San Antonio Day 3 City Officials

My impression of the City of San Antonio, and the common response I heard was "We're looking into that," "we're working on that." It seemed in many instances their hands were tied by developers who didn't have the vision of downtown revitalization, but were in the old school mind-set of "urban sprawl." David, one of the city officials, was tasked with working with the Fed. to destribute 3 M. One of his projects was a new Federal courthouse that would be placed in San Antonio and a public Safety building called the "Tower of the Americas." He also focused on the use of New Market Tax Credits, HUD funding, and C of O's (Certificates of Occupancies). Jesus, the next speaker specialized in planning for military bases, and in zonning for extraterritorial areas. He's in charge of the Geographic Information Systems for San Antonio, and he said that a lot of development in S.A. is beyond the current city limits, especially to the West. The city tried to implement codes that would direct growth to the urban areas, but after push back from the community, the codes became optional... and unfortunately, have not had great effect. The biggest barrier to urban growth, Jesus says, is the tourist driven economy, meaning hotels do best. A few successful projects such as the "King William" historical neighborhood, and the Vestana, have encouraged city officials. They believe historical areas will continue to do well and values will be maintained. Areas by the Riverwalk are also good investments. Generally, an investor is looking at $200 per foot for privately owned land off the Riverwalk.

Besides tourism, military, and biomedical are large industries in S.A. The city is concerned that urban sprawl is an issue as it is causing congestion issues.
Richard, head of Community Development Management, shared that the UTSC campus had a very positive impact on city growth, but the downtown campus was still in a small stage. Betty, former architect lamented the “Broadway” project in the “armpit” of S.A., which she said was badly managed, had no feasibility studies, and no market understanding – in contrast to the Vestana. The project basically went into bankruptcy, and Ed Cross bought the building in an auction. She described the historic method the city still used for chilled water. It’s chilled in one location and then sent out to the whole city. This can be bad because often buildings will have to have their own chillers to maintain building coolness. “Mission Verde” passed by a previous Mayor stated that all city buildings would follow sustainability guidelines. She felt that the only way there would be long-term viability of green resolutions would be to write it into code. Green building started in 1991 in Austin, and spread to San Antonio from there. Some of the efforts San Antonio has made to become more “green” include: solar panels, advanced lighting in buildings, planting of trees, public bikes, 91 hybrid sedans for city police, and 31 natural gas powered garbage trucks. Many of these advances were due to Federal Stimulus money in the form of an “efficiency and block grant” of 12.9 M, and another stimulus of 8 M.
The city inspector shared that code enforcement is complaint driven. Contractors have to have both a city and a state license. We discussed how difficult or easy it would be for adaptive re-use of buildings in terms of code. They understood what needed to be done for commercial buildings or residential buildings, but didn't seem to have flex codes for the adaptive re-use of a building from one use to another.