A manicured lawn surrounded by trees lies at the heart of a major new office, retail, and restaurant complex coming to the near East Side.
Quadrant Investment Properties released design plans Tuesday for East End, the name being given to a mixed-use development that will soon take the place of the RK Group’s offices and its parking lot near Sunset Station.
The RK Group sold its 60-year-old building and 5-acre property to Quadrant in June, as the catering and hospitality firm prepares to move to new headquarters at the Red Berry Estate next year. In July, Quadrant announced its plans for the mixed-use development that will bring office and retail to a previously dormant and industrial part of downtown.
Quadrant Principal Ty Thaggard said that construction on East End is expected to start in July 2020. When complete, it will include a six-story office building and 40,000 square feet of stand-alone retail space, as well as a 700-car attached garage, designed around urban green space.
The office building will include 4,500 square feet of full-service coffee bar and dining space with a sidewalk terrace and conference room on the ground floor. There will be three private meeting rooms and a large board room, as well as a fitness center. Plans show the top floor and rooftop featuring a tenant-only lounge with views of downtown.
The Austin-based team architecture firm GFF is designing the building exterior, Thaggard said, and Austin firm Studio8 is designing the interiors. Landscape architects dwg, the Austin firm developing the Merchant Ice property, is designing the East End landscaping and park as well.
East End takes its place among a recent resurgence of development surrounding the St. Paul Square Historic District that includes residential development The Baldwin and planned improvements for the St. Paul area and Sunset Station.
Three blocks north of the RK Group property, a $220 million redevelopment of the Merchants Ice site on East Houston Street will house a biotech incubator and accelerator and a biomanufacturing center as part of a project that broke ground earlier this year.
California real estate investment company Harris Bay has been planning a Pearl-like development called Essex Modern City since it purchased a major East Side property in 2016. Working since then with Union Pacific to establish a quiet zone in the neighborhood, Harris Bay co-founder Jake Harris recently told the Rivard Report the company is “doubling and tripling down on East Side and San Antonio as a whole.”
At 533 Delaware St., Ross Ormond, a San Antonio resident and officer in a Texarkana-based insurance firm, is turning a circa-1950s concrete block warehouse on the East Side into a contemporary space housing a restaurant, brewery, taproom, and offices to be completed by next year.
Quadrant is currently marketing East End to potential tenants. CBRE is the leasing agent for the East End office space and the Dallas-based real estate firm, Shop Companies, is representing the retail side.
