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.

Join us now as we go on the record with Randy Beamer.

Hi, everybody.

Thank you for joining us for on the record, I'm Randy Beamer, and this week we are starting with the demolition of the Institute of Texan Cultures, which just started a couple of weeks ago.

But the court battle over it continues.

In fact, this week there's a ruling.

And then there is another appeal filed by the San Antonio Conservation Society.

Louis, better as the president.

Thank you very much for coming in.

I'm glad to be here.

First of all, you've been fighting the possible demolition and the idea of it for a number of years.

What did you do this week as they are just starting to do the first steps of tearing it down?

Well, back on Wednesday, March 29th, we filed for an injunction, a temporary injunction to really hold off their remediation that they're doing.

And in all of that demolition of the building, to really have an opportunity to find those alternate uses.

When the University of Texas in San Antonio got the demolition permit from the Texas Historic Commission.

There is a series of conditions and elements that they were supposed to complete, and one of them was a study of seven possible alternate uses of that building.

Now they've only done one, for example, which was assuming they'd occupied the entire building.

And so they went with that conclusion.

Well, is probably not profitable or not going to work.

So they are moving ahead with their plans to to demolish the building.

Now, the state had owned that for a long time.

Yes.

The Institute of Texan Cultures, as an entity of the state, owns it.

The arguments to tear it down is it would cost millions of dollars to fix it up.

It is not state of the art as a museum, the institute, the institute wants to move to a better place.

Very few people have been going to it, as we remember, from either kids or decades ago when you had the Texas Folklife Festival, there.

And it is, you know, there are berms around it.

It is kind of a bunker, literally built as a bunker.

And so as a possible place for a sports stadium.

And that project marble bigger complex.

People say it would be much better used.

It's not to them, historic as something that should be preserved because it was built as many things were to be temporary at as part of HemisFair.

That's those are some of the arguments.

Well, one of the interesting things is when the state legislature legislature authorized the building, was it to be a permanent structure, not a temporary one for HemisFair?

Yes.

Some of them were.

Oh, absolutely.

I mean, a lot of them, you know, you could tell by looking at it.

But this is intended to be a permanent building to the benefit of Texans.

And that's where the Institute of Texas Cultures was a museum that occupied that building.

But that had to do with actually the statement of the future of the building itself.

And so, since everything that's gone on back in May of this last year, they moved the Institute of Texas Culture Museum and its holdings out.

Their intention is to try to find another location for it.

Right now, most of it's in storage, and they may have something at the bottom of the Frost Bank center.

But the whole idea.

For now, they would move.

It by then.

Yeah.

They're trying to find someplace with more, you know, connected foot traffic.

And that makes sense to me in that regard.

That's in terms of the museum.

But the structure itself is intended to be a permanent one.

Find that opportunity to make best use.

So there's various hearings at one with the Texas Historic Commission.

It was, you know, plenty of opportunities to find alternate uses.

In fact, one of the challenges is to do that.

That's one of the reasons why we're trying to put a pause in this process.

And so you, after Monday, I should say that Monday, a judge ruled here in San Antonio that, you don't they don't have jurisdiction for you.

You sued here in San Antonio, you sued the city, and you sued the Institute of Texan Culture.

Is this.

UTSA.

UTSA, or is that, because they shouldn't be doing it in your city says it's not theirs.

They don't have it, although they could buy that land afterward is a big project.

I'm part of Project Marvel.

So they have ruled against that.

What is the basis of the appeal now in Austin to a different court?

Well, in the 15th Circuit Court of Appeals that was specifically put in place to hear these kinds of arguments where someone is trying to, to sue an entity such as the state of Texas that does have this sovereign immunity.

And so is another chance to make their point known, to really have that opportunity for that, you know, temporary injunction put in place to keep from tearing it down completely.

Right now they have the opportunity to remove the asbestos that's inside of it, but they're going beyond that.

You know, when they when you drop panels and, elements off the side of the building is, you know, becoming obviously destructive.

Now, this has been going on the fight of this because of the possibility of the demolition has been going on for years.

Yes.

And those seven possibility, these you talked about, no one has really come forward developers and said, yes, we'd like to build something on this land with the building there.

And so it kind of suggests that that isn't maybe feasible, at least financially for someone.

Well, it's kind of hard to say because all those different alternatives, really weren't studied.

They took one, which was a full occupancy use of this 180,000ft² and determined, well, that's not going to work.

Well.

And then they didn't look at the other six alternatives that had been identified already for them.

What are some of those that you think would work?

Well, I don't know an entire list of what was going right into that one.

But one of the things that we had suggested and some of them we had already had, been suggested they wanted to build, for example, culinary and hospitality college.

Well, here's something that's already built that they could do there.

There's other kinds of sports venues that might fit in that space.

There's, you know, opportunities to use that structure now.

Again, it doesn't necessarily appeal by design to individuals.

It's a brutalist design, which means basically exposed concrete, which is what it is.

But the reason why is deemed historic and not just 1 or 2 elements.

And we think about that one.

But, last year it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Which doesn't mean that it couldn't be torn down, by state law.

That's right.

That, and that's one of those things you did to get it listed so that it wouldn't be.

But the Texas Historical Commission has said, as I understand it, it's okay.

They have in this case.

And what's interesting that was reached as an administrative decision, there was still never any public input permitted in terms of how important the structure was and how it might be used.

The commissioners themselves were somewhat short circuited in this process because, again, it never went back to that.

Board of Commissioners of Texas Historic Commission.

It was administratively decided that that would be something to do.

And so that's how it was granted.

So it's grant, it's gone and passed that hurdle.

What's the next step, as you understand it, from the, court in Austin.

How long do you think that will take?

And in the meantime, they are going ahead with the demolition.

At least that it has.

Never it has never stopped.

And that's just said, even though we've tried on several instances, we've not had success with the courts to do that.

For a variety of reasons.

And one of which is, again, this immunity position.

So what we're hoping to accomplish there is to have an opportunity to complete our case, which we think is a very strong case and or saving.

And in the past, you've you've had some campaigns that have gotten a groundswell of support.

There was a hotel that was going to be built in the building area, big, big hotel.

It cast a shadow.

I mean, the things that you have done in the past have gotten a big public support.

What has it happened this time?

And does that make it tougher for you to to fight this fight?

Well, the support I've found has been really overwhelming.

When we look at social media, when we talk to people about this, they have been thinking of us for taking this effort to not let just things happen behind the closed doors and whatever deals get made.

But, you know, they're really appreciating what we're trying to do to save this structure, and also for the fact of making sure it's more public.

I mean, the public has never had an input on the decision of the fate of this building.

Well, it's going to be interesting to see.

I appreciate you coming in and updating us on this as the battle goes on.

Thanks so much for coming in.

Louis Vetter, president of the San Antonio Conservation Society.

Thanks.

Well, thank you very much, Randy.

I appreciate the chance to be here.

A new poll just out this week from UTSA shows who's in the lead and who is way down in the mayor's race with all 27 candidates and how they're doing.

Here to tell us all about it is Brian Gervais, who is director of UC and UTSA center for Public Opinion Research and associate professor of political science.

Thank you very much for coming in.

Thanks for having me back.

Now, this, the polling center started, what, about a year ago, a little over a year ago.

We launched in, fall of 23.

First started doing polling in early 2024.

And the polling in the mayor's race.

You did one last?

Yeah.

Fall.

Yeah.

And what you found then is most people have no idea who's running.

Right.

And people weren't thinking much about the mayor's race at the time.

It was the middle of the presidential election and national federal election.

So I don't think they had, or thinking much at all about an election coming up in April, May of 25.

But we also had a much smaller pool of candidates.

Yeah.

Than it was.

Nobody knew exactly how many.

Now, that is official.

27.

27 candidate.

Candidates.

And so what did you find?

Well, we found that, a good deal of folks, a plurality at least, still don't have their mind made up.

So we're talking to likely voters here.

It is a decrease from what we saw in our last poll in February, where a majority either were unfamiliar with all of the candidates or didn't know how they're going to vote.

Now, a majority, at least, has one candidate in mind or have a has a choice among all those candidates.

But we still have a number of voters who haven't made their minds up yet.

And so it's a pretty fluid race.

You know, I don't think, we know or for for sure an outcome at this point.

But we do see a few trends in terms of how candidates have been moving.

And so, now that you have a top, top candidate, is that 13%?

Yeah.

We know it's going to be a runoff.

Yeah.

Who's at the.

Top?

Gina Ortiz Jones, who twice ran for congressional office locally here.

And one of the most competitive, seats, in the United States Congress for, for a number of years.

And so she's got a lot of name recognition, you know, people, I've heard her name before.

And she's been very active, campaigning.

And so perhaps it's no surprise that she's she's currently leading the race, and she's got a it's a real lead here.

Right.

Her lead over, the second and third place, candidates is statistically significant.

And she jumped to that because I think John Courage, count city councilman now.

He was about 9% before, and he's still about there.

Yeah, yeah.

So she was slightly ahead of courage or about.

Yeah.

Even with courage in our, in our February poll maybe had a slight edge but wasn't a significant lead.

And now she does.

But yet John Courage is still right up there in second place and is closely followed by Beto Altamirano.

And Rondo.

Pablos is another name.

Yeah, that people may have thought would be higher, but earlier in your polling was and now he's polling.

He moved up a lot.

I mean, he was under 1% in our February poll and now he's up to 5%.

So that's a that's a four point shift.

Pretty rapidly.

And again, maybe that's not surprising.

We've got a PAC, backed by Governor Abbott that's backing him, that's gotten involved, and he's done some campaigning.

And so, I don't think he started up with, much name recognition in San Antonio.

He's Texas secretary of state.

That's not an elected office of.

So lots of voters probably familiar with them, but they're starting to become familiar with them.

And that probably explains why he's polling where he is now.

How about some of the others down?

And what's the lowest?

Because some of them are significantly less than 1%, right?

Well, I mean, we've I mean, we have some people that are at 0.00, right?

I mean, we've got 27 candidates, and 18 of them are polling below 1%.

So we've got nine candidates.

We've been calling it our group of nine, that are polling above 3% at the moment.

And in this you didn't ask who would their second or third choice.

But now we don't have tiered voting in San Antonio so doesn't matter.

Yeah.

You know, if we had ranked choice or something, that'd be pretty neat I think to see and that might be a neat question to ask in the future, who would be your second choice?

But yeah, as of right now, you know, we, have a pretty competitive race, and, you know who's going to make the runoff?

It's not really clear.

And will you do another poll after the or before the runoff after that main.

It's kind of quick.

Yeah.

It's a quick turnaround.

So we're considering it.

We're trying to see can we get it into the field.

You know we don't like to have our polls be released during the early voting period.

And so early voting for the runoff starts May 27th.

We've got the actual mayoral election May 3rd.

And so we got to kind of look at the calendar and say, okay, can we get this done?

And out ten results released before the runoff.

And you also released, some results on some other issues in San Antonio that you've looked at before.

How how are those faring?

Well, we did see a slight dip in support for both Project Marvel and for, the plan to build a new downtown, stadium for the San Antonio Missions.

Minor league team.

You know, whether or not that's a real trend or not, we're not really sure, but, the, the both of those initiatives were polling above 40%, and the only, fallen to about 34% approval.

I some people might wonder, okay, well, how do you phrase that?

You know, Mission Stadium went forward with the city council because it's tax increment and reinvestment.

So whatever they put in there.

And so that's that.

Yeah.

Tax money.

Yeah.

And so you put that in the question.

Right.

Well, you know.

You use that term, you don't scare people off.

But we, we do provide a little bit of details that it would be funded in part by, taxing on the the redevelopment of the land surrounding where the mission Stadium was will be built.

Same thing with Project Marble.

We provided a little bit of detail of what it would encompass, you know, just potentially a new stadium, our new downtown arena for, the San Antonio Spurs and, and, you know, redevelopment, of the convention center and just a few other things.

The land bridge over I-37, just a few examples of what it would involve.

Do you say public financing or taxes or what do you say?

So we do ask about.

Hotel, motel, the.

Venue tax.

And we explained the venue tax in a separate question.

We asked people if they'd support or vote for, using the venue tax, to support, building a new arena for, for the Spurs.

We explained that the venue tax is a tax on, you know, hotels and rental cars here.

And there's a little bit more support there.

I mean, that's still over 40%.

And that potentially is something that voters, Bexar County voters will be voting on in November.

You know, whether or not they want the venue tax to be used for that purpose.

And so we do see, you know, at least some moderate support, for, for that, which might bode well, for folks that would like to see the money be used for that purpose.

And when we talk when you first started here, this is really the kind of issues and long term, goals say that you wanted to get into for San Antonio.

Yeah, yeah.

We want to make some sense of what voters think and what residents believe and bring their voices, to the forefront to make it clear, you know, we try to focus on issues that we think are really important that voters care about, and, and, and just help, with, you know, what officials and other organizations get some sense of what voters care about and what they.

Desire and what kind of, methodology did you use?

People might wonder, how did they get these numbers?

How did they get the people?

Yeah, they go door to door.

Was it our line?

Yeah.

So we we have a commercial voter file here and we randomly select, folks, outreach.

It's called stratified voting.

But we select people based on their past participation and local elections.

And so, we're basically waiting on both people's participation and in municipal elections, as well as their own self-reported likelihood of voting.

And it's conducted online.

And so we've got people's email addresses of registered voters.

We know whether or not they participated in previous municipal elections.

So we're able to contact, folks like that and pull them into our sample.

And, and we're also bringing some people who might skip an election or two knowing that they'll make up part of the electorate, too.

So it's it's a multi-step process that we do to try to get a sample that we think is going to resemble what the electorate ultimately.

Looks like with those issues, how many questions do you ask them?

And we try to keep it as brief as possible.

So we say, you know, the average time is between 5 and 10 minutes to complete the poll.

We don't want to make it overly long.

We want people to be able to complete it in a, in a in.

And when you do these kinds of polls, sometimes you do go out or you have people that would go out door to door in some polling, but not this.

We don't do any, door to door, polling.

We do do some, what we call RTD, telephone polling where we're randomly calling people up.

A lot of that we do just for some, you know, general recruitment to what we call our Bexar County panel.

So we've got a panel which is approaching 3000 residents, that, we recruit from, and we ask people basic questions that way.

So if you get a phone call from us, that's us trying to recruit you into our Bexar County panel, which we do additional studies, on the on the, population.

And I know you're getting this question is really unfair, but I'm just asking what you tell people.

Say, who's going to win?

Who's going to make the runoff?

You know, I'm very careful, not to suggest we're endorsing somebody or picking, who we think is going to win.

You know, I'll say that, you know, if voters keep breaking the way they appear to be breaking in our polls, that Gina Ortiz Jones looks like she has a good shot at making the runoff.

But again, I will emphasize is a really fluid race, right?

A lot of campaigning has even really begun yet.

It's going to be during the early voting period where a lot of the candidates are really going to start spending the money that they have, trying to reach out to voters.

More digital ads, more canvasing, more phone calls, more mailers coming out.

And so things can change, right.

The best of polls is a snapshot at a particular moment.

And, you know, a race like this can change pretty rapidly.

In a race like this, different candidates from different groups are going to cancel each other out.

Sure.

Split that.

Sure, sure.

So yeah, very fluid race.

A lot can change.

I hope that our poll helps people make at least some sense of what's going on right now.

All right.

Well, thanks very much.

Look forward to the next polls and the next polls.

Yeah.

Brian Gervais, director of UTSA center for Public Opinion Research and associate professor of political science at UTSA.

Thanks very much for coming.

Thanks for having me.

On reporters roundtable this week, how would you like a drone dropping from the sky to deliver your latest Amazon package?

Well, that is at least in the works here in San Antonio.

A reporter who found out all about it is Madisen Isela, business reporter of the San Antonio Express-News.

Thank you very much for coming in and how you found out about this.

It's really early in the process, but through permits or applications for permits, file.

Tell us what they're looking at.

Yeah.

So Amazon is asking for a permit essentially from the city to add space for this drone program at their warehouse on the east side.

It's on Cal Turner Drive and a pretty industrial area.

And so they want room for the batteries to charge the drones, to keep the drones inventory of sorts, and then to fly them out from the warehouse.

And so in order to add that space, it'd be about 90 400ft².

They need a special permit from the city.

And the drones would be carrying and have to be fairly big drones, and they're carrying less than 5 pound packages.

Is that right?

Yes.

They can carry up to 5 pounds and they're supposed to be able to deliver items in an hour or less.

We're not sure how far out the distance will be that they can travel from the warehouse.

Yet in other places where Amazon has rolled out this program, which is called the Amazon Air, College Station, Arizona, parts of California, they've been able to go a couple miles out from the warehouses, but it remains to be seen here how far they'll be able to travel.

How are they going in College Station and in Arizona?

I understand they made some changes after complaints in College Station, right?

Yes.

And College Station, which is where they first started experimenting with the drones.

There were a lot of complaints about noise, residents who live near the warehouse where the drones were going out from were complaining about how loud they were, the whirring sounds that they made, and saying that they affected their property values.

And so Amazon, in response to that, said, they basically rolled out a different type of drone that's allegedly quieter to try to mitigate some of those concerns.

But if you're in a neighborhood where somebody is getting a package next door, you're still going to hear buzzing and dropping and wondering, what the heck is that?

You'll still hear it.

Yes, you outlined some of the things under 5 pounds.

Are people really needed in our toothbrushes, aspirin, batteries?

Anything under 5 pounds that they already have at the warehouse.

Right.

And when when they do this, I guess it's like Amazon Prime.

Now, if you're you'd have to be part of Prime or part of air, that would be a certain a different level of membership.

Yes.

Once they roll it out here, when you order something on Amazon and you go to check out, you'll, you'll see an option that will say, essentially, do you want this delivered via drone?

Here's how long it might take.

And so you'll be able to pick you can still get things on a truck or a van or the normal delivery routes that they have now.

But you'll start to see that option for delivery.

And Amazon will tell you if you're eligible based on where you live and how far out the drones go.

Now I say I'm actually a certified drone pilot for little, little bitty drones.

It seems like there are a lot of places in San Antonio airspace that you cannot fly a drone.

You're not supposed to fly a drone without a special exception.

Near the airport, near a lot of military designated areas and zones like that.

So you would have to check online and there would be a lot of places where you can't go, especially if it's just within two miles.

Right?

I think that's one of the biggest questions right now is where exactly will the drones be able to go, given the military bases, given certain areas that they can't fly, how far out will they be able to go?

And will they be heading more north, kind of away from the military bases?

How far downtown or to the north side are other places where we have bases.

Will they be able to go?

I think that's one of the the main questions at this point.

And also to go back to the noise, what will this mean for neighbors who live somewhat close to the warehouse?

If they're seeing drones go through their neighborhoods, how loud will that be?

And if you have, say, a lot of trees in your front yard, they can't land and deliver.

I guess it's with a claw.

They would drop something.

They basically lower it.

Yes.

And the drones with the cameras that are on the drones can look for obstacles to make sure that the coast is clear.

Essentially, for them to be able to lower the package down in your designated area.

But depending on what you have in the front yard, what's going on in the area, the drone could say there are too many obstacles and it would fly back to the warehouse.

Amazon would alert you and say, okay, we're going to deliver your order otherwise.

And so you just wouldn't be able to get it.

You you can't know really whether you're able to get a package or what kind of clearance you would have to have.

You can once they roll out the drone delivery here, you'll be able to see if it's within your area, but you won't actually know until the drone flies over.

Is are there obstacles?

And there are certain times when they wouldn't be able to do this or won't do this right?

Right.

They said they don't fly at night and they don't fly in extreme weather.

So if there's a thunderstorm, if it's 150 degrees, the drones aren't going to be flying.

And what's the timeline on this?

You say the city has to approve it.

They're just also going they want to renovate part of the warehouse for this.

So it's going to be a while if that happens.

If it happens.

Amazon said that they're aiming to roll it out by the end of this year.

And so that's a somewhat short timeline.

But there are a lot of steps before then.

And so if you need your toothbrush now or your lip balm, you're still going to have to wait or maybe go to the corner store.

You'll have to get it on a truck for now.

I can't believe it.

All right.

Well, thanks very much.

Madison Esler, business reporter of the San Antonio Express-News.

Appreciate you coming in.

And thank you for joining us for this edition of On the Record.

You can watch this show again.

You can watch any previous shows and you can download it as a podcast.

Just go to klrn.org.

I'm Randy Beamer and we'll see you next one.

On the record is brought to you by Steve and Adele Dufilho.