Taking the long view
Downtown high-rise puts busy couple in the middle of the action but above the fray
Norma and Fernando Reyes spend a lot of time downtown, attending fundraisers, enjoying the restaurants and taking advantage of the city’s many cultural offerings.
But living out in the Dominion made doing all that a hassle.
“Fernando works south of town, and so he’d have to drive out there to pick me up because we didn’t want to have two cars downtown,” Norma Reyes said. “We needed something different.”
In 2020, they decided to sell what, for 25 years, had been their “dream house.”
“It was a beautiful home, but the kids were gone and it was just the two of us,” she said. “Taxes just kept going up and up, and it just seemed the right time to move.”
They looked at several highrises in and around downtown, eventually settling on the Arts Residences in the Thompson San Antonio, which at the time was still under construction.
Apartment life on the 12th floor suits them well.
“This is such an ideal location,” said Fernando, who is the founder of Reyes Automotive Group, a Toyota supplier. “The Tobin is right on the other side of the river. And we love traveling, so all we have to do is lock the door and go.”
Since the Fiesta parade routes have changed, they also have a bird’s-eye view of the excitement.
“We’ll invite people who are in the parade to come up and have a drink before they get on their float,” said Fernando, who served as Rey Feo in 2008.
They’ve gotten used to the city noises and say their floor is surprisingly quiet, suspecting that many of the condos on their floor are owned either by corporations or people who live in San Antonio only part time.
And they enjoy hosting their four grandchildren for overnight stays.
“They love coming over because it’s like being on vacation and staying in a hotel,” Norma said. “They like having 24-hour service, so that’s kind of a treat for them, too.”
Their condo, which they bought in November 2020, has three bedrooms (one serves as Fernando’s home office) and 31⁄2 baths, although one is not in use (more on that in a minute). Equivalent apartments today sell for $1.4 million to $1.8 million.
Because the building was already under construction when they bought their unit, the couple were limited in what changes they could make to the floor plan.
One thing they did do — at the suggestion of their interior designer, Ernesto Bustamante of Domain Design by Ernesto Bustamante — involved moving an interior wall to enlarge the living room space while shrinking the walk-in closet in the owner’s suite.
The reconfigured living area not only gave them room to install a gas fireplace with a TV above it, it also opened up the view out the large, curved bank of windows along the far wall. When the weather cooperates, that view reaches all the way to the distant Hill Country.
“Those windows are what sold us on this apartment,” said Fernando. “We realized that if we were going to live here, we really wanted to showcase that
view.”
For those times when views are not top of mind — at night when they want privacy or during the day while watching TV — they installed motorized shades that slowly drop down over the nine separate window panels.
In the open kitchen, the cream-colored cabinets were chosen to match the creamywhite granite atop the peninsula that’s shot through with streaks of light and dark gray.
“The kitchen is very reminiscent of my kitchen in the Dominion,” said Norma, who is retired from the family business. “Our old house had a kind of timeless look, and this isn’t a big change from that.”
The cream color continues in the owner’s bedroom, a calming space where the cozy bedding brings splashes of color.
Flanking the bed are a pair of cat lamps that hint of ancient Egypt. She brought them with her when the couple moved to San Antonio after living in Laredo for many years.
“It’s the way I mix my old stuff with the new,” she said. “Never forget the old.”
At the far end of the bedroom, a niche that could have served as a small seating area instead contains Norma’s work desk, complete with its own million-dollar view of downtown.
And the bathroom repeats the same quartz countertop as in the kitchen, this atop a modern floating cabinet. Nearby is another change they made during the construction phase: They installed a makeup vanity with a seat in a space that was earmarked for a tub.
“We already have the standup shower, so we didn’t need the tub,” she said.
She also made peace with losing closet space when the interior wall was moved to enlarge the living area.
“In our old house I had a whole room for my clothes and then I had a dressing room, too,” she said. “I had to get rid of a lot of clothing to make this smaller closet work, but I still wear the same stuff over and over again.”
To make up for the loss of space, in the bedroom that now serves as Fernando’s home office, they converted the shower in the en suite bathroom into a closet, nonetheless leaving the plumbing in case a future owner wants to convert it back.