Two historic buildings get a reprieve
City panel denies request for demolition after owners detail struggle to sell or lease
After listening to the owner detail his struggle to sell, lease or find an economically feasible plan to renovate the property and hearing neighbors’ frustrations over more historic structures disappearing from historic Cattleman Square, a city panel rejected a request to demolish a pair of buildings in the near West Side neighborhood.
The Historic and Design Review Commission voted 9-2 Wednesday to deny a proposal to raze the deteriorating Rich Book Building and an adjacent building along West Houston Street across from VIA Metropolitan Transit’s Centro Plaza transportation hub and near the University of Texas at San Antonio’s downtown campus.
Owners David Adelman, a local developer known for his work restoring historic buildings, and restaurateur Barclay Anthony of the Sea Island Shrimp House chain, said they have been unsuccessful in attracting buyers or tenants because of concerns about rehabilitation costs and safety in the area.
They couldn’t recoup the cost of restoring the property themselves and get a reasonable rate of return on their investment, they said, even if the buildings were fully occupied. The property is in poor shape and would be hard to repurpose or even salvage in pieces.
“It is a very difficult situation,” Adelman told commissioners.
But nearby residents and members of West Side organizations decried the request, saying that tearing down the buildings would add to the erasure of history and culture in an area that was once a buzzing commercial center. They also said the owners
knew when they purchased the buildings in 2014 and 2018 that they were considered historic as part of Cattleman Square, which was designated a historic district in 1988.
Opposition voices
More than 30 people spoke during the meeting, wrote letters or left voicemails opposing demolition.
“We need to preserve our history, our treasures, our people,” said Graciela Sánchez, who leads the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center.
“If we demolish these buildings, we all lose,” said Ray Morales, a member of the Historic Westside Residents Association.
The Rich Book Building at West Houston and North Frio streets was built in 1923 as a department store started by Morris Richbook, who came to the U.S. from Romania in 1902. It was occupied by multiple businesses including a cafe, barber shop, a hotel and Whitt & Co. Printers, which published the Spanish-language La Prensa newspaper, and has included apartments.
The other building, referred to as the Office Building and the SA Dye Works Building, was constructed in the early 1900s. Adelman and Anthony bought the buildings through an entity called Master Property Partners Ltd. and acquired other parcels on the block, which were not part of the demolition request.
In 2019, they put together an application to raze the Rich Book and adjacent buildings and replace them with a mixed-use development with apartments, retail and parking, Adelman said.
But when they met with commissioners and city staff, they were told they had not proved that retaining and redeveloping the buildings posed an “unreasonable economic hardship,” a standard specified in the city code, Adelman said. They decided against moving forward and hired brokers to market the buildings and find buyers or tenants.
Rehab ‘impractical’
In their application presented Wednesday, Adelman and Anthony submitted estimates from contracting and consulting firms that put the cost of rehabilitating Rich Book at more than $6 million and the adjacent building at $1.1 million. Remodeling Rich Book for use as offices would cost $6.1 million, and refashioning it as apartments could cost 25% more, according to one estimate.
An executive at Archcomm LLC, an architecture and engineering firm, said the buildings are in poor condition and the extensive repairs required “make rehabilitation impractical.”
The leaders of two organizations that considered leasing or buying the property said they opted not to do so because of the breadth of the renovations needed and concerns about employees’ safety and community support, according to letters included in the application.
Law enforcement raided the Rich Book Building in 2018 and 2019 because of drug activity, and there was a fire in the building. The San Antonio Fire Department told the owners the building is unsafe for them to enter if another fire breaks out because of its condition, Adelman told commissioners.
City staff recommended the panel approve demolition because they said the owners had demonstrated “unreasonable economic hardship.”
Residents and members of West Side groups questioned whether Adelman and Anthony had exhausted all options in searching for funding, including exploring historic tax credits, tax rebates and other potential assistance. They said the owners had neglected the buildings, allowing them to fall further into disrepair.
They are concerned about gentrification, as well.
Adelman said the buildings are generally in the same condition as when he and Anthony bought them and that renovation hasn’t begun because they can’t make it work financially. He has used historic incentive programs for previous projects but said they don’t provide enough for refashioning the Cattleman Square buildings.
“If I could do it, if the incentives were adequate, I would know how to do it and it would be doable and I would do it,” Adelman said.
“When we bought the buildings, we knew we were in a historic district … we believed in that neighborhood’s development and sort of evolution,” he said. “We have not been able to make any reasonable, not even minor, rate of return on any project we’ve tried to conceive of over these 10 years. … If I could unwind history and not have bought (the buildings), I would love to say that I wouldn’t have, because it’s been so difficult.”
No plan for future
But commissioners said they were concerned about the lack of a plan for what the buildings would be replaced with if they allowed them to be razed, and had required more detail when considering demolition requests for other propertiest. Some also asked if there were halfway measures such as reusing the SA Dye Works Building.
Adelman said they can’t develop a plan for a new project without knowing what demolition will be allowed. The property doesn’t have sufficient parking, the placement of the SA Dye Works Building doesn’t allow a garage to fit and saving the facade of the Rich Book building is not viable, Adelman said.
“Replacement plans start with schematic design and cost estimates, and I would think that as a minimum those replacement plans should come forward with the request for demolition to show what’s possible and what the total economic impact is,” Commissioner Jeffrey Fetzer said.
After the vote, Adelman and Anthony said in a statement they are working on their next steps.
“If the commission’s ruling stands, the community should expect only to see these structures continue to sit vacant. Our hope is that the larger community will come to agree with us that if we want to honor this area, we should create something new and vital that everyone can be proud of,” they said.
On the near West Side, property owners and preservation advocates have repeatedly battled over the fate of historic buildings.
In 2021, the Lim family asked commissioners for permission to demolish the Whitt Printing Co. building next to their Golden Star Cafe restaurant and across the street from Adelman and Anthony’s property.
The building, which was erected in the 1930s, is named for politician, publisher and author Gilberto Whitt, who founded a printing business after fleeing to San Antonio during the Mexican Revolution. At the time, San Antonio had more Spanish publishing houses than any other U.S. city, according to city staff.
An attorney said the Lim family could not afford to rehabilitate the building and potential buyers were unwilling to purchase it without knowing what they could do with it.
But representatives from West Side groups worried about the absence of a plan for the site’s redevelopment and the loss of more historic buildings in the area. City staff said the Lim family had not demonstrated the building could not be renovated or sold and posed an unreasonable economic hardship.
The Historic and Design Review Commission approved plans to raze parts of the building and preserve other elements. The property is still for sale, according to a listing on Loopnet.
Several blocks south, preservation organizations in 2021 pushed for historic designation of a complex at 503 Urban Loop. It was once a brothel run by famous madam Fannie Porter and said to have been visited by gunslingers Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and later an orphanage and a day care serving immigrants and poor families in the primarily Mexican-american “Laredito” neighborhood.
The owner, a company linked to Douglas Miller II of the Bill Miller BAR-B-Q family, was considering building housing on the property catering to students. A fire destroyed the structure in 2022 and commissioners decided not to deem it historic.