{"id":40303,"date":"2015-07-21T11:53:48","date_gmt":"2015-07-21T16:53:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/?p=40303"},"modified":"2015-07-21T11:54:18","modified_gmt":"2015-07-21T16:54:18","slug":"hard-times-come-to-the-hotel-capital","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2015\/07\/21\/hard-times-come-to-the-hotel-capital\/","title":{"rendered":"Hard Times Come to the &#8216;Hotel Capital&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_40309\"  class=\"wp-caption module image center\" style=\"max-width: 620px;\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-large wp-image-40309\" alt=\"Small town Cotulla depends on the oil industry to bring people to fill its many hotel rooms. Jorge Sanhueza-Lyon Jose Rodriguez is recently laid off from his oil industry job.\" src=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2015\/07\/Cotulla-015-620x388.jpg\" width=\"620\" height=\"388\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2015\/07\/Cotulla-015-620x388.jpg 620w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2015\/07\/Cotulla-015-300x187.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 620px) 100vw, 620px\" \/><p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Jorge Sanhueza-Lyon<\/p><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Small town Cotulla depends on the oil industry to bring people to fill its many hotel rooms.Jorge Sanhueza-LyonJose Rodriguez is recently laid off from his oil industry job.<\/p><\/div>\n<p><strong><em>This story originally ran as part of KUT 90.5&#8217;s series &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/smalltowntexas.kut.org\/\">Meanwhile in Small Town Texas<\/a>.&#8221;<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Cotulla, Texas, is a small town deep in the oil fields of the South Texas Eagle Ford Shale.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s a town that bet big on the oil boom.<\/p>\n<p>Five years ago the census put the population at less than 4,000 people. There were three or four motels then. Now in Cotulla there are around 25 motels, hotels and inns. It\u2019s earned the town a nickname: \u201cThe \u2018Hotel Capital of the Eagle Shale,\u2019\u201d says City Administrator Larry Dovalina.<\/p>\n<p>He says for years Cotulla was like a lot of places in rural Texas: \u201cDying on the vine. Kind of forgotten.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?url=https%3A\/\/api.soundcloud.com\/tracks\/206692622&amp;color=ff5500&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=false&amp;show_comments=true&amp;show_user=true&amp;show_reposts=false\" height=\"166\" width=\"100%\" frameborder=\"no\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><!--more-->Then one day, Dovalina got a surprising proposal. A man approached him about building a $3 million Best Western Hotel in Cotulla.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe said there\u2019s a big oil boom coming. And I heard about it from a friend of mine, who was also an investor in his business. And from then on, it\u2019s gone up every year,\u201d says Dovalina.<\/p>\n<p>The city laid down utilities and gave out permits for the Best Western and other new hotels. The buildings housed the thousands of men rushing in to work in the oil fields, and Cotulla reaped the benefits of the motel tax. To Dovalina, the whole thing looked like progress for the community.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_40314\"  class=\"wp-caption module image right\" style=\"max-width: 300px;\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-40314\" alt=\"Cotulla native Jose Rodriguez had lost his oilfield job earlier this year. He was thinking about leaving town.\" src=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2015\/07\/CotullaJose-300x200.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2015\/07\/CotullaJose-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2015\/07\/CotullaJose-620x413.jpg 620w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Mose Buchele<\/p><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Cotulla native Jose Rodriguez had lost his oilfield job earlier this year. He was thinking about leaving town.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>\u201cMany of its children who had left now enjoy very stable, very strong paying jobs,\u201d he says. \u201cWhich they were never going to be able to enjoy in the community on the vine, dying, like it was before.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s one version of the story of Cotulla, or almost any Texas boom town. It\u2019s a version we heard more of before the price of oil plummeted last year.<\/p>\n<p>Just down the street from City Hall, a young guy working on his car, Jose Rodriguez, tells a different version.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve been here all my life,\u201d he says. \u201c[The] 2010 oil field boom hit here pretty good. Since then it\u2019s been booming in Cotulla, man. But just in the past couple of months, it went down, you know? Everybody got laid off. Everybody who\u2019s anybody is laid off right now. I\u2019m laid off, as a matter of fact.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Rodriguez says he has a line on a new oil rig job, but if that didn\u2019t pan out, he was going to leave. He says lot of the guys he knew already had \u2014 to Canada, or Alaska.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_40320\"  class=\"wp-caption module image left\" style=\"max-width: 300px;\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-40320\" alt=\"Brenda Talbert is in charge of the county chamber of commerce. She thinks oil prices are will rebound soon. \" src=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2015\/07\/IMG_1269-300x200.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2015\/07\/IMG_1269-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2015\/07\/IMG_1269-620x413.jpg 620w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Mose Buchele<\/p><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Brenda Talbert is in charge of the county chamber of commerce. She thinks oil prices are will rebound soon.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>\u201cI think by ten years from now, this town\u2019s gonna be dried out. Every hole\u2019s gonna be poked around here, and there\u2019s only gonna be a handful of companies around here,\u201d he says. \u201cI don\u2019t know, man. Cotulla don\u2019t look too good right now.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Cotulla\u2019s about more than just oil and motels, of course.<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s art. There\u2019s local music \u2014 like <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=A0Dna5KaiSs\">El Gusano<\/a>, a Cotulla-based band from the \u201870s. There\u2019s loads of history: Before he was President, Lyndon Johnson <a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/2014\/04\/11\/301820334\/lbj-carried-cotulla-with-him-in-civil-rights-fight\">taught grade school here<\/a>. The place is overflowing with stories. But when you ask people about the future, you usually hear a version of the \u201cboom town\u201d story \u2014 or \u201cghost town.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>All you have to do is ask them about the hotels.<\/p>\n<p>Ronaldo Osario, who goes by his nickname Wheaties \u2014 he says he got it because he was so good at basketball as a kid, his teammates said he should be on the Wheaties cereal box \u2014 works at the auto parts store where Rodriguez was shopping.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_40321\"  class=\"wp-caption module image right\" style=\"max-width: 300px;\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-40321\" alt=\"'We've been through this before says Ronaldo &quot;Wheaties&quot; Osario. He worries the new hotels will become &quot;homes for the pigeons.&quot;\" src=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2015\/07\/IMG_1276-300x200.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2015\/07\/IMG_1276-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2015\/07\/IMG_1276-620x413.jpg 620w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Mose Buchele<\/p><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">&#39;We&#39;ve been through this before says Ronaldo &quot;Wheaties&quot; Osario. He worries the new hotels will become &quot;homes for the pigeons.&quot;<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Wheaties was here for last oil boom in the \u201880s, and the bust. He says repo men would follow him on his paper route to locate their targets.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019ve been through this before. We know how it works,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n<p>He says that in ten years, the hotels are \u201cgonna be pigeon houses.\u201d<br \/>\nBut, take that to the local chamber of commerce, and you get the sense that you\u2019re stepping on some invisible battle lines.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA lot of the people in this community did not want progress. But the progression came in just due to the fact that they couldn\u2019t hold back the oil and gas boom,\u201d says chamber president Brenda Talbert.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m a positive person,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019m not a negative person. I think this is a very positive thing.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She says the price of oil will rebound. The U.S. will start exporting natural gas, maybe even crude oil. Soon the city will need more hotels.<\/p>\n<p>She agrees that 25-plus hotels in a tiny town is slightly \u201cnuts.\u201d<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_40323\"  class=\"wp-caption module image left\" style=\"max-width: 300px;\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-40323\" alt=\"Before the oil boom Cotulla was known mostly for hunting and ranching. \" src=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2015\/07\/Cotulla-013-300x176.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"176\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2015\/07\/Cotulla-013-300x176.jpg 300w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2015\/07\/Cotulla-013-620x365.jpg 620w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Jorge Sanhueza-Lyon<\/p><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Before the oil boom Cotulla was known mostly for hunting and ranching.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>\u201cBut when you look at the overall picture, and if you drive around, especially at night when these service people are coming in, most of those parking lots are full.\u201d<br \/>\nBut Later that night, most of those parking lots were still pretty empty.<\/p>\n<p>That includes the lot at the Best Western \u2014 the place that was the first to go up with the oil boom.<\/p>\n<p>Katie Groda works for a company that manages hotels. She actually spends her life on the road living in different hotels, and she\u2019s spent a lot of time in Cotulla..<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAs you can see there\u2019s no business in here right now, and as I just came off the frontage road, I\u2019m watching contractors building two-, three-story hotels!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>At the height of the oil boom, she says the place was booked two years out. Companies were paying for empty rooms to have them in case they needed them.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou couldn\u2019t find parking. The hotel was full, our housekeepers\u2026everybody was just booming and going 24-7.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Now, she says, it\u2019s \u201cextremely quiet.\u201d<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_40325\"  class=\"wp-caption module image right\" style=\"max-width: 300px;\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-40325\" alt=\"With less business coming in and so many hotels, Katie Groda hopes the city has plans for empty buildings.\" src=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2015\/07\/CotullaKatieGroda1936-300x200.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2015\/07\/CotullaKatieGroda1936-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2015\/07\/CotullaKatieGroda1936-620x413.jpg 620w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Mose Buchele<\/p><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">With less business coming in and so many hotels, Katie Groda hopes the city has plans for empty buildings.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Since the oil companies started making layoffs and cutting spending, there have been rate wars between the hotels. And Groda doesn\u2019t see how lot of the places will survive.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat\u2019s going to happen to the city of Cotulla? Are all those going to be dilapidated buildings in the next two, three, four years? Is that what the town\u2019s going to be left with?\u201d<br \/>\nThere\u2019s a train that passes through downtown Cotulla.<\/p>\n<p>It carries goods made in Mexico to cities on this side of the border. One idea here is to capture that traffic by building big warehouses for the goods and filling the hotels with long-haul truckers. People also talk about repurposing the buildings \u2014 Cotulla needs permanent housing, so that could be an option.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_40327\"  class=\"wp-caption module image left\" style=\"max-width: 300px;\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-40327\" alt=\"In downtown Cotulla, an empty hotel from a bygone era serves as a warning to some. \" src=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2015\/07\/IMG_1324-300x200.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2015\/07\/IMG_1324-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2015\/07\/IMG_1324-620x413.jpg 620w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Mose Buchele<\/p><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">In downtown Cotulla, an empty hotel from a bygone era serves as a warning to some.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>But only one thing seems sure: Even if oil keeps going up, it\u2019s not likely Texas will soon return to the heady days of a year or two ago. That means there are hundreds \u2014 maybe thousands \u2014 of other small towns like Cotulla, wondering what comes next.<br \/>\nIn downtown Cotulla along Main Street, a rusted-out sign sits in front of a motor lodge that looks like it was abandoned long ago.<\/p>\n<p>The windows are dingy. The paint\u2019s chipping off.<\/p>\n<p>There haven\u2019t been any guests here for a long time. There are no pigeons, but there are swallows. They\u2019ve built their nests under the balcony.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This story originally ran as part of KUT 90.5&#8217;s series &#8220;Meanwhile in Small Town Texas.&#8221; Cotulla, Texas, is a small town deep in the oil fields of the South Texas Eagle Ford Shale. It\u2019s a town that bet big on the oil boom. Five years ago the census put the population at less than 4,000 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[60],"tags":[64],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40303"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40303"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40303\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40332,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40303\/revisions\/40332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}