For nearly a quarter-century, Opportunity Home San Antonio has been piecing together the Victoria Commons neighborhood south of downtown as though it was an extremely difficult jigsaw puzzle.
Often, years pass before the public housing agency, formerly known as SAHA, manages to put another piece in place, such as the Artisan Park townhomes, built in 2007; the Hemisview Village apartment complex, built in 2010; and the 100 Labor complex, now under construction. Building affordable housing is always tricky, and forces outside the agency’s control such as rising real estate and construction costs have slowed the growth of the roughly 36-acre neighborhood on the former site of the Victoria Courts public housing project launched during the New Deal.
Opportunity Home is now fitting in another piece with the sale of land to two homebuilders: Wes Peoples Homes of Austin and CVF Homes of San Antonio.
In January, an affiliate of Catellus Development Corp., a California company that Opportunity Home recruited to manage the neighborhood’s development, sold 20 lots to Wes Peoples Homes, eight of them on the south side of McMonigal Place and 12 on the west side of McMillan Place, Bexar County deed records show.
Wes Peoples Homes has another 30 lots under contract, its owner Wes Peoples said in a phone interview. Altogether, the company plans to build 42 townhomes and eight three-story “zero-lot-line” homes — a form of garden home — with large front porches, he said. All the homes will have two-car garages, he said.
“They’re very urban; they’re meant for entertaining,” he said of the zero-lot-line homes. “They’re just a different type of product than that area’s ever seen.”
The townhomes will likely range in size between about 1,750 and 2,300 square feet, he said. They will be designed by the Austin architecture firm Kipp Flores Architects and the Port Aransas firm Barron Custom Design. With several of them, there will be a bedroom and bathroom on the first floor that could be separated from the rest of the house for use as a single-family rental or as housing for a relative, he said.
The company is still figuring out the pricing, he said; the homes could sell for as low as the high $400,000s, but the price range will more likely be from the low $500,000s to the $600,000s, he said.
The Catellus affiliate, CDC Victoria Commons Holdings LP, also sold six lots to local sustainable housing builder CVF Homes, adjacent to those of Wes Peoples on McMonigal.
Catellus is best known in South Texas for working with the City of Austin to redevelop the former Robert Mueller Municipal Airport on the city’s near north side into the mixed-use Mueller neighborhood boasting popular restaurants and shops and high-end office space.
Wes Peoples said that his company has built around 50 homes in Mueller over the years. The opportunity to build in Victoria Commons appealed to him because the site is so close to downtown, he said.
The company is new to the San Antonio market, though it has been building in New Braunfels for years, he said. He has been building homes in Texas for more than 30 years.
Opportunity Home spokesman Brance Arnold said in an email that the agency and Catellus aren’t ready to reveal what they have planned for the sites and that he expects the details to come into focus in coming weeks.
“We selected the builders based on their track record, design and economics,” he said.
CVF Homes, led by owner Juan Fernandez, specializes in infill development in downtown and near-downtown neighborhoods such as King William, Dignowity Hill and Lavaca, which includes Victoria Commons, according to its website.
Reached by phone, Fernandez said he isn’t ready to share the details of his plans for Victoria Commons.
“I think it’s a prime location in San Antonio. That’s why I think it’s going to be a great project,” he said, citing the area’s restaurants and the proximity of Hemisfair, which is also being redeveloped into a master-planned neighborhood.
Several major components of Victoria Commons have yet to be developed, including two vacant lots facing Interstate 37 where Catellus has planned five-story apartment complexes, according to a map provided by Opportunity Home.
Arnold said in an email that the agency also is getting close to demolishing a 1.2-acre former YMCA day care at the northeast corner of Labor and Leigh streets, on which it plans to build someday. After the building is torn down, Opportunity Home plans to build an extension of McMonigal Place to Labor Street.
Established in 1937, the Victoria Courts housing project featured 660 units when it was demolished in 2000, whereupon Opportunity Home won a federal grant to redevelop it as Victoria Commons, according to reporting from the San Antonio Heron.
Asked whether rising interest rates and inflation had hampered the redevelopment, Arnold said “the current market conditions do pose challenges, causing it to take longer for the final build-out.” Opportunity Home also has struggled with opposition from nearby residents who protested earlier plans, saying that they would add too much density to the neighborhood. At one time, Opportunity Home’s plan called for the construction of 654 housing units, but in a more recent plan that was reduced to 426, according to the Heron.
