BROWNSVILLE — Texas Southmost College and University of Texas at Austin architecture students have teamed to create designs for a proposed West Rail Trail.
The students will design various proposals throughout the rest of the year, and the final designs that will then be presented to the public in December.
“Thankfully, (TSC architecture students) have always been engaged in service learning and our community for the past few years,” Murad Abusalim, TSC’s dean of STEM and CTE said.
Abusalim said that throughout the proposal process both TSC and UT-Austin students are going to do thorough research about the West Rail property and look at what amenities would fit best in the area and similar projects that have been completed.
Edna Ledesma, a UT-Austin professor and emerging scholar of race and gender, is a Brownsville native and said this project came to UT-Austin through the City of Brownsville.
“So each of the four teams will develop a master plan, and in the next six weeks around October, the TSC students will come and review our work in Austin — and then in December we will come down and present again here,” Lesdesma said.
Brownsville Assistant Planning Director Ramiro Gonzalez said some of the community projects that the city has implemented have been designed by TSC architecture students.
“We really think it’s a great way to engage not only the community but engage the youth of Brownsville in their future,” Gonzalez said. “In this case, we decided to take it a step further, and we partnered with UT-Austin because they’ll bring in different dynamics.”
