Creating an Oral History

African-American Oral Histories

Charles Urdy
Clip 1: Transcript

East Austin Revitalization

Running Time: 8 min 8 sec

CU: The thing that I’ve been most involved with is the 11th and 12th Street Revitalization effort. I’ve been on that board since 1997. That area is a very important area to East Austin. Some people consider it to be the gateway to East Austin and other parts of the community. The area had become completely run down, and was a huge deterrent for people to travel any place in East Austin, because there was so much crime on that little first two or three blocks east of I-35. Oh, people always traveled down East 7th Street to go to the State Cemetery or to Huston-Tillotson. Nobody would go through 11th Street because they had all the drug dealers and everybody all over the street. It was just a wild, pretty wild place, and so they, the concern, this started way back in the ‘70s again, that the area had become so bad and people had started working trying to revitalize it.

During pretty much the whole time Snell was on the Council, and my early days on the Council, there were things that were done. We did things; we did some sidewalk projects, street lighting projects. We put a police substation there. Every year we were doing something, we were trying to do something, trying to-- There were a couple of apartment complexes over there that had become havens for drug dealers that were subsidized apartments that the City was involved with, tore them down. So things were being done all the time, but meanwhile the area just kept deteriorating. And when they realized that, in order to really make it what it could possibly be, we’d have to revitalize the whole area.

And, that in itself was a challenge, because you had a few businesses there, and so you had challenges there. You had some opposition to anything that you wanted to do. And people would say, “Well, the City just wants to come in and do an urban renewal thing and take away, you know, what few existing businesses we have,” and that sort of thing. So you had opposition. So you had to work through all of that.

It was really never a conflict so much between the city and the neighborhood, but conflicts between different neighborhoods, or, because you have two different things going on there, really. You have the historical issue, where that was principally an African American business district, but now, most of, or all of those folks are gone, and so now you have the neighborhoods that are surrounding that are saying, “Well, yeah, but, but whatever is built here now is going to affect our neighborhood, so we want to have some say about what is, you know, what is done here. We don’t have any problem with you recognizing the historical involvement of African Americans, but we don’t want you building things that are going to destroy our neighborhood.” And those neighborhoods now are pretty much integrated, so you have Anglos, you have Blacks, you have Hispanics. And then you have, you had, other folks, who were, they were considered to be outsiders, saying, “We remember when this was this, and this was this, and this is what we want to do.” It’s just one of those kind of things where it’s sort of easy to appear to be, to seem to be divided, when you’re really not.

At one point, we had to, the city, in fact, did call in this group from the University of Texas, what do you call it? The people who try to negotiate, what do you call that, now, I can’t even think of that, it’s a very simple term for it. Dispute resolution group. It’s a dispute resolution, something or other, at the University. Anyway, they had to come in and we sat, and when we sat down, and everybody wrote down their goals, the only thing that we disagreed on was who should be a member of the board. [laughs] Nobody had any problems with any of the other things that people were talking about. Folks said, “Well, you know, I live over here, and so I don’t want, a skyscraper, over here across the street from where I live.” “Hey, I don’t see any problem, I wouldn’t either.” That’s the kind of discussions we got into, again, when people sat down and actually talked, rather than listened to what the perception is, that you had. “These folks don’t even live here, and they’re going to come in and tell me what they can build in my, around by my neighborhood.” And these folks saying, “Well, these folks have just moved in here. They’re not a part of the old neighborhood, they don’t have anything to do with the history.” And so on and so on. But that was a problem. Again, if you will sit down and listen, you can, that’s your best chance of getting anything done. You may not get anything done then, but that’s your best chance. [laughs] But anyway, that’s sort of the, that’s the kind of thing that, that we’ve done, and so, on a smaller basis, I guess, the main thing I’ve done is try to settle disputes among different groups.

It’s getting there. Of course, we’ve had programs before, [laughs] and so people were waiting to see the results of this, and so. But I think when we actually started building, when the buildings started going up, and the streetscaping started, and we built the archway, and the plaza and those kind of things, and some of the other buildings were restored, and people began to really believe that something was happening. And, and then, the concern switched to, “Well, how many community people are being involved in this, both in the construction and you know, and then in the businesses that will, will ultimately be there?” So we’re hearing more, more of that now, whereas in the past we heard a lot of criticism and just saying, “Well, you know, God, when are they starting? They haven’t done anything yet?” kind of a deal. So, I think, our feeling is that we’ve sort of turned the corner on that now and people will begin to look to more things happening.

And, as this is happening now, particularly on 11th Street, the other thing that people have seen is that the street has basically been cleaned up of crime. And it was, police say it’s one of the lowest crime areas in town now, of course, there’s not much there now [chuckles]. But, people around some of the places, there was one business where I think the police said there something like 400 police calls per year, and it’s one business, and it’s gone. And we bought the building, so that, that disappeared, and went down from four hundred and something to twelve or something, probably, that kind of thing. So people are beginning to see that a new, are beginning to open up, that gateway, so to speak. And, we’ll start doing some things with the state cemetery, to try to enhance that and attract people through that, through that area again. And I think by the time we open up the major buildings that will pretty much be accomplished where, people will see and feel that it’s safe to drive through there.

Disclaimer:
“Oral Narrative as History.” Students received class credit for this work, and were under the supervision of Dr. Martha Norkunas, director of “The Project in Interpreting the Texas Past.”

Every effort has been made to transcribe the audio recordings exactly. On occasion a word, or phrase, was difficult to hear and this is indicated by a question mark in brackets.

Interviewee:
Charles Urdy

Interviewer:
Heather Teague

Date of Interview:
February 23, March 9, 2004

Place:
Lower Colorado River Authority, City Council Room, Lake Austin Blvd., Austin, Texas

Recording Format:
Sony Mini Disc MZ-R50 with stereo microphones; 80-minute minidiscs

Transcriber: 
Heather Teague