The far West Side has boomed over the last two decades, with shopping centers and residential subdivisions spreading far beyond Loop 1604 to fill thousands of acres of former ranchland, providing a crucial outlet for San Antonio’s surging population.
Investors are now laying the groundwork for further growth, public records show.
Local real estate firms have recently bought large properties in the area, including expanses of vacant land, according to Bexar County property records. And state filings indicate that at least two new giant data centers are planned, adding to the existing cluster.
Birnbaum Property Company, known for developing retail centers at major intersections across Bexar County, bought a 16.6-acre plot at the southeast corner of the crossing of Highway 90 and Montgomery Road on April 30, according to Bexar County property records and the firm’s website.
It then went on to sell plots to entities linked with Bill Miller Bar-B-Q and the Alphabetz Montessori day care company.
A site plan on Birnbaum’s website seems to indicate that a portion of the property behind the retail will be the site of a 300-unit multifamily development.
The purchase price was undisclosed. An entity linked with Birnbaum borrowed $12.3 million from Texas Partners Bank to make the purchase, the county records show.
On that same day, a newly-created partnership linked with the local real estate firm Endura Advisory Group bought an 18-acre property less than two miles west, at the southwest corner of the crossing of Highway 90 and Highway 211. The property includes a 56,742 square-foot industrial warehouse which Endura is now offering for lease. A large portion of it remains undeveloped.
That partnership borrowed $5.9 million from Security State Bank to buy the property, the county records show.
Phone calls and emails to Birnbaum and Endura executives were not returned.
Development planned on Potranco
Also in April, a limited liability company named Potranco 16 MF Holdings linked to the Boerne-based development firm Stoneleigh Partners — known for building local garden-style apartment complexes such as the Sage in New Braunfels — purchased about 16 acres of vacant land just east of Paul W. Ott Elementary School at the crossing of Potranco Road and Grosenbacher Road, county records show.
On its website, Stoneleigh lists a “Potranco development” at the property’s address, 12189 Potranco Road, without including any more information. The firm lists several other ongoing apartment and mixed-use projects in New Braunfels, Castle Hills and Boerne.
The company linked to Stoneleigh borrowed $2.1 million from Frost Bank to buy the land, the records show.
A voicemail left with Stoneleigh was not returned.
More data centers planned
In recent decades, the far West Side has emerged as a hub for data centers, with more than 30 of them popping up in the area, thanks in part to a reliable electrical supply, a wide availability of land and a lack of natural disasters in San Antonio compared with other parts of the U.S.
Over the last six months, the Denver-based company Vantage Data Centers has submitted plans to the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation for two new data centers to be built in the area.
One of them, at 14720 Omicron Drive, will span 243,000 square feet and cost $95.8 million, the plans show. Construction began in December and is set to be completed in September 2026.
The other, at 5207 Rogers Road north of SeaWorld San Antonio, is expected to cost $157 million and to span 360,000 square feet. It also began construction in December, and it is set to be completed in June 2025, according to the plans.
Last year, the local developer Marty Wender, who pioneered the far West Side’s development starting in the early 1980s, said he expected several more data centers to be built in coming years.
“Probably within the next several years there will be 40” of them, he told the Report. “And all of them on the West Side.”
