In 2016, Christian Craft looked at the tiny slice of neighborhood east of the Tobin Hill Historic District and west of Pearl and made a bet.
The co-founder of Bexar Goods Co., which makes hand-stitched leather accessories, bought two old houses next door to one another on West Grayson Street with the idea of creating a neighborhood destination.
Zoned industrial by the city some time before 1965, that section of the neighborhood, bounded on the north by U.S. Highway 281 and to the south by Interstate 35, had been encroached upon over the decades by warehouses and businesses like the Flasher Equipment Co., which stored barricades and cones on the property behind Craft’s pair of homes.
But like the developers who would eventually buy the Flasher property and turn it into condominiums, Craft saw Pearl’s influence creeping west and wanted to capitalize on it.
Like a lot of creatives who were born and raised in San Antonio, Craft had decamped for Austin, where he worked in advertising. A collection of what would turn out to be fake vintage leather-working tools set him on an unexpected path that ultimately launched this entrepreneurial journey and brought his family home.
After years of setbacks that included legal-savvy squatters, a house fire and a global pandemic, plus the steep learning curve of navigating the city’s zoning and development rules, Craft’s SA Yacht Club, an outdoor food court of sorts, finally opened for business last weekend at 310 West Grayson St.
The name is a play on a confluence of sea-related signifiers, Craft said. The Bexar Goods Co.’s Airstream is a Land Yacht edition, the structures are shipping containers — get it? Like on an ocean — and nearby is Go Fish restaurant and the Pearl. He claims that he didn’t even think about the fact that his own name can be shortened to the heritage wooden boat company Chris-Craft.
A handful of picnic tables offer customers a place to enjoy the food and libations from the offerings on site, including the award-winning Naco Mexican Eatery, located in one container and Sippy’s, a tiny upscale convenience store with beer, wine and snacks, in the other.
Along the back of the property sits Jeepney Street Eats Filipino Fusion food truck and Outland, the Bexar Goods Co. land yacht. An orange vintage Volkswagen bug acts as sign and mascot, a tiny anchor thrown out behind it, a captain’s cap on the dashboard.
Perfect weather helped drive a successful opening weekend, Craft said. In between running around the day before the big opening, he marveled at the work it took to get to this moment.
From side hustle to main gig
“This is my first rodeo,” he said. “I hadn’t even bought a house before. I learned all of the lessons on this one. I’ve been hustling this for years now.”
The leather-making tools Craft’s cousin Guy Rubio bought at a Maine thrift store turned out to be more decorative than useful, but that didn’t stop Rubio, Craft and his brother Falcon Craft from forging ahead with their idea to hand sew leather goods for sale.
The result was Bexar Goods Co., which eventually included the Airstream showroom, parked for the past several years at Broadway News. Craft was still working in Austin, “but always wanted to kind of have a space that we owned,” he said.
He began eyeing real estate west of the Pearl, and fairly quickly landed on the pair of houses on Grayson. His original idea was to renovate and possibly connect them in some way. He began calling banks, seeking a commercial loan.
“I called maybe six banks, and they were all like no, no, no, no, no, no,” he said. “I kept asking, ‘Do you know someone who would?’ and that’s how I got to Michael at Citizen’s State Bank.”
That would be Michael Garland, executive vice president of the commercial bank, who suggested Craft meet him at the property and describe his vision.
“That was probably the longest deal I’d ever financed,” said Garland, who recalled title issues and a seller that tried to back out. Not long after Craft finally closed, developers who had purchased the Flasher property sought to buy Craft’s homes. He wasn’t interested in selling.
“They weren’t too happy about it,” Craft said. “But I was like, you’re going to build condos, and I’m going to supply the food and beer and entertainment for them.”
Navigating the system
Craft spent another several months trying to evict squatters who were living in one of the houses. That effort ended only when the squatters started a fire that destroyed the home.
He ultimately demolished both homes, and worked with childhood friend and architect Clay Hagendorf to figure out what to build there. With a limited budget, they settled on shipping containers, stacking two on each side of the property. Each is covered in thin slats of garapa, a Brazilian hardwood.
Craft hired a seasoned zoning attorney to get the property downzoned from industrial to Infill Development Zone, which modifies parking and setback requirements. He then spent most of the pandemic navigating the arcane world of city permitting. Hagendorf said he helped where he could.
“You have to have landscape plans, building plans, mechanical, electrical and plumbing plans,” Hagendorf said, “reviewed by something like 16 different divisions with the city. It took quite a bit of time.” After all that, getting workers to finish the project was its own challenge, Craft said.
He described his method for navigating all the arcane details of development as: ask a million questions, seek out people who could help and go with the flow — but never stop pushing.
As he picked his way through the system, the SoJo Commons townhomes were built. Three of them now loom over his back fence; their construction destroyed half the root system of a once-majestic pecan in the corner of Craft’s property. He has worked with arborists to try to save the tree, but it’s a sad shadow of its former self, most of its branches gone.
Across Grayson at the end of the block, a 250-unit apartment building is going up. Craft is thrilled with this ready-made customer base to come. He’s also mindful of being a good neighbor. He said he’ll likely have some acoustic music, but it won’t go late. He wants the Yacht Club to be a place where neighbors can walk over, chill and have tacos, or grab a six-pack and some snacks to take home.
“I just wanted to put something here that the neighbors would appreciate,” he said.
About eight months ago, Craft finally quit his advertising job, and he, his wife and their toddler moved from Austin back to San Antonio, buying a house in Mahncke Park.
Now that the business is finally open, Craft said he can finally take a breath, enjoy the fruits of his and so many others’ labor — and get to know his hometown once again.
“I’ve just been ‘blinders on’ for so long,” he said. After the opening weekend, he texted his verdict: “The neighbors seem to really love it… Had them coming down multiple times for wine/beer/snacks — using it as intended, so made me super happy.”
