Zachry Hospitality broke ground Tuesday on a downtown San Antonio hotel project more than a dozen years in the making.
City officials and others joined the local developer in kicking off construction of the 17-story Monarch San Antonio at 222 S. Alamo St. in Civic Park at Hemisfair. It will be the first Curio Collection by Hilton-branded hotel in San Antonio and is expected to open in 2026.
First proposed in 2012, the project has long been delayed. In the time since the development was first proposed, major partner The NRP Group walked away from the project, economic recessions have come and gone, a historic winter storm put the state on ice and a pandemic gripped the world, leaving ripple effects on the real estate market.
“Honestly, I never thought this day would come,” said Zachry Corporation CEO and President David Zachry.
The groundbreaking represented a major milestone not just for Hemisfair and city leaders, who negotiated and renegotiated the deal with Zachry Hospitality, but also for the Zachry family.
Zachry’s grandfather led the organizing committee for the 1968 World’s Fair, he said. To provide hotel space for HemisFair ’68 visitors, his father built in record time the Hilton Palacio del Rio hotel, which is still owned by Zachry Hospitality and sits directly across from the Monarch site.
“This is the second time [my mother] has been to the groundbreaking of a hotel at the corner of South Alamo and Market Street,” Zachry said before thanking a host of people who worked on the new hotel project, including his father, Bartell Zachry, who died in 2020.
“To my father whose support and encouragement for this project and his enthusiasm about it, I always appreciated and very much miss,” he said.
The 200-room Monarch, named for the butterfly that migrates through San Antonio in the fall, will feature a spa, terrace pool, five food and beverage concepts, a garden, fitness center and about 10,000 square feet of meeting and event space.
The curved tower designed by San Antonio-based architecture firm Overland Partners is oriented to provide views of Hemisfair, the River Walk, La Villita and Alamo Plaza. Zachry said the design is intended to represent an abrazo, or hug, to the community and the park.
Though the curvature in the design has remained consistent, the hotel design itself also went through a number of iterations over the years before being downsized to the current plan, said Robert Thrailkill, vice president of operations for Zachry Hospitality.
“The hotel will create a front door for the park,” he said, and serve both visitors to events at the park and convention-goers.
The five-acre urban park featuring a great lawn with a tree-lined promenade and water features opened to the public in late September. Since then, about 250,000 people have visited the park and recent festivals held there, said a Hemisfair spokeswoman.
Whiting Construction is the general contractor for the Monarch and the interior design work and branding are by The Gettys Group. Austin-based DWG is the landscape design firm.
The hotel is expected to open in early 2026, more than a decade since it was first proposed.
The project has been long in coming, said Andres Andujar, president and CEO of the Hemisfair Park Area Redevelopment Corporation (HPARC). “It has not been easy and getting here is truly a testament to everybody who was involved. This is going to be a world example of how to finance, design, build and operate a sustainable project for the next 100 years.”
In 2022, Zachry renegotiated its 2016 deal with HPARC and the City of San Antonio, which required the developer to make lease payments that would support debt service on Phase 1 of the park. But due to project delays and missed rent payments, HPARC could not make the debt service payments.
The new agreement extended the completion date to 2025, when San Antonio is scheduled to host the NCAA men’s Final Four. Though the hotel won’t be open by then, Zachry has agreed construction cranes and equipment won’t impede foot traffic or views in the urban park, said Assistant City Manager Lori Houston.
The amended agreement also allowed HPARC to defer payment to the city for the project through 2029 in order to give the park developer time to raise the needed funds. HPARC will reimburse the city with interest starting with an $8.8 million payment due in September 2029.
The city agreed to rebate all state hotel occupancy sales taxes to HPARC, but not city hotel occupancy taxes and sales taxes, which will, in turn, rebate the taxes to Zachry to help offset parking costs and other public improvements at Hemisfair.
The garage will be privately funded and operated, but the city has pledged $8 million to the Hemisfair Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone to pay for the utilities needed for the South Alamo Street and Civic Park improvements.
Mayor Ron Nirenberg said the groundbreaking was cause to celebrate, “because time sometimes kills visions.
“It has taken a whole host of people that have been involved to make this day a reality,” Nirenberg said. “It’s taken a huge amount of perseverance.”
A second phase of Civic Park is planned on two acres closer to Market Street, which will be bordered by the Monarch hotel and a 10-story multifamily and retail development.
A third development project with multifamily units and retail space is planned next to the hotel.
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