Not for the first time, San Antonio needs to evolve as a city. That will require vision and a plan, a big plan. It has happened before in contemporary times, and it can happen again. Visionary plans, of course, never turn out exactly as they are envisioned. Critics with great hindsight can always point out the unrealized goals.
But without vision, without a big plan, significant progress is far less likely.
I arrived back in Texas and in San Antonio toward the end of 1989, just as former Mayor Henry Cisneros’ Target ‘90 program, first launched in 1983, was nearing completion. He led a city that prior to his time as mayor from 1981 to 1989 was very different. San Antonio was home to fewer than 1 million people. For a transplant like me who had left Texas for work overseas and then in New York before moving to San Antonio, the city seemed to be a great place for Monika and me to raise our two sons. The lack of ambition and confidence seemed palpable.
Target ‘90 envisioned a 60,000-person stadium downtown that might attract an NFL franchise and regular bond cycles that would address the many infrastructure inequities, including an end to unpaved streets without sidewalks in inner city neighborhoods that were home to Hispanic and Black people. Cisneros’ program pushed for energy and water diversification, investments in the bioscience and medical sectors, better parks and more amenities for locals and visitors alike.
Workers were jackhammering downtown streets when I arrived for my interview with San Antonio Light Publisher George Irish in 1989. I accepted the job offer and bought a brick paver with my family’s name on it on Houston Street. The pavers were being sold to help finance the downtown improvements.
The city’s flirtations with the NFL fell short, other than the brief stay of the New Orleans Saints after the team’s city was devastated by Hurricane Katrina. But we did get the Alamodome, and beginning with the U.S. Olympic Festival in 1993, it has hosted 30 years of pro, collegiate and amateur sporting events, not to mention countless concerts and other entertainment. This time of year it’s busy with graduation ceremonies.
Mayor Julián Castro, who served from 2009 to 2014 and was one of many young Latinos inspired into public service in no small part by Cisneros, presided over his own visionary program, SA2020. By its advent, we had City Manager Sheryl Sculley who fulfilled Cisneros’ vision decades earlier of cyclical bond programs to build a better, safer and more equitable city with unprecedented investments in downtown and the inner city. Municipal government under Sculley was much more muscular and capable. Private and nonprofit sector partners were critical to the success of SA2020.
Again, critics can point to some of its unachieved goals, but no rational person would argue that SA2020 was anything less than transformational. Both Target ‘90 and SA2020 changed San Antonio for the better in real time.
The pandemic has changed the city for the worse. It triggered the mass flight of workers from offices and even some companies from downtown addresses in San Antonio. The advent of remote and hybrid work represents major challenges and, for some cities, opportunity.
Workers freed up to work remotely are fleeing expensive East Coast and West Coast cities. They are headed for more livable, more affordable cities: Austin, Salt Lake City, Nashville and Fort Worth, to name a few. Some cities are offering cash bonuses to new residents who bring remote work with them.
Some employers are pushing back, with mixed results. Scarcity of skilled workers has given employees greater leverage with management than at any other time in recent history. Productivity, not attendance, has become the defining measure.
Some employers have more leverage than others and are rounding up grumbling workers and herding them back to the office, but many more are not. Downtown office towers remain spookily vacant, even if some tenants are still paying their rent while not occupying their space.
Most startlingly for me was the November announcement by Facebook/Meta that it will sublease the first 33 of 66 floors in Austin’s newest tall building, which the social media giant leased in January 2022. Exactly who will fill that empty space remains to be seen.
Closer to home, it’s been a year or more since I’ve read anything in the local media about the announced $400 million dollar mixed-use development on the River Walk between East Martin and Convent streets, featuring a condo tower, multifamily residential tower, an office tower and the Dream Hotel, conceived and owned by Boerne-based Universal Services Group and its partners.
My guess is that developers have reassessed the market and probably will go forward without an office tower. Zachry Hospitality and the Hemisfair Park Area Redevelopment Corp. agreed upon a similar post-pandemic reboot in 2022. The San Antonio-based developer’s planned new building cluster on Civic Park will still include residential and mixed-use buildings, as well as a hotel, but minus the previously envisioned office tower.
Completion in 2024 of 300 Main, Weston Urban’s 32-story residential tower, will test the market for high-end rentals downtown. The 354-unit building at East Travis Street and Main Avenue will be the first multifamily high-rise in the city, the kind of buildings that are common in San Diego, Denver and Austin.
Some of San Antonio’s office towers, whose heyday has come and gone, should be converted to residential living (with ground retail) with some percentage of units set aside for workers in the hospitality industry who could afford higher rents if they no longer had to spend time and money on gas or bus fare getting to work.
Converting office buildings to residential units is complex and expensive. One example is the 63-unit Travis Building, which just began leasing this month. Redefining downtown is going to take vision and another big, sustained push by local government in partnership with the private sector, UTSA and others. Some will argue that empty office buildings are a private-sector problem, not a community issue. I disagree, but perhaps there is a case for radical action, like the wrecking ball.
A vibrant downtown is essential to the health, stability and attractiveness of any city. That includes its tax base. A major investment of time, money and talent now isn’t merely justified. It’s essential. The pandemic was a once-in-a-century disruptive change to the San Antonio urban landscape. It’s going to take a new vision and plan to restore the city and secure its future.
There will be pushback from suburban business interests and voters. Nothing big happens without opposition. We simply need the belief that it’s the right thing to do, right now.
I’ve been thinking about this challenge ever since San Antonio shut down and downtown life suddenly disappeared, but even more so this past week with the announced leadership change at Centro San Antonio and the many conversations with various stakeholders who are impatient to get going.
San Antonio needs to think big and to act now if it aspires to be one of those cities with a great downtown and a great future.
