SAN ANTONIO – Long-awaited upgrades to a section of Brackenridge Park appear to be moving forward.
The City of San Antonio is seeking approval from the Historic and Design Review Commission (HDRC) for a series of upgrades to the urban core park. This includes improvements to the Lily pond and upper Labor Dam. These improvements are considered Phase II of park renovations.
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The city received a certificate of appropriateness from the commission in May 2023 for Phase I work, which includes stabilization and restoration of stone walls, the Grand Staircase, and the 1877 Pump House.
The city is awaiting permits from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to proceed with Phase I work. The city also wants to remove a number of trees in the area, which sparked legal challenges for Phase I renovations. The renovations were first approved in the 2017 bond election.
A suit brought by two members of the Lipan-Apache Native American Church, who alleged that changes to the site would infringe on their civil rights, further delayed Phase I renovations. The church is not a party to the lawsuit.
The Texas Supreme Court ruled in the city’s favor in June 2025, and an appeals court reached the same conclusion in December. Following the Fifth Circuit’s denial of the plaintiffs’ request to rehear the suit, a city spokesperson said the plaintiffs filed another motion for all 17 members of the Fifth Circuit to hear the matter. While this motion is pending, the City is not under any court order preventing the project from moving forward.
In a 2023 interview with the Business Journal, the city’s project manager, Jamaal Moreno, said the city aims to protect the area’s cultural heritage.
“It’s essentially trying to stabilize all of the cultural resources that are within that Lambert Beach area,” he said at the time. “Some of that includes the river walls, some of that includes the Lambert Beach retaining walls. We’re also looking to do some underpinning of the foundation of the Pump House. There’s also the Grand Staircase, which we’re going to be looking at renovating with a new foundation and then putting the stones back in their original place.”
Nearby, the Brackenridge Park Conservancy is pursuing a $10 million project that would see the rise of a new playground facility bordered by the San Antonio River, the Witte Museum and the Lambert Beach area.
HDRC is expected to take up the measure at its Jan. 21 meeting. There is no timeline for completion of the bond project, a city spokesperson said.
Read more of this story at the San Antonio Business Journal website.
Editor’s note: This story was published through a partnership between KSAT and the San Antonio Business Journal.