The sustainability initiative to the original redevelopment plan of Hemisfair Park is mentioned in HemisFair’s Sustainability Plan. The Sustainability Plan[1] explores six core sections, which are detailed below.
Energy
The energy component includes plans for reducing energy demand from new construction, connecting district energy systems, developing alternative energy supplies, encouraging the use and incorporation of renewable energy systems, using passive design principles for buildings and public space, and the use of smart buildings that have smart meters with real-time consumption feedback and utility rate information.
Water
The water component focuses on the use of water features and infrastructure in the park system. The plan includes scenarios for reduced water demand; stormwater treatment for reuse and reduction of runoff pollution, and treatment and reuse of recycled water. This component also seeks to celebrate the site’s water history, possibly by as restoring the historic acequias that were developed during Spanish colonial settlement. The plan seeks to use this as an opportunity to provide onsite education about the role of water in the city. Other initiatives include adopting native landscapes to be irrigated with recycled water.
Transportation
The transportation component includes new modes to be aligned with existing transit: by increasing transit stops within Hemisfair park and making public transit as accessible and comfortable as possible, the site will help to reduce personal vehicle use. This component also reduces the amount of free on-site parking and encourages other alternative transportation options such as providing electric vehicle charging infrastructure, car sharing, increased bike uses and the incorporation of bike lanes, and complete streets. To make the park more pedestrian friendly, the plan also incorporates pedestrian crossings in mid-block areas and at intersections with large feeder streets such as Cesar Chavez Boulevard and Alamo Street.
Community
The community sustainability initiative is mainly focused on completing the park as laid out in the proposed plan. This includes incorporating local food production, developing urban agriculture, establishing community councils to allow Hemisfair residents to participate in the decision making process, increase mixed income residential development to ensure a diverse population, and increase educational opportunities by creating an ‘educational’ park with an interactive, learning component for children to play in. This will also provide an opportunity for the city to showcase its innovations in sustainable growth.
Waste Management
Sustainable initiatives of waste management include the reuse or recycling of existing buildings and material, reducing the environmental impacts of materials in design and operation through the use of green materials, and having separated waste streams in order to expand existing recycling efforts. Strategies for this include providing segregated waste receptacles for landfill, recyclables, and paper in public spaces. The plan also encourages developers to incorporate a sorting space on each floor of buildings to make waste sorting an easier process. In order to optimize waste opportunities, the plan will also consider implementation of a waste-to-energy component to the existing energy plant that would be able to accept waste from Hemisfair and produce electricity or biogas. This would raise community awareness about waste issues while creating jobs.
Economics
The last component to the Hemisfair Park sustainability initiative is economics. This consists of incentivizing the development of green buildings, renewable energy, water conservation, and other sustainable strategies to be incorporated in Hemisfair Park. The plan aims to provide high values to residents and businesses by linking residential development to employment centers in the downtown and surrounding commercial corridors, and also creating alternative financial instruments for sustainability such as adopting a green building fund to pool resources from tenants and residents, and encouraging local businesses to adopt sustainable practices by implementing a clause agreement in leases that includes incentives to incorporate sustainability in their business plans and goods production.
Additional Sustainability Issues Identified by the Team
The existing 2011 Master plan includes several sophisticated sustainability goals and measures. Our design interventions incorporate pre-established sustainability elements and expand upon them in our own concepts. Elements relating to energy (such as the use of green buildings) and economic components (such as the cost of building materials and prototypes) will be assessed using a financial feasibility test. Using the Envision Tomorrow Return-on-Investment tool, an open source scenario planning tool, we examined whether these proposed projects might provide a financially sustainable outlook.[2] Water, transportation, and community elements are addressed through our design scenarios detailed in the section below.
One critical factor to consider for sustainability is the existing infrastructure and existing buildings. As mentioned above, our focus area consists of several historical structures from late 19th century to mid-twentieth century that provide an invaluable legacy for San Antonio and the park. The existence of these buildings will play an important role in creating an identity for the redeveloped neighborhood. How to reuse former world’s fair era buildings with consideration for a neighborhood identity that leads to not only environmental sustainability but also social and economic sustainability is a vital consideration for the redevelopment of the park. As HemisFair is also adjacent to several historical San Antonio neighborhoods, including the Lavaca historic district to the south, La Villita to the west and King William to the southwest[3] (Figure 5), and new development at Hemisfair will have a significant impact on these neighborhoods. Finally, usage of existing infrastructure, water, and energy are also considered..
Map of Downtown San Antonio showing HemisFair Park, Lavaca Historic District and King William Historic District. Source: UTSA Center for Cultural Sustainability (2011) Inventory, Assessment and Evaluation of Historic Resources in HemisFair Park, San Antonio: UTSA Center for Cultural Sustainability.
Continue to Proposed Design Interventions
Footnotes
[1] Hemisfair Park Area Sustainability Goals. (2012). Retrieved from http://www.hemisfair.org/pdfs/0006_Hemisfair_Sustainability_Plan_Arup_09052012.pdf
[2] For more information about Envision Tomorrow, see http://www.envisiontomorrow.org/
[3] UTSA Center for Cultural Sustainability (2011) Inventory, Assessment and Evaluation of Historic Resources in HemisFair Park, San Antonio: UTSA Center for Cultural Sustainability.