Turning Old into Opportunity: Redevelopment and Adaptive Reuse in San Antonio

It’s spring in San Antonio; the time for bluebonnets, and the rebirth of your shrubbery that died in the January frost. Looking back to what was beautiful before, like your yard last year, to what will become beautiful again is my theme this month. From useful to decay and irrelevance, to rebirth and newness of life. Whether we call it recycling or the more elegant terms, repurposing and reimagining, San Antonio is very good at it. For a city that is over 300 years old, that is a very significant theme.

 

The Alamo

San Antonio is a leader in taking old properties and locations and repurposing and redeveloping them into new and spectacular developments. The best example is The Alamo. It has long been an iconic structure that became an important symbol of the willingness of brave men to sacrifice their lives for others to live free. But the actual site and structure are, well, underwhelming. But now the State has taken over the plaza and is engaged in massive redevelopment, so that Alamo Plaza is becoming very, very interesting and educational. My wife and I visited it recently and the scope of the work is amazing. And it isn’t finished yet. I suggest you visit it when you can because it is well worth it. No longer the 5-minute drive-by, it is a full-scale walking tour that will take an hour or more to fully absorb.

 

Pearl Brewery

The original Pearl Brewery was built in 1883 with many buildings added over the decades. If you can find a tour guide to tell you the story of Max and Emma Koehler and their brewery it is well worth the listen. Once the largest brewery in Texas, Pearl Beer’s company was sold and the grounds and buildings abandoned, until 2001 when, a local, newly minted billionaire went against the best real estate advice and bought this mess of an industrial site. Kit Goldsbury was not a typical real estate developer. He was a visionary who did not have to answer to investors nor banks. When Mayor Hardberger learned of his plans, and loving garden developments, he got money from the Federal government and extended the River Walk through that grassy drainage ditch, including a lock. The Pearl District was born and is one of the most magnificent successful redevelopments anywhere in the world. Thank you, Kit!

 

Alamo Iron Works

Alamo Iron Works was a huge foundry sitting alongside US 281 opposite downtown, on the near Eastside. It really needed to be demolished but what would you do with such a monstrosity? Mayor Henry Cisneros was working hard to make San Antonio into a first-class American city, so we needed a professional football team. He got the construction of the Alamodome approved and used an ingenious financing mechanism through our VIA public transportation system. Of course, we built it and they did not come, but the Alamodome has been a huge success, despite all the naysayers. It is fully booked year-round with concerts, UTSA football, high school football, graduations, truck rallies, Astros baseball, the New Orleans Saints during Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath, the NCAA Final Four, Disney on Ice and it even saved the Spurs from leaving San Antonio for a few years, until the AT&T Center could be built.

Japanese Tea Garden

Then there are our beautiful rock quarries. The oldest that provided stone for the earliest San Antonio structures has become the Japanese Tea Gardens at Breckenridge Park and Sunken Gardens Theater.  Then, there is The Alamo Quarry Marketplace, a 600,000 square foot open air mall that had been Cementville rock quarry. The golf courses are beautiful. Did you know that the north course is a links style with no trees, because it is built over a huge clay cap over the fly ash from the cement plant that had to be properly and ecologically contained?

 

The Rim

Then, there are the huge Redland Worth quarries, spanning IH 10 West, just north of Loop 1604. The ownership in the 2000’s was managed by Bill Worth whose dream was to turn this amazing rock quarry, that had literally helped to build San Antonio, into a new mixed-use to serve our city. He turned to Stan Thomas, a developer from Atlanta who purchased the 800-acre portion of the quarry on the east side of IH-10 that was no longer useful for mining.  He began The Rim retail, office and multifamily development with John Santikos which opened in 2006. The Great Financial Crisis in 2008 caused an unexpected change in ownership, but The Rim is hugely successful as the most visited open-air mall in Texas, with nearly 17 million visitors a year.

 

La Cantera Resort

Then, there is the sister property, to the west, comprising 1,700 acres, that Worth sold to USAA. They then developed Six Flags Fiesta Texas Amusement Park, The La Cantera Resort with Westin International, including two golf courses, and a 1.3 million square foot open air fashion mall, opening in 2005. It has continued to grow with the Westridge Business Park, several apartment complexes and now The Rock, the Spurs headquarters.

 

Longhorn Quarry

Another quarry re-do is the Longhorn Quarry on IH-35 at O’Connor Road, developed by Bitterblue and Laddy Denton. This includes Gordon Hartmans’ Morgan’s Wonderland, Heroes 11,000 seat football stadium for the North East Independent School District, Toyota Field’s 8,000 seat soccer stadium and the STAR soccer complex for youth sports. Bitterblue is also developing three apartment complexes.

 

Kelly Air Force Base

Then, there are the re-purposed Air Force Bases. Kelly AFB was established in 1917, during World War I, as a flight training facility. It was closed in 2001 and turned into Port San Antonio in 2007, including many aerospace contractors like Boeing and Martin Marietta. Now it has evolved into Tech Port San Antonio with emphasis on cyber security, robotics and other applied technology.

 

Brooks City Base

Another public-private partnership is Brooks City Base. Brooks AFB was established in 1918 and has now evolved into the 1,300 acre City of San Antonio’s mixed-use development, including 62 acres of retail, a hospital, a massive industrial park with more than 150 businesses, and 772 apartment units.

 

Tower Life

Back in the 1920’s, when San Antonio was the largest city in Texas, we saw the construction of the iconic Tower Life building and the Milam. Tower Life is now being completely renovated by Ed Cross and McCombs Enterprises into a residential tower with ground floor retail. The Milam Building, was finished in 1928, the first high rise air-conditioned office building in the U.S. It is now owned by Weston Urban with full renovation plans.

 

River Walk & Hemisfair Park

And, of course, we should mention that muddy drainage ditch downtown that became the world famous River Walk. The urban redevelopment in the 1960’s that became Hemisfair, only to be re-reborn again as Hemisfair Park and now continues to grow with plans for the new Spurs arena and convention center expansion. San Antonio Museum of Art was once a brewery. There is also the Milam Building, which was finished in 1928, the tallest building west of the Mississippi and the first air-conditioned office building. That was when San Antonio was the largest city in Texas. And the iconic Tower Life Building is finding a new life, too.

 

Every generation has the privilege of building on the successes of the past generations and also learning from their mistakes. We march forward with our proud 300-year legacy and the responsibility to continue to build our great city to be even better! Viva San Antonio!