Texas A&M University Kingsville engineering students, from left, Dahlia Monique Reyes, Sally Romero, Joshua Farias, Kyle Mahoney, Nicholas Payne and Jim Glusing (professor) are helping design commercial and medical architectural portions of the plaza.
Contributed photo
“My intention is that this be a place where you can encounter and enjoy knowing other people,” Bishop Daniel Flores of Brownsville said at a dedication ceremony at the project site. “My hope, especially for the families that are here, is that this land will continue to be a land that bears fruit —fruit of hope, of joy, of laughter and learning, especially for our young people.”
The project, called Plaza Amistad, will include a health care clinic and education center, retail stores, a farming field school, a farmers market, a community garden and a café. The Rio Grande Guardian reported that there will also be venues for soccer, volleyball and other sports, as well as a perimeter trail. It takes its name from the Spanish word for friendship.
The project’s first phase, developed over a six-month period, will use 14 acres outside Donna, Texas, which is located 50 miles northwest of Brownsville, and just eight miles from the US-Mexico border. The land was donated by the Bonham family, non-Catholics who are prominent citrus growers in the Rio Grande Valley.
It is modeled on public-private partnerships to gather support and expertise from various community partners. Fifteen sophomores from the Institute for Architectural Engineering Heritage at Texas A&M University Kingsville—situated n the Diocese of Corpus Christi—are helping design commercial and medical architectural portions of the plaza, according to Jim Glusing, a civil and architectural engineering professor. Parts of their proposals could be considered for inclusion in the final design.
“It made me proud to see students from my design studio show their initiative and dedication to the project…it was completely unexpected,” Glusing said.
Bishop Flores said “We have to take a few risks because we haven’t done this before. This is all kind of new; the church, businesses, local community organizations, the more the merrier, working together as a community of communities.”
“We want a community that helps the community,” the bishop said. “To me that is part of the Catholic vision of life. We were not put on this earth to only help Catholics, we were put on this earth to help everyone because we are Catholics, and that means, for example through Catholic Charities, we don’t ask people what religion they are, we don’t ask them if they have papers; we ask them, 'are you hungry, are you thirsty, do you need a place to stay?'.”
For Patti Sunday, a consultant who has worked on the project, Plaza Amistad is “one of the first steps at solving our own problems.” The project aims to host enough profitable services that it can fund vital services like health care at an “extremely affordable rate” for people who otherwise cannot afford them.
The effort aims to combine making a profit and good stewardship, taking a new path in a field that often involves the same people competing for limited grants and government funding.
The Brownsville region has developed a border culture of its own where U.S. and Mexico meet. Beneficiaries of the project might or might not be undocumented.
The Plaza Amistad model focuses on the “working poor,” people who take in about $40,000 per year for a family of four. It is believed they have enough income to support such a community, while also benefiting from affordable community services.
The Plaza is located next to entry-level housing, while the project’s farmers market will also bring people together across class lines. Population growth projections suggest the area near Plaza Amistad will grow.
“It’s a different vision, and I think it is something God will bless,” the bishop said. “With the hard work of a lot of people, I think it could be a model for the whole country.”
Miguel Santos, director of strategic planning for the Brownsville diocese, said Plaza Amistad is based on “the premise of human dignity, of both solidarity and subsidiarity, of not just giving them a handout but a hand up.”
Plans for a second phase of the project may include a Catholic church. “We will have a chapel,” Bishop Flores said. “It will be a place to let the Church do what I think the Church does best, which is gather people in the knowledge of the love of God, and in the love of neighbor.”
For the bishop, it is natural that the Church gathers her people and then “opens up the doors, as the Holy Father Pope Francis says, so that we can welcome. For the beauty of what it is to be human is that we were meant to live in community and not isolated.”
The diocese is the leading agent in the public-private partnership. Santos said that while the diocese has provided an initial outlay of funding, “the idea is to partner with different entities that can bring to the table their particular expertise.”
Kyndel Bennett, a member of the traditionally Methodist Bonham family, said he thought the project was “a win-win for all involved.”
“It is a project we are all excited about,” Bennett said.