberg with running a Valero gas station, much less managing another major construction project.
Meanwhile, Jody Bailey Newman, owner of Southtown ice house The Friendly Spot, tweeted that small business owners shouldn't have to fear major construction projects every time they're announced.
The fears of Weissman, Carey and Newman stem from the disastrous construction delays along the St. Mary's Strip, a project that went on nearly a year longer than promised and left the thoroughfare impassable for months on end. Affected business owners said the once-thriving nightlife area still hasn't fully recovered.
"The traffic on the Strip is noticeably smaller than before," said bar owner Aaron Peña, who closed his St. Mary's cocktail spot Squeezebox after construction delays bit deeply into his sales. "I've driven down there on Friday and Saturday nights, and it's not like it used to be. You used to see droves of people walking around and going out, and now it's just different."
Peña attributed the closures of at least two other businesses — nightclub El Ojo and dining spot Wurst Behavior — to the construction debacle.
Despite those concerns, VIA Senior Vice President of Engagement Jon Gary Herrera said the Green Line project won't turn into another St. Mary's Strip fiasco.
"[On St. Mary's], the city was having to redo the storm sewers, they had to redo the sewer line, they had to redo the water line and those types of things that are under the street," Herrera said. "We're not going to do any of that."
In a major change to VIA's approach to bus service, the Green Line buses would primarily travel a designated center lane, avoiding regular center-city traffic, which can move at a crawl during peak times. On paper, anyway, that means riders would benefit from quicker travel and VIA would improve its efficiency.
"It's going to be changing the way San Antonians move," Herrera said. "Having this type of system as the core piece of our community is just going to be a tremendous asset and tremendous value for everyone."
Construction on the nearly 12-mile-long project, backed by $270 million in federal funding, is scheduled to begin in early 2025, with construction wrapping up sometime in 2027, according to Herrera.
However big the promised benefits, small business skeptics said they've heard it all before.
Strip mining
When the city began a project to widen sidewalks, build bike lanes, add new lighting and repave the St. Mary's Strip in March 2021, city officials assured business owners including Peña that construction would be wrapped up by October of the following year.
The completion date was moved back to April 2023, which city officials attributed to snags in sewer work and other utility issues. Indeed, 26 days were tacked on due to "conflict with a Google utility line," Axios San Antonio reported.
Ultimately, the city even fell short of that revised date, and construction wasn't completely finished until September 2023 — 11 months after the initial deadline. During some of that time, streets were completely impassable, and patrons were forced to walk over rubble to access bars and restaurants there.
"We would have renewed our lease if it hadn't been for the construction," Peña said, who ultimately made the tough call to shut down Squeezebox and open a new bar and restaurant, Gimme Gimme, in Southtown.
Following the St. Mary's Strip shitshow, District 6 Councilwoman Melissa Cabello Havrda introduced the Responsible Bidder Ordinance, which puts greater scrutiny on city-hired contractors. Under that ordinance, which passed early last year, companies unable to meet deadlines and budgets are barred from city work for three years.
Federal oversight
The Responsible Bidder Ordinance doesn't apply to VIA and its Green Line project since it's not a city contractor.
"A lot of people, when they think of VIA, CPS or SAWS, they think they can call the city, and the city will help them," Havrda said. "Most people, I think, don't understand that the city is separate from these utilities."
Even so, Havrda, who describes herself as an advocate for both public transit and small business, said she encourages VIA to take a look at the city's list of so-called "naughty contractors" that have failed to live up the city's expectations in the past.
"[VIA] should take a look at that list," Havrda said. "They don't have to, but we already have a heads up that this could be a company that doesn't live up to your standards."
While city rules don't apply to VIA, Herrera said it will be held accountable by the federal government since 60% of the money for the new line is coming from the Federal Transit Administration.
"Another big partner here is the Federal Transit Administration, and they like to know how their partner is spending," Herrera said. "These big dollars they're sending, they don't just say, 'Hey, do what you want.' They send them, and they watch them. They have their own consulting contractors that report to the FTA that are also watching how this project is proceeding and how this project is going."
In other words, if VIA intentionally delays the project, inflates costs or misses deadlines, it could face serious consequences, including having the feds slam the door when it tries to access future funding.
What's more, the Green Line work won't be comparable to the upheaval caused by city projects on St. Mary's and nearby Broadway, which tore up sections of streets and left them impassable, Herrera pledged. It also won't include the sewage and utility work that led to deep delays on the Strip and primarily will occur along 26 proposed stations along the route.
"Most of the construction that does occur is going to be around our stations, and we're going to make improvements to some intersections along the corridor in order to facilitate and push vehicles through intersections at a faster clip," Herrera said. "This is not going to be a construction project like on the scale that Broadway and St. Mary's saw, because we don't need to do any of that for the station work that we're doing."
Damaged goods
Work around the stations will included some limited widening of streets, but Herrera said that will be completed in phases, minimizing impact on businesses along the route.
"The VIA commitment is to make sure that they're not going to lose access to their customers," Herrera said. "The driveway access that they have, we're going to make sure that those remain open. Even if we might have to do some work at a station that's in front of their building, it is definitely something we are committed to — to make sure that we're keeping the flow of their customer base."
Although the VIA Green Line — including its scope, funding and oversight — is fundamentally different from the city's work on St. Mary's Strip, the damage from the latter project is still fresh in business owners' minds. The distrust isn't easily repaired.
Indeed, the city's poor handling of the St. Mary's project is the primary reason why incumbent District 1 City Councilman Mario Bravo lost to political newcomer Sukh Kaur, San Antonio political strategist Christian Archer told the Current at the time.
"There's a big, healthy distrust, even with [Kaur], who has been responsive and has worked with us," Peña said. "But, it's just after that kind of experience, it's like the definition of trauma: you don't trust anybody."
The ball's now in VIA's court to show whether it can stick to deadlines and avoid disruptions to earn the trust of San Antonio businesses and residents who feel burned by city government.
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