Peering downward from the windows of a future penthouse apartment in downtown San Antonio is a perfectly framed view of the gleaming crown of Frost Tower.
At 32 stories, the residential development under construction at 300 N. Main St. now scrapes the sky at a height just above the bank building. When complete, at 388 feet, it will be one of the tallest buildings on the skyline.
“I’m very biased, clearly, but I think this is maybe the coolest view in the entire city,” said Mark Jensen, vice president of multifamily at Weston Urban.
The downtown developer completed the octagonal Frost Tower at 111 W. Houston St. in 2019, the first high-rise built in San Antonio since 1989.
Weston Urban expects to have 300 Main, designed by the Austin-based architecture firm Page, complete by summer 2024.
“[The contractor] has done an incredible job building this,” Jensen said. “But just the reality of construction is until you’re 60 days out from an opening, or maybe even less than that, it’s not as exact as you would like it to be.”
The height of the building rivals Frost Tower’s 24 floors, but office buildings have taller floor plates than do residential ones, Jensen said.
Also in view from the top floors of 300 Main is the Continental Hotel block where Weston Urban is building a 16-floor apartment building and remodeling the historic hotel.
With 300 Main now framed and a crane removed from the site, work to build out the residential units from the bottom up is underway. A sizable hoist moves up and down the structure throughout the day transporting workers and materials.
The top two floors of 300 Main actually exceed the height of Frost Tower and are planned to feature 10 penthouse units with panoramic city views and ceiling heights taller than other units in the building.
Floors 7 and 25 are amenity levels that house the public spaces — lounges, a fitness center and hospitality suite. The swimming pool, cabanas and outdoor kitchen are being built on the 25th floor where there are landscape planters and seating areas overlooking another of the developer’s projects, Legacy Park.
The landscaping plan is one of Connie Garza’s favorite features of the property. A data analyst for Centro San Antonio, Garza recently toured the building site with colleagues. She said it seemed like an exciting new space for downtown.
“As we walked through some of the more finished-out rooms, with the beautiful minimalistic finishes, I like to imagine who will be residing there, what new lives will be added to the vibrant downtown life, who they will be, where they will shop, where they will work,” she said.
A bank of four elevators with destination dispatch systems, which provides residents with the fastest option to their floor, has been installed.
Other levels in the building feature residential units averaging 924 square feet, with spacious bathrooms and closets and open-concept kitchen and living areas with 10-foot ceiling heights. The units on floors 8-10 have been framed and others already have cabinetry, appliances and other finishes installed.
Below the 7th floor is a five-story parking garage with 456 spaces. On those levels is where construction material is currently stored and where workers take breaks and eat lunch. The first floor will feature a lobby and retail space.
Prior to the groundbreaking in April 2022, the narrow 1-acre parcel of land that then became a construction site in the central business district was used as a parking lot.
Moving materials onto such a tight site bordered by three busy streets is especially challenging and a big part of the project logistics, said Nathan Caruthers, senior project manager for the general contractor, Rogers O’Brien.
“Today, we had three semi [trucks] show up, and you’ve got to figure out where to put them, how to store them or how to move them around,” he said.
It takes a lot of collaboration to build a tower in the center of town, said David Robinson Jr., director of placemaking at Weston Urban. In addition to a 300-member crew of workers and tradespeople on the site nearly every day, he said the project has involved a team of architects, engineers, capital partners, the city and county governments, CPS Energy, the San Antonio Water System and Rogers O’Brien.
“Soon, we’ll have the property management team ramping up to start leasing activities. It truly has been and will continue to be a team effort to bring this building to life!”
Pre-leasing is expected to start in February with Kairoi Residential managing the property. The apartments will be leased at market rate but the exact pricing has not been set.
The project was awarded $7.5 million in Center City Housing Incentive Policy incentives to include a 15-year local tax rebate. The terms of the incentives agreement call for the developer to contribute almost $2.2 million to the Affordable Housing Fund.
