Brandt Bakke was in Pearsall one afternoon when his father suggested they go for a drive and “look at some dirt.”
Bakke steered the car toward Southtown, where he wanted to show his dad the Blue Star Arts Complex and the residential and commercial growth in the area south of downtown.
Instead, the intersection of Roosevelt Avenue and Lone Star Boulevard caught their eye and their imaginations.
“What drew me to it originally was the tunnel outlets and just the way the park, Lone Star, the railroad was kind of all just blending together, and it just seemed like such a cool corner,” Bakke said.
Now the developer family — Brandt Bakke, his father Phil and uncle Joe — want to make the parcel of land that sits a stone’s throw from the ruins of the Lone Star Brewery site and Roosevelt Park near the San Antonio River even more interesting.
They set about making a plan to acquire the property and turn it into the kind of business that neighbors had once anticipated would recast the defunct brewery and draw more investment.
“I think we all are hoping that if it can’t be Lone Star that starts the final transformation of Roosevelt Park, then let it be the Bakke development,” said Jeff Hunt, president of the Roosevelt Park Neighborhood Association.
In 2019, the Bakkes bought the one acre at 207 Roosevelt Ave., located in the Mission Historic District, from the Meier family, who had for years lived and operated a business crafting stone and marble monuments and mausoleums.
By 2021, the Bakkes had turned a former warehouse on the site into sleek new office space for themselves and moved from a building on Broadway Street in 2022.
They then acquired four more parcels surrounding the property, including a defunct railway bridge extending to land across Roosevelt and adjacent the Mission Reach of the San Antonio River.
A year later, they won approval from the Historic and Design Review Commission (HDRC) to restore the Meiers’ two-story home and redevelop the site into a sizable “ice house-style” casual food and beverage destination. The home will become a restaurant or wine bar, Bakke said.
A distinct tile and concrete masonry model mausoleum next to the home will remain in place and potentially house a future ofrenda.
At a more recent HDRC hearing, commissioners approved a wide-ranging proposal to put up another office building and finish out the entire property as an eclectic and sprawling entertainment, restaurant and bar space.
A vintage Lone Star Brewery billboard hovers over the spot where the Bakkes, working with Alamo Architects, envision a footbridge crossing over Roosevelt to a sand volleyball court, food truck parking and landscaped seating areas overlooking the river.
In design renderings, surface parking lots are laid out along the north edge of the site, next to Union Pacific railroad tracks.
Dan Kachtik, owner of King William District Crossfit, said his business is located about 150 yards from the project, on Groveton Street, which he said will make it easy for the gym’s members to access it.
“I think it’ll do really good because they sound very family-friendly, dog-friendly,” he said. “I think it fits with the vibe of the neighborhood. People like to walk to places in that area, and I think a lot of people will walk or bike there.”
Bakke said he doesn’t want to call it a passion project because they do want to make a profit. But, “this has more social impact than just building a storage unit, where people can put their stuff they don’t want.
“You get an emotional return that exists when you do something where … people are going to have a place to go watch a Spurs game on a Wednesday night, go watch a Cowboys game, have a neighborhood community event out on the lawn.”
Revitalization plans for the former brewery site a block away have come and gone for more than five years, with a series of new owners failing to make changes and dashing the hopes of the neighborhood, if not the city, which has sought to incentivize redevelopment.
Developer-owners Midway and Graystreet acquired the 32-acre industrial site in April 2020 and put it back on the market less than two years later.
While the Bakkes’ plan has been in the works for several years, they intend to see it through. The rezoning and historic review processes behind them, the developer has given the design team the go-ahead to start construction drawings.
“That’s why this has taken so long to come to fruition, is that we plan on being down here for a long time,” Bakke said. “So building something that’s going to have longevity and have great buy-in from the neighborhood is important to us.”
The Bakkes intend to move into the planned office building, a new three-story structure, and lease their current space to another firm. “This is our last move,” Joe Bakke said.
The frame of a vacant warehouse, stamped Carnegie Steel 1909, will be repurposed into a pavilion with a grass-covered roof and two large holding tanks will stand at the corner of the site and feature signage.
The father-son-uncle team is also working to acquire for the development the conspicuous pig structure that was built in 1933 to house a barbecue restaurant and later served as the oversized mascot for the Pig Stand restaurant on South Presa.
Though renderings show the concept will be called “South Star,” Bakke said they are still working on what to call it.
“We’re not sold on anything yet,” he said. “Definitely something that kind of ties in the history of the property” with Meier Monuments and also the Staffel feed and seed business that had a store there.
Bakke said they expect to break ground on the project in April or May and might open in phases, with the full project possibly completed in 18 months.
