ustxtxb_obs_1984_06_15_50_00009-00000_000.pdf

Pho to by Bo b Sa b la tu ra Houston’s Fourth Ward on-site parking, and all but one altered the traffic circulation to improve traffic flow. All teams found ways to open APV to the south and better integrate the public housing with the neighboring Fourth Ward. In addition, clearly marked pedestrian paths through the site created better connections both to the Fourth Ward and to the Bayou parkland. In each solution, the elderly, who are currently located in the three story section of APV \(requiring that some were relocated in other buildings. Since public funds are still available for the construction of elderly housing, several teams proposed new construction of medium-rise elderly units on the APV site. Few teams felt that alteration of the existing buildings was necessary, beyond the addition of hipped roofs or porches, to create a less institutional image and to support existing neighborhood patterns. The primary emphasis of all the proposals was on the open space, adding garden elements, such as low walls and landscaping, to help define “neighborhoods” within the larger community and to give residents a greater sense of attachment to the land directly adjacent to their units. Many of these small changes would have a dramatic effect on the quality of life at APV. Initial cost estimates of the students’ solutions indicate that such changes would be far less expensive than HHA has suggested. Problems considered by the study team to be endemic to the site planning were easily transformed into positive resources in the design proposals. Renovation has worked in other cities. The West Dallas Housing Project is about the same vintage and style as APV but over three times larger, with 3500 dwelling units. The Dallas Housing Authority and Peterson, Littenberg, architects and urban designers, have set about creating a complex proposal that will not remove any of the existing units but will in fact add to the development. Through numerous meetings with residents and the help of many consultants, a set of mixed strategies will be employed, including commercial uses and all forms of ownership and rental of the units. When asked about the cost of the plan, Peterson said, “The housing authority and we agreed that it would be a big mistake to hinge the proposal on cost estimates. There are lots of alternatives, including private and commercial sources, that will be aggressively pursued. In the end, the cost to the public will be much less than the cost of complete implementation.” The emphasis in this project was liveability, not profit, and resident participation in the planning process reflects an attitude we haven’t seen in the Allen Parkway Village case. Pharmacy Co-op Gains Strength By Larry Hufford and James Donovan San Antonio R. HOUSTON WADE was looking both backward and forward when he purchased a renovated building on San Antonio’s near east side and made it the home of the Sunset Pharmacy Cooperative. He knew the building’s past in 1903 it had housed the Appman Sunset Pharmacy, named for the Sunset Limited which stopped at the depot nearby . And he knew how things had changed. The neighborhood was no longer served by a pharmacy and would be, these days, a mostly low-income clientele. He Larry Hufford is a professor of Politics and fames Donovan is a professor of Accounting at Incarnate Word College in San Antonio. wanted a creative solution to connect the past with the future. But when he looked into forming a pharmacy cooperative, he found there are no laws in Texas specifically covering a consumer-owned pharmacy. With the assistance of an attorney, Dr. Wade concluded that the Texas Pharmaceutical Act and the Texas Cooperative Act could be used in the formation of the enterprise. On October 23, 1980, the Texas Secretary of State approved the documents creating the Sunset Pharmacy Coop. To date, it remains the only freestanding pharmacy cooperative in the state and one of the few in the country . Most other co-op pharmacies have been established under the sponsorship of a parent organization, such as a cooperative grocery store. Several people advised the newly created Board of Directors of the Sunset Co-op that the profit margin in pharmaceuticals was not exhorbitant and that a pharmacy cooperative would not be able to price prescriptions at a low enough rate to be successful. They also pointed out that the co-op was being organized at a time of rapid proliferation of chain-store pharmacies in San Antonio with their high volume, loss leaders, and discounts to senior citizens. The chains are able to operate at a loss, knowing that to do so for a short time makes it difficult for neighborhood pharmacies to compete. And, to make the venture even more risky, the co-op board would be forging into uncharted land, since Texas doesn’t have as strong a cooperative tradition as other parts of the country. THE TEXAS OBSERVER 9