San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
SAN PEDRO
percent of the area median income, according to an incentives agreement.
City staff noted last year that it’s expected to include about
274 apartments, with the lowerpriced units “anticipated to be achieved through a partnership with a Public Facilities Corporation.” Such a partnership would provide Weston Urban with a property tax exemption.
The firm is also set to receive nearly $2 million in city incentives, including fee waivers, grants and tax rebates.
Weston Urban is still in the process of acquiring the Continental site from the city, Smith said, but intends to combine its parcels on that block for a mixed-use development geared toward students at the University of Texas at San Antonio.
“The idea there would be to preserve the historic portions of those buildings and develop the entire block … with a product that is complementary to UTSA,” he said. “Of our developments that are on the horizon now, this is the one that we think most directly caters to the things that UTSA is doing downtown.”
The firm acquired the office building at 800 Dolorosa with UTSA’s expansion in mind but has no immediate plans for it.
The same goes for a parcel it owns on West Travis Street and about 3.3 acres it has amassed at the San Pedro Creek park’s northern limit, around the intersection of North Flores and Kingsbury.
“We are still working through some environmental issues,” Smith said, referring to the northern parcels. “It is right there at the top of the creek project, and that’s what we loved about it.”
The firm renovated several buildings along East Houston for technology firms, Geekdom and retailers. It finished the Frost Tower in 2019 and recently rehabilitated a historic building across from City Hall, which
includes ground-floor retail and space for an office tenant on the second floor.
“We’ve built an office portfolio that I’m very proud of, and we will never stop focusing on that and helping support the tech ecosystem,” Smith said. “But as far as our new development right now, our primary focus is mixed-use residential.”
The firm plans to build a 32story tower with 351 apartments and retail on a parking lot at 305 Soledad.
It is seeking incentives that include a 15-year tax rebate estimated to be worth about $8.8 million and will contribute 25 percent of the rebate, or about $2.2 million, to the city’s affordable housing fund.
The firm also is requesting a reimbursement of $1 million for San Antonio Water System impact fees from the Houston Street Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone, which reimburses developers for public improvements.
Weston Urban also committed to creating at least 265 housing units downtown under a 2015 deal between the firm, Frost Bank and the city — a requirement Smith said it will exceed. The properties it will acquire through the arrangement include the Municipal Plaza building and several parking lots.
“We certainly have the property to deliver a massive number of housing units,” he said. “Ultimately, the market will decide how many we deliver, but we do believe that across a number of different product types, downtown is entirely underserved from a housing standpoint.”
GrayStreet Partners
The local firm bought historic buildings and parking lots on two corners of the intersection of Nueva and South Flores in 2018, but not with the creek’s renovation solely in mind, said director of development Peter French.
The properties were attractive in part because of the proximity to the Bexar County Courthouse, UTSA’s expansion and activity at Hemisfair.
“There’s a lot of underutilized real estate,” French said.
But the firm is “bullish on the prospective impact” of the waterway’s rehabilitation and the pedestrian-friendly environment that will be created, he added.
GrayStreet plans to eventually fill the buildings with retail and service tenants — well after the pandemic.
One of the occupants, the Cadillac Bar watering hole that was once a gathering place for politicos and public officials, closed last fall due to the pandemic.
In other swaths of the city’s urban core, GrayStreet is rehabilitating the historic San Antonio Light building on Broadway into office space and is planning a massive mixed-use development across from the Pearl.
The firm has also renovated several buildings on Houston. Last year, it acquired the former Lone Star Brewery complex, which it also wants to turn it into a mixed-use project.
UTSA
UTSA broke ground in December on a 167,000-square-foot building that will house its School of Data Science and National Security Collaboration Center. The building is expected to be completed in the fall of next year, said Corrina Green, the university’s director of major capital projects and real estate.
On the other side of the creek, the university plans to construct the Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Careers building. It is still in the planning stage, and the university is working on gathering funding for its expected $161.3 million cost through donors and in the current state legislative session, among other sources, Green said.
The university is considering what to do with another piece of land at 702 Dolorosa St., currently a parking lot. A master plan published by the university in 2019 identified a potential for housing on the site, but the university is as yet unsure what to do with it and is working with consultants to consider the options, Green said.
“It could be another academic building. It could be housing. It could be part of a (public-private partnership). We just don’t know right now,” she said.
The university’s buildings will feature public places near the creek, such as a coffee shop and a “showcase space” where hacking competitions would be held, and perhaps an interactive garden, she said.
The 2019 master plan describes how the university could link its mini-campus around the Culture Park with its existing campus west of downtown to create a “seamless, porous” downtown campus by means of landscaped streets and a pedestrian bridge running under Interstate 10. Under this plan, the university would serve around 10,000 students on the downtown campus.
Representatives of UTSA meet monthly with the city to coordinate their plans and figure out what the next project will be, Green said.
“We’re really trying to embrace the creek,” she said. “I would hope that it’s vibrant, that there’s a lot of people living down there and walking around and interacting. I hope that our students are interacting with the folks that live and work downtown.”