The campus of San Antonio’s first public secondary school, known today as Fox Tech High School, is about to undergo major changes.
The Historic and Design Review Commission recently gave conceptual approval for the $81 million project, according to the district website, which was approved last summer by the San Antonio Independent School District and supported by the district’s 2020 bond program.
On Monday, a spokeswoman said the actual budget is $73 million, with the remaining funds slated for contingency and sports field under a different contract.
The project includes a new performing arts building with a 704-seat auditorium, a black box theater, athletics building and a surface parking lot.
The school’s history begins in 1879, with the first school campus built on the site in 1882, according to the Texas Historical Commission. San Antonio High School became Main Avenue High School in 1917, then San Antonio Vocational and Tech High School in 1932.
The name was changed again in 1961 to Fox Tech in honor of a principal who championed vocational education. Today, the campus also houses the Advanced Learning Academy at Fox Tech, Centers for Applied Science and Technology (CAST), opened in 2017, and a law magnet school.
Last year, the school was caught up in a city- and county-backed plan to build a new $160 million Missions baseball stadium adjacent to the school.
Holding the keys to a key piece of property needed for the project, San Antonio ISD trustees met the proposal with demands of their own, securing promises of affordable housing units, a parking garage and land for a new Advanced Learning Academy campus in exchange for a tentative agreement to sell the lot.
On Wednesday, the design review panel agreed to grant a certificate of appropriateness for the school’s theater and gym project, which is set to begin construction this year.
Documents submitted to the panel state that the performing arts center will be constructed at the northeast corner of the campus, at the corner of West Quincy Avenue and Jackson Street. The existing north parking lot will be demolished.
The design features metal facade panels, glazed brick, glass curtain wall systems and glazed tile.
The planned black box theater building will be situated to the south of the performing arts center. It will feature metal facade panels and a ribbed concrete masonry veneer.
The athletics building is planned for a central space on the campus and will connect two existing gyms. The new addition will house new code-compliant locker rooms, dressing rooms and showers, and other supporting spaces for the gyms.
The work is being performed by Bartlett Cocke general contractors and San Antonio-based architecture firm Alta Architects.
A new 85-space parking lot is also planned on the southeast end of the campus where the school’s day care and health care buildings were located. That 1970s-era structure was approved for demolition in late 2024.
In recent years, the campus has had limited parking available. In 2019, the district partnered with Bexar County to spend $17.2 million on a 600-space parking garage near San Pedro Creek and Fox Tech, providing space for staff in the district’s new central office headquarters.
The garage was completed in 2021. Two years later, the school’s teachers were briefly relegated to a dusty, gravel lot before the county and school district came to an agreement over use of the garage.
All students on the campus will have use of the new facilities, according to the planning documents. The Cast Tech and Fox Tech schools each have an enrollment of about 500 students in grades 9-12. The Advanced Learning Academy has over 1,000 students in grades 4-12.
This story has been corrected to include the Advanced Learning Academy at Fox Tech which also operates on the campus and provide more context regarding the cost of the project.
