Leo Gomez was born and raised in the Rio Grande Valley but moved to San Antonio after finishing school. He has moved up through the city ranks through multiple Chambers of Commerce, the San Antonio Spurs, Toyota Manufacturing and various charities. Now, he runs one of San Antonio's most exciting developments.

Transcript:

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Justin Hill: Hello and Bienvenidos, San Antonio. Welcome to the Alamo Hour, discussing the people, places, and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, proud San Antonio, and keeper of chickens and bees. On the Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique and the best-kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here.

All right. Welcome to this episode of the Alamo Hour. Today's guest is Leo Gomez. Leo's been involved in everything currently president and CEO of Brooks City Base but been involved with the Spurs, with Toyota, with the Hispanic chamber, with the San Antonio chamber. I watched a video on you and maybe they called you Mr. South side. Did I hear that correct?

Leo Gomez: I've been called a few things Justin.

Justin: All right. We've had your wife on here, and she was nice enough to help us convince you to come be on the show. I met you years ago, just out having beers with Tim Maloney. It's good to see you again and thank you for doing this.

Leo: Beers with Tim Maloney, huh?

Justin: I feel like beers with Tim Maloney could-- that go anywhere.

Leo: I sure could.

Justin: A lot of people can say they've had beers with Tim Maloney too.

Leo: That's terrific. Good to be on here with you.

Justin: I usually start this and I told you just some general information about your interaction and thoughts on San Antonio. Let's just start when and why did you end up in San Antonio?

Leo: San Antonio is always that big city to the North for me and my extended family. I'm from the Rio Grande Valley, grew up in McAllen, not far from the Rio Grande river and our neighbor to the South there. I grew up in the Valley knowing only the Valley pretty much. The closest metropolitan area, the closest thing to a city that was a real city when I was growing up was San Antonio Texas.

I actually visited it once or twice while I was very young to visit an aunt and some cousins in San Antonio and spend a day at the zoo. Going back home and I got into my late teenage years, and I'd never still really been outside the Rio Grande Valley except for San Antonio. San Antonio was always that big wonderful city that had me in awe to the North of the Rio Grande Valley.

Justin: Did you move up here after high school or after college or?

Leo: I moved here right after graduate school. It was in the late eighties.

Justin: Did you get your masters in public administration? Did I say that?

Leo: Public policy? That's what we call it. Public affairs at the LBJ school of public affairs in Austin.

Justin: All right, so you've been here ever since?

Leo: I've been here ever since. Justin, little did I know. I thought I'd come here and learn and get a career started in a real city and then take a look at real big cities on the East Coast or the West Coast and had some opportunities, but I fell in love quickly with San Antonio, fell in love with other things in San Antonio and here I am 30 something years later.

Justin: Well, that's a great city.

Leo: It absolutely is.

Justin: You did some time in DC, right?

Leo: I did as an intern when I was in graduate school. I spent six months there.

Justin: I interned there for the DCCC in 2002, and it's a great city too. It's very young, it's vibrant, it's great.

Leo: Oh, Justin, to go from the Rio Grande Valley, to graduate school in Austin and then intern six months in Washington DC, I was a young man that was just soaking in everything I could soak in and the experiences of DC as well as Austin during those two years of graduate school.[00:03:46]

Justin: Similar, I grew up in a town of 500 people in North Texas. Similar, San Antonio still a huge town even though it's a big small town.

Leo: They have small towns in North Texas?

Justin: On the border of Oklahoma. People try to avoid Oklahoma so there's only a few that say up there. All right. Favorite hidden gems in San Antonio and your wife said [unintelligible 00:04:07] house, so that's off the board.

Leo: Oh, well, that's not fair. I will tell you hidden gems in terms of food but in gems period.

Justin: Anything that you've got friends and you say, "You got to go check this."

Leo: I got to tell you the first thing that came to mind is you were saying it and that's the Jose Antonio Navarro house, the Navarro house. In downtown San Antonio, close to the courthouse, close to the police station, close to City hall. If folks don't understand who will say Antonio Navarro was, I encourage you to spend a day at the Navarro's house.

His contributions to the constitution of Texas, the development of Texas, a setting of the stage for what would become Texas, his friendship with Steven Austin, that [unintelligible 00:04:58] history, Justin of contribution to establishing what became Texas is evident in the letters between him and Steven Austin.

You can read some of those letters. You can walk around the house that he lived in. You can walk-- I'd love to do a little reception, a little party in the little courtyard of what's Navarro House. It's an incredible gym and those who have a hunger for understanding culture, understanding a little history and such, and wondering why is that street named Navarro? Go take a look.

Justin: Where is it at?

Leo: It's literally just South of Market Street, almost catty-corner to the new police station. There's a big parking lot between the police station and the Navarro House. It's a little wooden house on the corner of that block.

Justin: That's a new one to me. I've never heard of it. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that.

Leo: Someday I'm going to invite a lot of people there with a charcuterie board and some bottles of wine if we're allowed, and we're going to learn more about Jose Antonio Navarro and his contributions to the state of Texas.

Justin: I would love that invite.

Leo: All right, you're on.

Justin: Need a show about it. What is the thing you miss most about the Valley?

Leo: Besides family? What I remember as an incredibly tight-knit community, incredibly tight-knit community. That's probably something that can be said about a lot of small communities but McAllen wasn't exactly a small town yet it was very tight-knit. It's also where my entire extended family lived and so the family feeling and how close we were is what I miss. Justin, I had 16 uncles and aunts on my mom's side and 10 on my dad's side.

Justin: Big family.

Leo: I like to say if this language is allowed on air here, I have Chingos of cousins. If I had 16 uncles and aunts on my mom's side and 10 on my dad's side, I don't know how many cousins I have. We were all there in close proximity in the Rio Grande Valley. I missed that.

Justin: A ton still down there?

Leo: Is who's still down there?

Justin: Are a ton of them still down there.

Leo: Yes. My extended family is still for the most part is down there. I and just one other set of cousins represent those that ventured out of the Rio Grande Valley into that great city too.

Justin: Well, it's not that far. All right. Are you a reader?

Leo: Absolutely, read a number of books at the same time? Well, not literally at the same time, but I have them open--

Justin: What's in your Kindle right now, or your bookshelf?

Leo: Dream Big by Bob Goff. I love his stuff. It's a combination of leadership development with a Christian foundation. That's a book I'm just really soaking in right now. At the same time, I'm reading a biography of [unintelligible 00:08:21]. I am reading Lincoln on Leadership. I am reading-- well every day I read from a good book that gets my conversation with my heavenly father started. Then there's a few more. If I can look here, I can spit off some more, but those are the ones that come to mind.

Justin: Big reader.

Leo: Yes sir.

Justin: All right. This is a personal question that I want to know. In Brooks City Base did I read something about a salt cave being created there or some strange spa?

Leo: Oh, it's already here.

Justin: What is there?

Leo: It's incredible? It shouldn't be a secret. I'm sorry that it's a secret, but we have a wonderful hotel [unintelligible 00:09:11] ago, the Embassy Suites and the Embassy Suites has a spa in it. I would offer that it's the spa spas in San Antonio. Literally we built a rock salt cave or a salt rock cave within the spa. The rock was literally imported from Europe and brought here installed by some craftsmen from Europe. The quality of the air in that cave is just fantastic.

If you allow yourself to fall asleep in there just for a 30-minute nap and you breathe that wonderful quality of air is just an incredible experience. On top of that, you can get a massage, you can get foot massage, you can get a facial, and then right across the hall from it is Linda's, which is a hair salon run by Ms. Linda, who's been operating a hair salon on another location on the Southside for 20 plus years.

Justin: That's great. It's a legitimate like salt room, right?

Leo: It absolutely is.

Justin: Okay. It's still operational?

Leo: Yes, it's operating today. You can schedule a massage today or you don't even need to schedule a massage you can schedule 30 minutes at a time or an hour, or an hour and a half, or three hours in the salt cave, and people literally rent time or buy time, 30 minutes at a time in that salt cave.

Justin: I saw something about that and thought I've got to ask you questions about that.

Leo: If you're interested, anybody that is interested, please call the Embassy Suites at Brooks and they'll connect you with the folks at the spa and come visit us.

Justin: All right. Do you have a Spurs championship ring?

Leo: I've got four of them.

Justin: Geez. [laughs]

Leo: I'm not wearing them but I've got four of them, yes. They're in my safe at home.

Justin: I saw that you were there in stints but I didn't know which stints covered championships.

Leo: I got a ring for all of them but the last one, I wasn't there for the last one.

Justin: Okay. Favorite Fiesta event.

Leo: Oh, my team would kill me. I should say [unintelligible 00:11:22] Justin. You know what that is, Justin?

Justin: I mean, I know what it translates to, I don't know that that's a Fiesta event.

Leo: [unintelligible 00:11:27] yes, it is an event in the making for Fiesta. We've qualified to be an event. We're in our second year, you got to operate for three years before you get qualified as a Fiesta event so that's, Brooks' contribution to Fiesta. It's [unintelligible 00:11:44] on the green line park at Brooks.

We've got our green line park with five ponds, it's a 43-acre linear park and we literally use those grounds as a chancla [unintelligible 00:11:57] drink beer and throw chanclas at stuff and it's fun. Everybody who's grown up in Texas or South Texas, in particular, knows what grandma used to do with her Chancla when you misbehaved, and that's basically what we are building on as a thing.

Justin: What month do y'all do it now? Do you do it with Fiesta?

Leo: We do it with Fiesta.

Justin: Okay. All right, and who's the beneficiary of the charity?

Leo: Brooks Gives Back, which is our own foundation to build a sense of philanthropic activity right here on the Southside. We raised the funds to support nonprofits that are implementing initiatives in the zip code that surrounds Brooks.

Justin: That's great.

Leo: This nonprofit raises money to help-- this year we awarded for the second time money to the boys and girls club, for example, and their programming in the Brooks area. SISD foundation in their programming for their schools in the Brooks area, Caste Med in particular, which is actually located on Brooks.

We're also supporting Meals on Wheels, not their food serving program but they have a home repair program for the elderly folks that they serve through their meals on wheels program, and so they've got a number of homes in the area that they are serving with that home repair program, and the Brooks Gives Back is supporting those three initiatives. We raised the funds in part from the activity and the fundraising that comes along with [unintelligible 00:13:30].

Justin: Y'all proved out two years in one more or you've done one?

Leo: Well, this last year would have been our second year.

Justin: Okay. All right. Are they going to count that?

Leo: I don't know when we're going to get to the second one.

Justin: Yes, true. I think that's a good point, so for a new Fiesta event, you have to prove that you're viable and can raise money essentially, right?

Leo: Correct. Absolutely.

Justin: I think that would have to be the Southern Most Fiesta event, right?

Leo: I'm going to claim it.

 Justin: I mean, I can't think of anything. I'm kind of a big Fiesta fan, and I can't think of anything that's sort of South of South town really. That'd be a good selling point as well. What do you think some of the biggest challenges facing San Antonio are right now outside of COVID? This is a question I've asked a lot of people, COVID obviously is the biggest challenge but outside of that, once we get through this, what are some of the things that you think the city's facing that they really need to tackle head-on?

Leo: Same challenges we've had before COVID. It starts with unacceptable levels of poverty in certain parts of our town. Poverty shouldn't be acceptable anywhere, but the levels in certain parts of the town are just not-- I mean, we as San Antonians should not find it that acceptable. What that leads to in terms of an impact on education for example, and many other things as you might imagine but it starts with a level of poverty. We've got to decide we're not going to be okay with that anymore.

It's a problem we had before COVID, COVID is really showing us how real a problem that is for us, and we've got to band together one way or another tackle that. It is the biggest challenge for San Antonio for a number of reasons, including economic development. We're trying to attract really good companies and good jobs and we got to keep fighting this perception of a poor town. It doesn't help us if we're doing well, it doesn't help us if we allow our neighbors to be poor.

Justin: Do you think COVID-- I talked about this with the mayor, do you think COVID will sort of light the fire under our collective butts to approach poverty as a sort of community or do you think we're just going to go back to the way things were before, after COVID?

Leo: I think it already has. I mean if you listened to the mayor, I mean, certainly has lit up the mayor and that's lighting up the council, and it's lighting up community leaders around town, showing them support for those kinds of agendas. I'm a believer in investing in San Antonio and I know there's taxpayers out there who don't like hearing those code words, so to speak, but if we don't invest in ourselves, what do we expect? If you have a business and you don't invest in your business, what do you expect?

If you have talent working for you and you don't invest in their development, what can you expect from them? We as San Antonio have got to invest in our city and Justin, I'm going to say this, I hope I don't get in trouble or step on any toes. I love San Antonio, and I'm very grateful for what past leaders have done for our community in leading us forward, but too many times we have taken the less challenging route, the cheaper route, if I may, to address issues we need to address. I think we've got to address transportation and connectivity throughout San Antonio.

We're growing and we're going to continue growing, and we should be connected. Our neighborhoods should be connected so we've got to do that. We've got to address this poverty level and help folks get a good job that pays well and has good benefits. We've got to attract the companies that bring them in, we've got to keep investing in our infrastructure. Kudos to the mayor and community leadership, the County judge moving forward and making those investments.

Justin: I'm going to brag on Ron a little bit here, I mean, Ron's really taken up the mantle of it, sort of attacking some of the transportation issues in light of the fact that polling shows very few San Antonioans feel it's one of the major issues that need to be addressed. It doesn't affect everybody the same way but the people, it affects, it affects in a big way and Ron's kind of taken an unpopular opinion on some of that, and you got to give the guy credit for having courage to do what he thinks is right.

Leo: Absolutely. I would challenge that notion. I've seen research that says that a lot of people in San Antonio actually support and understand it, and a lot of people in San Antonio know now more than ever that we need to invest in [unintelligible 00:18:18], in our transit system, like we should have 30 years ago, Justin.

Justin: I was just reading that article where they talked about