At the same time the City Council is trying to end the operation of horse-drawn carriages downtown, one carriage company also suddenly finds itself struggling to house its horses in the city.
The Yellow Rose & H.R.H. Carriage Company currently keeps its horses near Interstate-37 and East Houston Street while they’re working. Plans for a new location near Roosevelt Park were shot down unanimously by the city’s Board of Adjustment on Monday.
“Her lease is up in September and she needs to find somewhere else. We’ve only got a few months,” said John Carr, who was planning to purchase the property at 2102 South Presa Street for the company’s new barn. (The company’s owner, Stephanie Garcia, refuted that idea in a text message Monday afternoon, saying she can continue operating from her current location as long as she wants.)
The Board of Adjustment’s decision came just a day before the City Council’s Transportation and Infrastructure Committee is scheduled to discuss plans for phasing out the permits for horse-drawn carriages downtown — something Garcia was discussing with council aides during the board of adjustment meeting, according to Carr.
“I don’t believe in coincidences,” Carr said in an interview after the vote. “There is a concerted effort to get rid of horses in San Antonio.”
For weeks, nearby residents had been divided on the idea of the new facility, according to Jeff Hunt, president of the Roosevelt Park Neighborhood Association.
Some envisioned a fairytale setting where kids could interact with the majestic, 2,000-pound horses, which would go home every night to their permanent residence outside of the city. But others were concerned about the smell and increased traffic congestion as the carriages departed toward their routes downtown.
“It’s an interesting opportunity,” said Hunt, whose group ultimately took a stance against the proposed barn and turned out to oppose it at Monday’s meeting. “The company has said they would like to be a good neighbor… but there are so many outliers.”
Garcia met with neighborhood leaders several times about her plan, Hunt said. She adjusted her variance requests to accommodate parking concerns and included plans for a local artist to beautify the outside of the stable, according to a Carr’s presentation Monday.
But much like the efforts to remove horse-drawn carriages from the streets of downtown, the decision seemed to revolve around whether the business was in alignment with the city’s plans for the future.
Right now the property on South Presa is a blighted, vacant lot.
It was once a Mexican restaurant, but sat empty before the cybersecurity services firm Jungle Disk purchased it with plans to create a modern office space. Those plans changed during the pandemic, and the company left behind just two walls of the original building, propped up by two-by-fours.
“It’s a derelict site, and that’s the way it’s going to stay,” Carr said in an interview after the meeting.
But Roosevelt Park is undergoing a larger rezoning process aimed at bringing in more commercial neighbors, like the coffee shops and brewery that have opened up more recently.
The South Presa property is technically still zoned industrial, meaning the carriage horse company only needed variances, instead of a wholesale rezoning, to get around some of the required setbacks meant to keep business from encroaching on residences.
That will all change with a new commercial zoning overlay that’s expected to go to the City Council for approval later this year, said John Bustamante, who serves as zoning commissioner for District 5.
“That’s why they want this property,” Bustamante said at Monday’s meeting. “The variances will make what is already an inappropriate use, of [industrial] abutting residential, even worse.”
After roughly an hour of back-and-forth on the speed of the carriages, the smell of the horses and the proximity to a bus stop and power lines, Carr said he knew that the results were a forgone conclusion.
“I wanted to go down fighting,” he said. ” … I can argue about the overhead [power] lines. I can argue about the bus stop. But I can’t argue if someone just doesn’t want to have this as a business.”
