The Where I Live series aims to showcase our diverse city and region by spotlighting its many vibrant neighborhoods. Each week a local resident invites us over and lets us in on what makes their neighborhood special. Have we been to your neighborhood yet? Get in touch to share your story. If your story is selected and published, you will receive a $250 stipend.
If you had told me five years ago that I would be a homeowner, I would have carefully closed the door of my nearly perfect, historic downtown apartment in your silly face.
Now, here I am, on the verge of installing an irrigation system to water my house’s foundation during these increasingly hot San Antonio summers (because, yeah, that’s a real thing). Now I have dreams of building a casita in my backyard to rent it out cheap to a student attending St. Philips College nearby. Now I have two dogs.
In 2021, I bought a small, affordable 20-year-old house in the Arena District. The move was inspired in part by a cooped-up feeling brought on by the pandemic and my older dog’s love of backyards. Thanks to my hardworking grandmother, who passed away in 2020, I could afford a down payment.
I say Arena District because that’s where Google Maps says we live, but my neighbors are divided on what to call our little suburban pocket on the East Side. We live in Denver Heights, according to the City of San Antonio’s official maps. We live in Coliseum Park, according to Nextdoor. We live in Spring View Heights, according to the brick signage off of East Commerce Street.
We live in a “… beaten down neighborhood,” according to one sports columnist, who described the area as “suboptimal.”
The recent name change of the AT&T Center, now Frost Bank Center, and rumors of a Spurs move downtown has attracted several headlines and with it, commentary about where I live.
I’m naturally biased, of course, but I don’t find my neighborhood, whatever its name, “suboptimal.” I doubt the people who are building new, live/work lofts near the Frost Bank Center and tall, skinny condos that dot the neighborhood would either.
Voters were sold on the AT&T arena in 1999 with promises of economic boosts and subsequent private investments in the long-neglected East Side. Nearly 25 years later, the commercial properties adjacent to the arena are still occupied by warehouses, manufacturers and other trade businesses, and there are only a few restaurants and bars in the area.
“If the Spurs were going to bring economic development to the East Side, it would have happened by now,” Councilman Jalen McKee-Rodriguez (D2) said.
Still, our zip code, 78203, saw the second-highest home value increase in the entire state of Texas from 2016 to 2023.
That’s probably welcome news for the condo builders and out-of-town property owners, but I worry that some area residents won’t be able to keep up. The average median income for households in my zip code is about $34,500, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Gentrification and the affordable housing crisis are things the city is “struggling with in general,” McKee-Rodriguez said. The promised economic boost from the arena “is not happening and people are still being pushed out.”
The Spurs still have a nearly 10-year lease on the Frost Bank Center and even if they relocate downtown, McKee-Rodriguez said, the county is “going to be looking for ways to make it revenue generating. … Maybe the conversation should be less about ‘should we try to get the Spurs to stay’ and more of a visionary approach: What can this be and what could it do? Let’s try to get ready for that.
“Now’s a good opportunity to try to cash in on some of the promises of development and support for the East Side,” he said.
Many people in the area work for the Frost Bank Center and Alamodome, which is closer to downtown, but other than that, the arenas haven’t sparked infrastructure or economic improvements for the neighborhood, said Ryan Kenney, vice president of the adjacent Jefferson Heights Neighborhood Association
If the Spurs do end up leaving, “the community needs to be remunerated for it,” Kenney said. The city and county could incentivize multifamily housing and commercial uses nearby to “create a little entertainment district — it would be much cheaper and more effective than creating a new arena district somewhere else.”
That would require a revamp of surrounding transportation infrastructure and commercial properties, McKee-Rodriguez said.
Currently, cars leaving the arena’s massive surface parking lot are immediately ushered out of the East Side after events, he said. “How do you make it to where there’s a natural flow from the [Frost Bank] Center to the rest of the East Side?”
The Arena District is not filled with bars and restaurants like Southtown, but our neighbors get to enjoy the Garcia Street Urban Farm, which offers affordable produce, herbs, and flowers; Lincoln Park, which has a public pool and splash pad; the shady trails at nearby Martin Luther King Park; and two community centers, Claude Black Community Center and Dawson Community Center, which provide nutrition and financial empowerment services and connection to other community resources.
In the morning, I can hear kids playing outside the Miller Child Development Center. In the afternoon, I try to avoid the traffic when school lets out at IDEA Eastside. To honor Martin Luther King Jr., I walk just two blocks to join one of the largest MLK marches in the country.
My neighborhood, like any, is also not perfect. My car clunks over potholes, and Bandit, my puppy, and I have found some sidewalk gaps on our morning walks. Sometimes I can hear yelling and gunshots at night — but not necessarily more often than in other neighborhoods where I have lived in San Antonio.
Crime is not restricted to low-income areas, McKee-Rodriguez said. “It’s happening everywhere.”
Kenney was one of several neighbors who started an unofficial neighborhood crime watch group in early 2022 in response to increased criminal activity.
Vacant homes and absentee property owners led to an “open drug market, pretty much,” Kenney said. “My neighbors were all going through it on their own, effectively.”
What started as a giant group chat on WhatsApp, where neighbors shared information and security camera footage with each other, has led to a revitalized, restructuring neighborhood association, he said.
“It was really cool being able to realize you’re not alone going through this stuff,” Kenney said. The neighborhood was also able to strengthen its relationship with the area’s SAFFE officer, a neighborhood-police department liaison, who advocated for more patrols in the area. “I hate to say that crime brings people together, but somehow it did. … The crime has gone down a ton. We still have our issues, but it’s all a work in progress.”
As the neighborhood progresses, so does my home. I’m nearly done replacing all the awful carpet and flooring that the flipper I purchased it from had installed. I’m slowly learning about the expensive challenges of homeownership — I had to replace an A/C unit the summer after I moved in and I may or may not have a termite issue.
Being my own landlord, unfortunately, means that the scorched forest of sunflowers, weeds, and puppy droppings in my backyard is, well, mine. And I’ll be the first to admit that at least that part of where I live is “suboptimal.”
