Editor’s note: Each week, the San Antonio Report publishes a brief synopsis of the weekly bigcitysmalltown podcast hosted by Robert Rivard, co-founder of the Report.
Recorded in front of a live audience at Texas Public Radio headquarters, the latest bigcitysmalltown podcast featured a panel of what host Robert Rivard called five heavyweights in shaping the future of downtown.
“Our panelists today are on this stage because they have already had, and will continue to have, significant influence on the future of our downtown core,” Rivard said.
Panelists included Veronica Salazar, UTSA chief enterprise development officer at UTSA; David Robinson Jr., development manager at Weston Urban; Trish DeBerry, president and CEO of Centro San Antonio; Erik Walsh, San Antonio city manager, and Andres Andujar, president and CEO of Hemisfair.
“There’s a lot of collaboration and a lot of momentum from public sector entities [and] the private sector,” Walsh said. “There are very few downtowns that have 14,000 or 15,000 hotel rooms … so we’re very unique, and there’s a lot of momentum. Everybody wants to be part of the winning team.”
Robinson said that looking back over the changes in San Antonio since returning to his hometown at age 25, he admires the people on the panel for the work they’ve done so far and is excited for what’s to come in the city.
“Everybody on this panel has had a massive influence on my life,” he said.
San Antonio is more than a tourist town now, Robinson said. New housing has brought more residents into the urban core and attracted more lifestyle-driven businesses. Weston Urban is focused on bringing even more.
“If we’re going to grow by a million people over the next 10 years, how are we going to grow?” Robinson said. “Are we going to continue to just stretch the suburbs and eat up farmland and really extend city infrastructure in a way that’s not possible, or are we going to grow into a more dense pattern that will be more sustainable in a lot of different ways?”
With much on the downtown drawing board, the panel covered a lot of ground during the San Antonio Report’s CityFest event on Monday — from high-rise housing and a growing university to a new Missions ballpark and Spurs arena, an aging Alamodome and the need for a larger convention center.
