When the 23-story Frost Tower opened in downtown San Antonio in 2019, the eight-sided glass windmill represented a decade of revitalized urban development. It was the city’s first new office tower in three decades.
For Randy Smith, CEO of Weston Urban, one of the developers behind the project, this was the start of a new wave of activity. Now that offices have reached the city centre, a new flood of calm follows.
One of the firm’s next big projects, a 32-story brick residential tower a few blocks away, is breaking ground this year. “The Frost Tower is this big, big visible symbol of a new era in the city centre,” said Mr. Smith. “And the residential tower will be the same thing.”
But community advocates counter some of that growth, saying the new office and apartment towers encroach upon the city’s historic neighborhoods that form a cultural core of Mexican American heritage.
“San Antonio has a wonderfully preserved historic downtown, a stock of historic buildings and the River Walk, and that’s the image the city projects to the world,” said Ian Caine, director of the University of Urban and Regional Planning Research Center. Texas in San Antonio. “And on the other hand, it’s one of the fastest growing cities in the US, a famously bicultural and minority majority, and one of the most segregated and poorest cities in the US.”
“As San Antonio progresses, it tries to make sense of these competing histories,” he added.
Often overlooked when compared to other major Texas cities, San Antonio has for years been one of the fastest growing metro areas in the United States. Its population has grown 8.1 percent over the past decade and is projected to host another one million by 2040. Developers are progressing at a similar pace.
A number of large-scale projects will support recent growth in the city centre. The $700 million Lone Star District will break ground this year; Essex Modern City, a $150 million multi-purpose district, has finally overcome funding and regulatory hurdles; and the second phase of development at Hemisfair Park will break ground this fall. Other notable projects include a wooden office tower called Soto, the $450 million renovation of the historic Alamo Plaza, and the development of new parks and green spaces along San Pedro Creek.
“San Antonio still flies under the radar, and I think it’s the best kept secret in the US,” said Jake Harris, managing partner of Harris Bay, a Sacramento-based developer behind numerous projects in San Antonio. Including the Modern City of Essex. “Growth isn’t priced in real estate yet, and you can still get a good deal once institutional capital starts coming in.”
The tie that ties these issues together may be the significant expansion of the downtown campus of the University of Texas at San Antonio, which launched a virtual breakthrough in January. Expected to attract 15,000 additional students over the next decade, the university is adding streetscapes and academic facilities, including the $90 million School of Data Science and the Center for National Security Cooperation, to fuel growth in future industries.
Corrina Green, vice president of real estate, construction and planning at the university, said the ability to develop this site felt like creating a “complete district.”
The expansion has the potential to be an incubator for development, but it is also likely to catalyze further commercial and residential development in the city centre, worrying some community groups.
In recent years, San Antonio’s relatively small, walkable downtown has been overtaken by suburban growth and development—partly due to streets that traced Spanish colonial-era irrigation canals called acequias. Even now, higher-income suburbs offer 26.4 million square feet of office space compared to downtown 4.9 million.
Initial projects drew attention to the area’s potential, particularly the redevelopment of a brewery by Christopher Goldsbury, a former CEO of Pace Foods, and its transformation into the Pearl District, an entertainment hub. However, investments began to increase significantly in 2010, when former Mayor Julián Castro launched the Decade of the City Center initiative.
Kamil Alavi, partner at GrayStreet Partners, which developed the Lone Star site, said it changed traditional building calculations in the city centre. Projects that required demolition and replacement of old buildings were neither cost-effective nor did some have undeveloped land, but these limitations encouraged adaptive reuse, which highlighted the city’s architectural heritage.
With 2.4 million square feet of real estate under construction in the city centre, there is now more opportunity, said Ryan Metz, brokerage consultant at ECR.
“There is a mismatch between the demand for real estate and those currently in the city centre, which cannot be met anytime soon,” Mr. Alavi said.
This demand and need for new housing has worried advocates and community members in the Westside, a neighborhood of small stores or tienditas, and tightly interlocking single family homes that are the source of affordable home ownership for low and middle incomers. residents, through their homes, are often passed down through the generations.
“This is where people have lived for generations, where the Chicano movement started, and it has a very rich history,” said Levar Martin, chief program officer of the National Latino Community Asset Builders Association, headquartered in San Antonio. “It’s not just about preserving the housing stock. It’s about people’s culture and life.”
The Esperanza Center for Peace and Justice has pushed for affordable housing and recognition of historic architecture and is restoring 11 historic “casita” homes and buildings and building a museum highlighting West Coast history to create the Rinconcito de Esperanza, a historic cultural district.
The Center’s director, Graciela Sanchez, said the Decade of Downtown initiative invests in housing for newcomers, but not for those who have lived downtown for generations.
“This neighborhood is the Ellis Island of Mexican Americans,” he said, and has fought to preserve it and participated in community protests last year against plans to demolish and rebuild the Alazán-Apache Courts, a historic public housing project.
City and housing authorities are grappling with the next step, especially when it comes to access and affordability. Mia Loseff, policy analyst at Texas Housers, a nonprofit focused on low-income housing, said the previous development focused more on increasing the number of downtown homes. He said new policies and incentives need to be more aligned with promoting housing for all income levels and realizing that “the most affordable housing is the structures we already have.”
Half of San Antonio’s affordable housing isn’t subsidized, so it’s more subject to market forces. Groups such as the Esperanza Center for Peace and Justice and others supported the development of land trusts as well as targeted investments to assist homeowners.
Mayor Ron Nirenberg and his administration have created tools to invest in housing, including a $1 million risk reduction fund in 2019 to allocate funds for affordable housing and assist residents displaced by development, and an additional $4 million this year. will receive funding.
The city is working to complete a new strategic housing plan that includes proposals to offer incentives for private sector development and to create 28,000 units over the next decade that will support mostly low-income residents. And in May, the city will vote on a planned $250 million affordable housing bond measure that will fund construction, conservation and real estate banking.
Now is the time to find the right formula to preserve the city’s heritage and sustain affordable housing, said Mr Martin, of the National Latino Community Asset Builders Association.
“I understand that the city wants to capitalize on the culture, but it needs to be followed with fair protection for the people who are there,” he said.