The original wood floors have been repaired and refinished, signaling the final days of redevelopment of a century-old building in downtown San Antonio.
The Henry Terrell building, located at 212 N. Alamo St., has undergone restoration and will be ready for lease in about a month, said Doug Bystry, president and CEO of Clearinghouse CDFI, which acquired the building in July 2019 through a partnership, ALAMO QOZB LLC.
The work on the Terrell building is not the lender’s first redevelopment project, but it is its first in San Antonio, Bystry said. He hopes the project will raise Clearinghouse’s profile in the city.
“We really want to do more in San Antonio,” he said. “Another reason sometimes we go into communities and do this is so that people know who we are and there’s more opportunity for work.”
Community development financial institutions, or CDFIs, are specialized financial institutions that provide financial products and services to populations and businesses located in underserved markets.
Los Angeles-based Clearinghouse CDFI is one of more than 1,300 CDFIs in the United States. Clearinghouse focuses its efforts in the Western U.S. and, for the last three years, also in Texas.
“We’re primarily a lender … and we’re obviously interested in working with cities that are doing some of the transformative work that is occurring now in San Antonio,” Bystry said.
Built in 1909 by lawyer Henry Terrell, the son of a prominent businessman, the brick Renaissance Revival-style building bearing his name has been used as a hotel and, for a short time, by the YWCA of San Antonio. It is situated two blocks from Alamo Plaza and the Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse.
The storefront spaces have been occupied by a jeweler, package store, restaurant and cafe, according to historic documentation prepared by architecture firm FPC.
Bystry said a mix of retail and food and beverage again would be suitable for the first floor space, where modern chandeliers hang from the original beams in front of large shop windows facing Alamo Street.
Another CDFI, Texas Mezzanine Fund, helped to finance construction for the Terrell project.
The upper floors are ideal for a law firm, insurance or banking business, Bystry said. The rental rate is listed as $22 per square foot per year at commercial real estate listing site Loopnet.
In recent years, the three-story building sat vacant as past redevelopment attempts failed, including a plan in 2013 by a Las Vegas firm to turn it into timeshares or condos. Contractors working for Clearinghouse removed the framing that had been installed for those spaces.
The efforts by Clearinghouse were delayed by historic restoration requirements, the COVID pandemic and supply chain issues, Bystry said. “It took us a year to find the right windows,” he said of the building’s more than five dozen wood-framed, double-hung windows.
The condition of the 9,802-square-foot building also extended the timeline.
“The middle part of it was kind of caving in,” he said. “That was another one of the ‘starts and stops’ and additional costs we ran into [because] there were some structural issues that we hadn’t anticipated.”
When initially filed with the state, the cost for the project, which involved foundation repairs, window replacement, interior remodeling and adding an elevator shaft, was estimated at $2.85 million.
In June 2022, Clearinghouse filed for historic tax certification, which will make the property owner eligible for tax breaks. The building was last assessed at $1.5 million, according to tax records.
The Henry Terrell also is located in the downtown opportunity zone, providing investors certain tax benefits including deferral of capital gains tax.
Donald Degollado, opportunity zone development manager at Clearinghouse, said his company believes the historic nature of the building, which will retain its name, could be attractive to potential tenants.
“We’ve just restored it versus some of the older buildings that are here, or the new buildings that are nice and have all the amenities,” he said. “We think here, someone will kind of appreciate the historical context of it.”
A San Marcos native, Degollado is now turning his sights on a similar project about a mile away, but the deal has not been finalized, he said. “The idea is that we want to do more work since we’re here.”
