Over the last 15 years, several development clusters have sprung up on the South Side, including the Mission del Lago neighborhood around Mitchell Lake and the Brooks mixed-use community at the former Brooks Air Force Base, bringing new housing and retail to an area that largely had been an afterthought for investors.
The area around the future Arboretum San Antonio — a 188-acre park set to replace much of the former Republic Golf Club, along Salado Creek between Southeast Military Drive and Loop 410 — is becoming another growth center, with developers constructing hundreds of homes and drawing up plans for more, as well as an apartment complex.
This spring, the homebuilder DR Horton put the finishing touches on 124 homes at the eastern end of what had been the golf club. The land had been prepared for development by the golf club’s owner, Republic Golf Club Ltd., and local developer Bitterblue. They are now platting the next phase of the subdivision, known as Salado Creek Ranch, which will feature 103 homes, said Dan Pedrotti, president of Republic Golf Club Ltd.
Homes in the neighborhood are now listed on DR Horton’s website for between $277,500 and $329,950. The median price for a single-family home in the local market was $318,950 in September, according to the San Antonio Board of Realtors.
In March, a shell company linked with Bitterblue bought 63.4 acres of vacant land between the former golf club and Loop 410, just south of the recently built neighborhood, according to Bexar County deed records. The firm plans to build 117 homes there, Pedrotti said.
“This overall area has huge potential to become something special for the community,” Bitterblue co-founder Laddie Denton said in an email, declining further comment.
The apartment complex could occupy 14 acres where the golf club’s driving range had been, near its clubhouse on SE Military, Pedrotti said. He said that he’s in negotiations with the potential apartment developer and can’t share more information. The clubhouse area is zoned for commercial, he said, though he hasn’t settled on plans for the site.
This month is likely to be a momentous one for the arboretum: On Tuesday, Bexar County commissioners are set to vote on whether to grant Arboretum San Antonio, the nonprofit set up to build and manage the arboretum, $7.3 million that will be used in part to buy a portion of the former golf club, said Thomas Corser, the nonprofit’s CEO, in an interview.
Brooks also will buy part of the golf club with plans to lease it to the arboretum, he said. Brooks is about 2 miles to the west, across Interstate 37; Leo Gomez, its president and CEO, sits on the arboretum’s board.
The properties are expected to change hands this month, Corser said. Once they do, the nonprofit will begin the master-planning process to determine the layout of the arboretum.
What the arboretum will consist of will depend on the resulting master plan and input from the community, he said.
“I think it will have 90% of what you typically find in an arboretum: It will have a lot of trees, it will have celebration, it will have curated vegetation,” he said. “We will create ecosystems for butterflies, bees, birds, things like that.”
The arboretum will have an emphasis on native species, he said. It also will choose its plant life with the effects of climate change in mind, he said.
“We will celebrate and highlight native species, but we will also explore the edges of that to understand what are those plants that will survive tomorrow and for our children and our children’s children as we get hotter, as we might get drier,” he said. “We have to acknowledge and plan for that. That’s one of the purposes of the arboretum.”
The City of San Antonio owns a roughly 29-acre property along SE Military just west of the future arboretum, according to the Bexar Appraisal District. It is now working to extend its Salado Creek Greenway trail there, Corser said. He said that he hopes to work with the city to find a use that complements the arboretum.
Arboretum San Antonio is looking to hire a development director to go after other funding sources — local, state and federal, Corser said. The arboretum also will rely on corporate and private philanthropy.
“Building out 188 acres into a very verdant, nice place like this is going to cost a fair amount of money,” he said. “How much will be informed by the master planning process, but I know it’s tens of millions of dollars. So we need to begin to get ready for that.”
The arboretum could open its existing trails — the former golf cart paths, which are still in good shape — to the public early next year, Corser said. But it will take several more years for the arboretum to reach its final form, he said.
To the south of the arboretum site, there remains about 300 acres of undeveloped land wedged between Loop 410 and Interstate 37, according to the Bexar Appraisal District. About 59 acres of that land is in a flood plain.
Bitterblue had formerly planned to redevelop the site of the Republic Golf Club, which closed in 2020, with a mixed-use district with a large park, according to the San Antonio Express-News. The plans evolved after the park didn’t receive funding from the city’s 2022-2027 bond, Pedrotti said. Former Mayor Henry Cisneros went on to spearhead the effort to establish the arboretum.
Disclosure: Brooks CEO Leo Gomez is a member of the San Antonio Report’s board of directors.
