City of Tyler Mayor Don Warren talks about severe weather cleanup, downtown development, the new W.T. Brookshire Conference Center to replace the old Harvey Hall and more in his quarterly update for UT Tyler Radio and the UT Tyler Radio Podcast.
Mike Landess: For UT Tyler Radio, I’m Mike Landess.
It’s starting off as quite a year for the City of Tyler with challenges and victories on a number of fronts. Here to bring us up to speed on all things Rose City is Tyler Mayor Don Warren. Welcome.
Don Warren: Hello, Mike. How are you?
Mike Landess: I’m doing good. Now, we spoke at the beginning of this year with a wrap up of 2022 and a preview of 2023. From your perspective, can we start with the challenges thrown our way from Mother Nature so far this year?
Don Warren: Well, we had another storm. And it seems like they’re kind of running together, but this one was Winter Storm Mara, and you probably remember back in February, March, we had all the ice, and it just kept on and kept on for days and days.
And it got to where limbs started falling, and trees were falling into roadways and knocking out traffic signals; it was havoc. And city staff stepped up. They went to work and started clearing trees out of the roadways. But, the amount of ice was amazing. In my backyard I had limbs falling nonstop. And, whenever I let my dogs go out to do their business, my wife actually had me put on a hard hat. So, I wore a hard hat, let my dogs do their business, and all was OK.
Mike Landess: Then of course, we’ve put a nice punctuation point on it so far this spring with the tornado. That must have scared the heck outta you.
Don Warren: Well, we sat there, and we’re listening to the weather man on the TV, and we’re trying to decide, do we go to our safe room? Do we not go to our safe room? We live in an older house, so it’s all pretty safe, so it’s all pretty solid. But you sit there and you listen, and they say there’s a tornado that’s by Green Acres Church. And then they say it’s at Front and Beckham, and then it’s by Lloyd James funeral home. And I’m thinking, this is where we live. And I went outside, which I probably should not have done, but it was totally still and dark, and it was gone. I mean, the storm, the tornado passed, and it blows my mind how close we were. It could have been a disaster. And when you think that it it could have hit UT Health, it could have hit TJC, it could have hit Green Acres Church, and all these huge businesses could have really been impacted. And as soon as it came down, it went back up, and we dodged another bullet. And we had no injuries, no deaths.
Mike Landess: Let’s talk about the Downtown Revitalization project. It seems to be moving along. There was a groundbreaking for the empty and partially disassembled Wilcox building. How’d that go?
Don Warren: It went great. NORF, who’s doing the development, has also been working on the Carlton Hotel, the Lindsay, and the Fair. And this is the first one that they’ve really gotten off the ground. It’ll be a huge investment on their part. They’re gonna be investing over $100 million downtown. But on this one specific building, it’ll be 31 units, and it’s gonna be exciting. They’re excited about the Tyler market, and they love what’s going on downtown. They love the vibe, as you call it. And they’re excited to be here, and we’re excited to have them as a partner.
Mike Landess: How are they doing with the Carleton? How’s that moving along?
Don Warren: Well, they’ve had some issues. I think funding right now is a hard thing for people to come by with the rise in interest rates, but they’re looking at a different source of funding, and they’re still strong on the project. The city, recently, we’ve incentivized them to help them get their funding, and we voted to put aside $1.5 million. And if they can break ground at a certain period of time, the city’s pledged to give them $1.5 million after they get their certificate of occupancy.
Mike Landess: A big feather in the cap of the city, of course, was the opening of the W.T. Brookshire Conference Center that replaced the old Harvey Hall. And you’ve already had the first big event there.
Don Warren: First big event was the Women’s Symphony League Ball. And I did go up there Saturday afternoon once they had everything set up, because I was a little nervous. And whenever you open something new for the first event, you wonder, are things gonna go smoothly or are there gonna be any hiccups? And there were a few hiccups that need to be ironed out. Some of the lighting wasn’t working correctly, and which we’ll address. But my real fear was when you have 700 people there, are the toilets gonna stop up? You know, when the band starts playing, are the circuit breakers just gonna start popping? And you just have all these different ideas of how it’s gonna go. And so I didn’t attend the event, but our audio-visual guy, Danny, was there, of course. And so I’m texting him throughout the evening saying, “How’s it going… how’s it going?” And he’d say, “Perfect… perfect. It’s great.” So, it all went well. All the Facebook posts were positive. And we’re just really excited to get this open. You know, we had the grand opening several weeks ago. And we had probably 700 people in attendance.
Mike Landess: And fireworks.
Don Warren: And fireworks. But what we had was a community, and we had people from all over Tyler who came to the event. But it was just a blessing. It was a blast. And once everyone left, a small group of us went back to the green room, and we actually uncorked a bottle of champagne. And we sat there and had a toast because what we had worked on for so long, which was just a drawing on a piece of paper, and it was a vision, and it really, it came to reality. And as I was making one of the toasts, I realized I had tears in my eyes. It was just, you realize we have accomplished so much, but it’s not me. It’s the staff and the architects and the contractors and everybody really pulled together to build a beautiful facility, and it’s gonna work. Proud of it.
Mike Landess: And you had a community behind you to make it happen.
Don Warren: Yes.
Mike Landess: Give me an update on what’s happening with traffic and Tyler.
Don Warren: Well, you just have to bring that up, don’t you?
Mike Landess: Of course we do. Well, I mean, it’s probably the thing that people talk about most, and yet you are seeing improvements, right?
Don Warren: We are seeing improvements. When we spoke last, I believe I told you that there was a 30% reduction in wait time if you’re going up and down Broadway. That’s now increased to 32%.
Mike Landess: Ooh. Well, let’s take the 2%.
Don Warren: That’s a 32% reduction in wait time. And so it is working, and we’ve re-timed a third of the lights that we have in Tyler. We have 149 traffic lights, and we’ve done a third of them. You know, TXDOT is coming in, and we’re gonna have a widening project from Cumberland South. We’re gonna have the widening of Old Jacksonville. We’re gonna have the widening of Rhones Quarter Road. We’re working on a study to see how we can alleviate traffic on South Broadway through some other means. We have 100,000 people in Tyler, but in the course of any certain day, we have 250,000 people, and they’re coming into Tyler to go to school, to go to hospitals, to spend money, and we love people to come to Tyler and spend money.
Mike Landess: Any final thoughts before we wrap up?
Don Warren: I tell you, it’s a good time to be Mayor. It’s a fun town. There’s so much vibrancy, there’s so much youth. We continue to get younger population, and it’s really fun to see young people being so part of the process and to see their ideas and what they want to do. And it’s a great time to be here and I love this city.
Mike Landess: Our guest has been Tyler Mayor Don Warren. To hear this interview again or to share it, go to KVUT.org. I’m Mike Landess for UT Tyler Radio.
(Transcripts are automatically generated and may contain phonetic spellings and other spelling and punctuation errors. Grammar errors contained in the original recording are not typically corrected.)
