Whether it’s the ongoing development of Pearl, projects at The Rim and the Shops at La Cantera or proposals around the Lonestar Brewery or Project Marvel, mixed-use districts have been growing fast in San Antonio.
Now, a community organization is trying to bring something similar to the East Side.
San Antonio for Growth on the Eastside (SAGE) shared proposals for a public market complex on Wednesday, looking at the Friedrich Refrigeration Building, The Hugo on East Houston Street and SAGE’s headquarters on Chestnut Street.
SAGE identified the three candidate sites with architecture and design firm Able City and funded the process with a $150,000 federal grant. All three sites would involve rehabilitating and renovating an existing building to make room for small businesses, office space or other community needs.
SAGE wants to have a final plan in June, but expects they would still face hurdles to fund and then build its public market space.
“This community has waited a long time for its share of amenities, resources and ‘third spaces’,” said James Nortey, SAGE’s CEO.
Nortey said Eastside community members deserve more “third spaces” or places where community members can gather for leisure or recreation. Residents have to cross major highways to get to places like Pearl or Brooks, Nortey added.
He also pointed out that the East Side lacks standard entertainment amenities like a movie theater.
The three candidate sites bring different combinations of office, small business and community space. The Friedrich Refrigeration Building on Commerce Street would have around 68,000 square feet, the largest indoor space of the three options.
The Hugo at 1228 E. Houston St. would be around 29,000 square feet and has a basement space, as well as a parking lot. Renovating SAGE’s offices at 220 Chestnut St. would involve more outdoor space and utilizing Ellis Alley, which runs between the organization’s two buildings.
All three sites prioritize access, said Able City CEO Mario Peña, by being close to neighborhoods and bus lines. They’re also in areas that could be primed for affordable housing construction and further investment because of their location in the City of San Antonio’s tax increment reinvestment zones.
Nortey said the public market complex is not supposed to be an end goal. Instead, he hopes a successful project will show banks and investors that there’s no reason not to build on the East Side.
“One way we can shift that model is by demonstrating that, yes, private development can happen on the East Side. Yes, businesses can thrive,” Nortey said. “We just want to make sure it’s done in a way that protects Eastside residents.”
SAGE and Able City are also prioritizing community needs by making the planning process open to feedback. The three candidate sites were shown at a community engagement session at the Davis-Scott Family YMCA on Iowa Street, where community members could stop in, look at renderings and ask questions.
SAGE and Able City have also held pop-ups and reached out to community members to get feedback. There’s no set vision for what the public market complex will look like. SAGE could use its small business programming and provide support to businesses at the proposed public market, but what ultimately gets built will depend on what community members ask for.
“It’s really a space that the community gets to form. That’s what we want to do with it,” said Val Lara, a SAGE communications assistant. “The amenities that are there really depend on the feedback that we get today and what the community wants in general.”
That attitude parallels a wide-open community engagement and development process taking place on the opposite side of downtown around Cattleman Square.
The idea is still several steps from reality. Nortey said SAGE had received federal funding to develop a plan, but it still needs money for construction.
“We want to be honest with the community, we don’t want to oversell,” Nortey said.
He’s open to more grants, other public funding and even private investment, as long as partners on the project understand its community focus. There are still questions about how the proposed public market could be funded.
“Two of the three [candidate sites] have significant redesign. One involves some potential new construction, and so we could be looking at anywhere from as low as $2 million, [to] $7 million plus,” Nortey said. “We can do this in phases. We imagine based on community response that it might be more of an outdoor farmers market for a while — get the foot traffic, get the vendors and then, over a period of years, go to scale.”
“It could be that we strike the irons hot, [if] we have the funding and capital in place to immediately jump to scale,” he added. “But whatever we do, we want to be transparent with the community.”
