Residents of one of downtown’s last relatively cheap apartment complexes will need to move if the city goes forward with a planned $160 million minor league baseball stadium — which the City Council is expected to vote on Thursday.

On Monday, city officials and developers unveiled a relocation plan for the hundreds of people living at the seemingly doomed Soap Factory apartments, designed to assuage resident and council concerns.

Weston Urban, which owns the 381-unit apartments and plans to build a baseball stadium and other mixed-use developments there, pledged to cover relocation costs for residents displaced by the proposed project.

Opportunity Home, San Antonio’s housing authority, is also welcoming residents who qualify for housing subsidies, and offering a free first month’s rent in its mixed-income housing across the city.

But for residents who make too much money to receive subsidies — or for other reasons don’t qualify — finding a similarly priced building in the heart of downtown won’t be easy.

“There’s other options for them,” Assistant City Manager Lori Houston said Monday afternoon at a City Hall press briefing that featured top city leaders and representatives from the Missions and Weston Urban. “We, the city, are concerned about the most vulnerable.”

At a separate gathering with Soap Factory residents later that evening, resident after resident on Monday evening disagreed with that assessment, saying they were so relieved to find a downtown complex they can afford, after doing significant research in their initial selection.

Handmade signs at the gathering in the courtyard in front of the complex’s pool read “Your revitalization is our displacement,” “This deal is smoke and mirrors” and “Subsidized displacement.”

“This [relocation] plan is still unclear,” said Sarah, who has lived at the Soap Factory for nearly two years and helped organize her neighbors to respond to the demolition notification.

“What we have to say is very clear: the Soap Factory is our home,” Sarah, who declined to provide her last name, told the crowd. “We live in and we are part of the heart of San Antonio. The Soap Factory apartments has provided housing at an affordable price for its residents who work, go to school and have made their lives in downtown San Antonio. The decision to demolish the Soap Factory in favor of constructing another expensive living space and a baseball field will unfairly and negatively impact my neighbors.”

The event outside the apartments drew nearly the entire City Council, as well as representatives from the Texas Organizing Project, to hear firsthand how residents were receiving the city’s relocation plan.

After listening to residents’ concerns, City Manager Erik Walsh said it will be up to council on Thursday whether to delay the vote on the preliminary outline of the development deal.

“It’s just a [memorandum of understanding or MOU] with the main business points,” Walsh said. “We still have to come back this time next year … and negotiate pretty detailed documents. And those have to come back to council. What the MOU does is provide [the city] certainty on the business terms and it gives them certainty that the city is willing to go into this.”

Throughout the crowd’s chants of “shame on city council” and “shame on Weston,” Weston Urban President Randy Smith stood among them, listening and taking notes in a small notebook.

In his brief remarks at the end of the gathering, Smith acknowledged the residents’ emotions and said: “We will not stop listening.” He apologized that initial notices were not also sent out in Spanish. Many residents speak Spanish as a first language. Smith pledged to improve communications.

“I am sorry,” he said. “We are making every effort to make sure that all communication is bilingual and any other language needed.”

After the gathering, Smith told the San Antonio Report that “the plan that will be laid out Thursday at Council is a plan that we are very proud of. It is unprecedented in market-rate housing, and it’s also not a one-size-fits-all plan,” he said. “This is a process. … We can really understand the needs of each unique person and not apply a broad brush to an entire set of folks.”

A rare downtown bargain

Weston Urban acquired the Soap Factory roughly a year ago.

Compared to other downtown apartments, Smith told reporters earlier in the day that the Soap Factory’s unusual construction in the 1970s and 1980s made for some of the city’s smallest, cheapest unsubsidized units, which couldn’t be replicated under today’s building codes.

“If we were to come to the city or to [the Historic Design Review Commission] today and say, ‘We’d like to develop 381 units on nine acres downtown, and it’s going to be wood frame with Hardy siding and window [air conditioning] units,’ that’s [dead on arrival],” Smith said of the Soap Factory’s unique situation. “Not only is it something that couldn’t be done today, but it was even a little bit unique in its time.”

That dynamic has led to some of the last so-called “naturally occurring,” non-subsidized affordable housing developments downtown with rent averaging $900; a studio rents for around $700 and a two-bedroom is just over $1,300.

In comparison, blocks away at the recently opened 300 Main, also owned by Weston Urban, rents start at $1,482 for a studio.

Among the examples of unsubsidized units the city has suggested residents could move to is the Peanut Factory Lofts, which come in at a similar price per square foot as the Soap Factory but have much larger floor plans, making their overall rent much higher.

After a months-long search for housing downtown, college student Brooklyn Ramos and her partner finally came across Soap Factory. They moved in about 17 days ago, Ramos said during the courtyard gathering.

“Just five days into moving in, we got a knock on our door from Texas Organizing Project — there we were informed on what was [going] to happen to our new home,” Ramos said. “We almost felt betrayed that we weren’t told about this during our very long leasing process.”

Moving into subsidized housing

Under the developer’s baseball stadium proposal, the apartment complex would be demolished in three phases starting in late 2025.

The city is suggesting vulnerable Soap Factory residents impacted by the first phase — about 200 units — could access the housing authority’s subsidized and market-rate housing, which would provide them several options for those who want to stay downtown.

“… [W]e hope to provide these families an option for stable housing and bring some relief as they deal with the challenges of relocation,” Michael Reyes, Opportunity Home’s acting president and CEO said in a press release Monday. “It is simply the right thing to do.”

While the waitlist for public housing and vouchers has swelled in recent years, there is currently no waitlist for homes in Opportunity Home’s mixed-income portfolio, many of which have comparable rents to Soap Factory, Reyes said.

The housing authority can accommodate all households affected by phase one of the proposed development, Spokesman Brance Arnold said. Those residents would still need to qualify based on their income, meaning they would need to make less than 80% of the Area Median Income.

“Based on our understanding, phase one will take at least a year,” Arnold said. “We can explore [unit] availability for phase two when it arrives in a few years from now.” 

Opportunity Home’s Beacon Communities portfolio includes 35 properties across the city, including Victoria Commons and 100 Labor near Hemisfair that are close to VIA bus lines and within walking distance to downtown workplaces and attractions. There are also market-rate apartments within the Beacon portfolio, but those rents are naturally higher.

Projects that receive city funding — as the stadium project would — are required to include plans to address resident displacement.

The developer’s plan

As part of Weston Urban’s relocation plan, phase one tenants can move to other parts of the complex, Smith told council last week. Subsequent phases will involve moving tenants to the nearby Continental Hotel development — also owned by Weston Urban and now under construction.

Nearly 150 of the 250 apartments in the Continental Hotel project are slated to have affordable rents based on income. That project is expected to be completed in late 2024 or early 2025.

Weston Urban contracted with Building Brighter Communities, a housing navigation and social safety-net nonprofit, with helping affected Soap Factory tenants find housing elsewhere.

“No leases will be terminated prematurely,” according to documents Weston Urban submitted to the city. “Phase 1 residents will have the opportunity to renew their existing leases with flexible lease terms until September 2025 with no rent increases. Similarly, residents who choose to terminate their lease early to accommodate a longer term solution may do so without penalty.”

Soap Factory, then known as Soapworks and Towne Center, was at the center of housing affordability and gentrification conversations in 2018 as the San Pedro Creek improvements project and new ownership pushed up rents at the complex in more recent years.

“It is important we offer housing support to these residents who are facing relocation,” said Gabe Lopez, who chairs Opportunity Home’s board. “We are cognizant that this is a delicate situation and so we want to offer an immediate solution that is compassionate.”  

Weston Urban and the San Antonio Missions team ownership group face a tight deadline, said Hope Andrade, one of the team’s owners and a former Texas Secretary of State.

The new ownership has until Oct. 15 to show the league that there is a plan in place to build a new stadium for the team, Andrade told the San Antonio Report after the event. Additional approvals by Bexar County and the San Antonio Independent School District would be required after city council’s for the plan to be official.

“The MLB told us — they put us on notice — If we don’t build a new stadium, they will pull our license,” Andrade said. “If we run so close, we might not make the deadline, even if we deliver the letter personally. So that’s our concern. Everything else we can work out.”