The City’s Historic and Design Review Commission gave conceptual approval to H-E-B’s plans to grow its downtown footprint with the development of a six-story parking garage that will connect to the company’s headquarters via a skybridge stretched above East César E. Chávez Boulevard.
“This is part of our [$100 million] master plan,” said Dya Campos, director of public affairs at H-E-B. “It is to create enough parking for the growth that we experience here at our corporate office.”
The garage, which will provide 750 parking spaces for employees working at the grocery giant’s Arsenal campus, is slated to be built on a company-owned parking lot at the corner of Dwyer Avenue and East César E. Chávez Boulevard. As H-E-B expands its downtown workforce, the skybridge aims to get current and future employees across the busy street safely.
The structure is designed to feature façade screening, a rooftop shading trellis that could be retrofit with solar panels, and black chain-link fencing.
If the design receives final approval, construction will begin in late spring or early summer, Campos said.
The San Antonio Conservation Society does not oppose the development, its first vice president Patti Zaiontz said during the HDRC meeting. However, she pointed out a motion the organization passed 14 years ago, which opposes sky bridges being built in the area.
The King William Association’s architectural advisory board reviewed the proposal on Dec. 4 and voted to approve the design.
“From a public safety standpoint, [the sky bridge] makes a lot of sense,” the association’s president Chris Price said, and the design does so in “a way that was a little more appealing than a concrete box.”
