DoSeum again wants to expand parking lot

On peak days, The DoSeum is so popular that families are forced to park along curbs deep inside the Mahncke Park neighborhood. Sometimes, families park in lots they're not supposed to. Or, they park at Lions Field Adult and Senior Center and then traverse congested Broadway in “Frogger”-like fashion to get to the museum.

Even with school back in session, museum officials expect the waves of parents and kids to keep coming, even if the waves are smaller than the tsunami of its opening weekend when a record-setting 6,402 visitors descended onto the museum.

For this reason, The DoSeum, 2800 Broadway, wants to expand its current 231-space parking lot by 55 spaces. An unnamed benefactor is under contract to acquire the parcels on the 1100 block of East Mulberry Avenue — a cottage and two ramshackle fourplexes, which would be razed for the parking expansion.

Last fall, The DoSeum floated a similar plan, but withdrew it after rebukes from the Mahncke Park neighborhood.

But this time around, even though the Mahncke Park Neighborhood Association still opposes changing the properties from residential to commercial — The DoSeum is taking its proposal to the Zoning Commission on Tuesday, saying more parking is desperately needed.

Despite the parking problems, the neighborhood association recently voted to oppose the project, just as it did last fall when the issue was hypothetical.

“The jury is still out on this,” the group’s President Gabriel Shelton said. “Grant you, traffic is a problem. Will it stay a problem? Maybe. Is tearing down houses and paving those parcels the only solution? (We) disagree with that.”

Since The DoSeum opened June 6, more than 220,000 people — from 28 states — have visited the museum, officials said. By comparison, attendance for all of 2014 totaled roughly 153,000 visitors at its former downtown home on Houston Street.

“Since then, every day and weekend, the parking has been pretty bad,” said Trey Jacobson, a museum spokesman employed by attorney group Golden Steves Cohen & Gordon.

Under the proposal, an anonymous benefactor would purchase the three parcels, allowing the museum to expand its lot. The two four-plexes that flank the cottage would be razed, clearing room for the 55 spaces. The properties would be given a special use designation to become parking lots. A third structure behind the cottage also would be demolished. The cottage, however, would remain standing for The DoSeum to use. Foliage-covered fences would divide the lot from the street, maintaining a residential feel on Mulberry Avenue, DoSeum officials said.

According to Bexar County records, Veronica Zabith currently owns the property closest to Broadway, and an entity called Mulberry Developers LLC owns the other two properties. The registered agent for Mulberry Developers is Charles Clines, a Houston accountant, who did not return a phone call seeking comment.

The neighborhood’s main worry is encroachment by commercial entities — it wants to keep its single-family homes from being gobbled up by commercial land use. And it says The DoSeum’s parking lot expansion proposal, if approved, would set a dangerous precedent the next time an applicant wants to convert a residential lot to commercial use.

The group also wants to see attendance numbers during the school year, and when the novelty of The DoSeum has worn off, before any decision is made, they said.

“We feel like it’s kind of premature to base the need (of more parking) on these two months when it’s a brand-new institution, and kids are out of school,” Mahncke Park Neighborhood Association President Gabriel Shelton said. “We don’t feel like there’s enough information.”

But DoSeum officials expect the popularity of the museum to continue into the school year, and not wane. The DoSeum said that on Monday, the first day of school, the facility welcomed 668 visitors, and the parking lot still was nearly full.

“One of our missions is to serve kids — birth to (age) 10,” said Pam Hannah, The DoSeum’s vice president of operations. “So birth to (age) 5, they’re not in school right now. We had mothers and families waiting Monday morning with their kids because the big kids are back in school and now (the younger ones) can have run of the museum.”

To help open up spaces for the public, DoSeum staff park on Brackenridge Avenue, just south of the museum.

Many who live or do business near The DoSeum — and who have been inconvenienced by the flood of visitors — welcome the lot expansion.

Millard Stetler, owner of nearby burger joint Good Time Charlie’s, says parking has been an issue and he supports the proposal.

He pointed out that The DoSeum has done more good than harm.

“The DoSeum is the best thing to happen in this area in a long time,” Stetler said. “In the past, we were dealing with issues of crime, prostitution, drugs, vagrancy. Now we’re dealing with some parking issues. I’ll take parking issues any day of the week.”

Stetler said museum-goers park sometimes in his lots and sometimes, when they return, they’ll eat at his restaurant before heading out. Even if they don’t, he said, he won’t tow. He said he’d rather work with The DoSeum on coming up with solutions to the parking problem.

Across the street, Mauricio Marushamer, a dentist who owns a shuttered Jack-In-the-Box, said he started leasing the property to a parking company after The DoSeum opened because families would park there anyway.

The Mahncke Park Neighborhood Association said there are more tactful fixes — such as mass transit — than what it called “heavy-handed solutions” of replacing residences with surface lots.

Members of the Broadway Reach — San Antonio Museum of Art, Witte Museum, Brackenridge Park Conservancy, San Antonio Zoo, San Antonio Botanical Garden, the McNay Art Museum and now The DoSeum — have talked with VIA Metropolitan Transit about creating some kind of shuttle system that would connect the various attractions up and down Broadway. But they have only talked.

Parking is also an issue for some of the other attractions.

On Funston Place in upper Mahncke Park, the Botanical Garden is expanding its footprint by 8 acres — on land that’s already being used for parking. To lessen any parking spillover into the residential area, garden officials have said they plan to space out popular events such as Gardens by Moonlight.

The Witte got some relief from its parking problems in 2009 when the city built a $5.6 million, 325-space parking garage for Brackenridge Park that’s a stone’s throw from the museum.

“I don’t know what we’d do without it,” Witte CEO and President Marise McDermott said.

But now that it’s expanded, McDermott said the garage needs to grow vertically by more than 100 spaces.

The museum also is looking at other options. “There are other opportunities we are actually in negotiations with,” McDermott said declining to talk specifics.

Shelton said a parking garage for The DoSeum isn’t a “terrible idea,” but that “we’d prefer to see them not have their footprint spread in order to put a garage.”

bolivo@express-news.net

Twitter: mySAdowntown