Naked City

"Last week's theme for Austin politics seemed to be reviving old issues that were settled long ago," noted Council Member Daryl Slusher in a Tuesday press release. First, it was businessman William Archer's instantly controversial proposal to revive high-speed performance boat races on Town Lake, which Slusher slammed in a brisk press release before most Austinites had even heard of the idea. (The Statesman followed the next day with a big boat-race package, including vintage photos of Eastside activist Paul Hernandez getting manhandled by Austin police during the 1978 "boat race riots.")

Leaders from all walks of East Austin life, though at odds on other issues, are united in unequivocal opposition to bringing back the boat races, which as part of the now-defunct Austin Aqua Festival drew huge crowds of rude and rowdy spectators to Festival Beach to watch the fuel-guzzling and stunningly loud drag boats, which could reportedly be heard from three miles away. "I think the wisest approach would be to abandon this idea now," Slusher wrote. "Even the attempt to [generate community support] is going to be very divisive, unpleasant, and unnecessary." Betty Dunkerley, Danny Thomas, and Will Wynn all quickly followed to throw cold water on the idea, and it now appears to be quite dead.

Slusher's wife, Adela Mancias, fought the boat races as one of Hernandez's Brown Berets; Slusher himself, nearly a decade later, was a leader in the 1985 referendum campaign to dedicate as parkland the city property around Palmer Auditorium. This campaign, which voters endorsed by a 2-to-1 margin, saved the shores from becoming a commercial annex to the then-planned Austin Convention Center (later moved back across the river) and made way for the now-planned Town Lake Park. So when another front-page Statesman story trumpeted proposals to bring commercial and retail development to the area, Slusher wheeled back into rhetorical action.

"This resurrects a battle that was settled long ago, and only after considerable conflict," he wrote, referring not only to the 1985 campaign but to the 1998 deal brokered between arts groups, incumbent users of Palmer and the coliseum, south-side neighbors, parks advocates, and the city. That agreement, likewise approved by the voters, allowed Palmer to become the Long Center for the Performing Arts and allowed the city to build the new Palmer Events Center, demolish the coliseum, and plan and pay for Town Lake Park. Backers of the new plan envision using revenue from leasing and developing the parkland to pay for the Long Center, since fundraising for that $110 million project has stalled out amid the economic bust. Downtown Austin Alliance director Charlie Betts told the Statesman, "We've got parks out the wazoo. We don't need parks; we need income."

Yet this idea to save the Long Center has been as poorly received (and was as poorly conceived) as the last one -- redirecting funding for the Waller Creek Tunnel flood-control project. Slusher takes exception to using city assets to support what was supposed to be a privately funded project, especially since the development that would replace Town Lake Park would be "largely, if not completely, a preserve for the wealthy who could afford the high-rise living" planned for the site. While Slusher took pains to not blame the Long Center's leaders for the idea, he says the proposal "violates and destroys" the 1998 agreement. "To do away with the park -- an integral part of the compromise that resulted in [the Long Center] getting Palmer -- would amount to a betrayal," he wrote.