This story has been updated.
A striking, futuristic office tower visible for miles could soon take its place among the many aging and nondescript former military buildings at Port San Antonio on the Southwest Side of San Antonio.
The plan for Innovation Tower, first debuted in 2023, was approved by the Port SA board of directors on Tuesday, with $7.5 million committed for architectural plans, a budget and construction schedule.
The tower is one of the most ambitious projects to date at the 1,900-acre campus, a former Air Force base turned tech and manufacturing hub, and part of a board campus development strategy unveiled last year.
Port SA officials said the tower will be an “iconic landmark” on the San Antonio skyline, a wave-like structure rising 12 stories and adorned with lights.
Planned for the campus’ main entrance, the tower will be designed to provide 300,000 square feet of high-end office space, plus amenities such as a health and wellness center, sauna and spa-quality locker rooms and a large conference room.
Designed by the New York-based architecture firm Pelli Clarke & Partners, with architect Bill Butler leading the project, the tower’s design phase is expected to take about one year with a groundbreaking anticipated for 2026.
The estimated construction cost is $275 million.
“The reason for building something iconic … is to create something that is emblematic of what you do and the work that is done,” Port San Antonio President and CEO Jim Perschbach said.
“The work that is being done here at Port San Antonio is some of the most advanced work being done anywhere on the planet,” he added. “And if that’s all being done in pedestrian, five-story, cream-colored buildings, you’re not saying that.”
In recent years, the 80 tenants at the Port, made up of Boeing, Knight Aerospace, Booz Allen, Plus One Robotics and more, have added more than 9,000 new jobs, bringing the campus-wide total to 18,000.
Operations at the Port include aerospace, cybersecurity, defense, advanced manufacturing, industrial robotics and space exploration. The campus is also home to schools and professional training programs.
Finding more offices
Port SA’s offices and industrial space, at more than 10 million square feet, are nearing full capacity, with 96-97% occupancy, Perschbach said.
“When we built that first office building back in 2018 … there was real doubt that we would ever get people to move offices down here, that we’d ever be able to transition to people who don’t have to be here because don’t they need the runway or they need a hangar,” Perschbach said.
“Right now, we have people knocking on our door every day for office space, and we don’t have any office space to give them, none.”
Perschbach believes the growth will continue given the growing fields of work commonly found at the Port — cybersecurity, asset and infrastructure protection, signals and electronics — justifying the need for more and better space.
“You could do that in a whole bunch of buildings that look like [Port SA’s buildings known as] Tech 1 and Tech II, but then it just becomes every other research park in the country,” he said. “We want it to be something that is more special.”
‘Leasable, sellable’
Architect Butler described the first design for the tower project that he showed Port SA officials as “respectable.”
“Then I got a tour of the [Boeing] Tech Center [and] the San Antonio Museum of Science and Technology,” Butler said. He was in awe.
The architect apologized to Perschbach. “I said, I completely undershot on the potential of what is really going on here.”
Butler returned two weeks later with three more designs and the Port chose the most ambitious, he said. “They picked it with one caveat: It had to work. In other words, it has to be leasable, sellable, self-sustainable.”
Christi Griggs, first vice president at the commercial real estate firm CBRE, who is marketing the planned building, told Butler that she appreciates that he is bringing Innovation Tower to San Antonio.
For many years, the business community thought of San Antonio as less sophisticated than other cities, she said. “Finally, for the first time in history, we’re getting cool buildings, and they are leasable.”
Port SA board member Victoria Garcia voted in favor of the project and said the building is a visual and architectural representation of the cutting-edge work that’s being performed at the Port.
“And it’s just the beginning of what we’re trying to accomplish here … so we’re very excited, it’s a good first step,” Garcia said.
What’s next for Port San Antonio?
In 2022, the Port opened the Tech Port Center and Arena, now known as the Boeing Center, a high-tech concert venue and e-sports center.
Perschbach said the Boeing Center is partly why the Port earned the prestigious “Outstanding Innovation District” award last year from the Association of University and Research Parks.
But Perschbach’s vision for the “defense industrial research campus of the future” goes far beyond the arena and Innovation Tower.
Other projects on the drawing board include:
- Large multi-agency child care facility to serve military and civilian families
- Secure facilities for Air Force cybersecurity commands
- Vertiport for the next-generation electric vertical take-off and landing vehicles
- Major brand hotel and attached fitness center
- Temporary military housing
- Retail and food and beverage amenities for Port workers and surrounding neighborhoods
The vision also includes a grocery store and pharmacy which Perschbach described as similar to H-E-B’s South Flores Market. The store would function as a commissary for service members, but also fill a need for people who live and work in the area.
Those projects support military service members while saving the Department of Defense the cost of building and operating those services, and drive demand in the market, making them more commercially viable, Perschbach said.
In January, Port officials responded to an Air Force request for information on real estate opportunities at the campus, pitching all of those projects. The proposal touts the Port’s experience in real estate development and its ability to move on the projects at a faster pace than the Air Force.
Perschbach said he thinks the current climate in the nation’s capital could benefit the vision.
“I think if this administration is being intellectually honest that they want to find ways to save money and be more efficient, they’re going to love what we’re talking about,” he said, adding it has the potential to save years and billions of dollars.
