May 19th Day 3- San Antonio

Texas Real Estate Tour Day 3-Back Home
Day 3 of our Real Estate Tour started with a trip to the City of San Antonio to meet with city officials to learn more the procedures needed to start projects in the City of San Antonio. Our goal in this visit was to find out some of the current projects going on the city, some of the challenges in building in San Antonio, incentives given, and future growth.
The first three people we met with were Dave McGowen with Center City development, and Jesus Garza and Richard Milk with the Planning & Development Services. They spoke with us about several subjects including the push for the city of San Antonio encourage development and growth towards downtown and the inner-city. Unfortunately, for San Antonio with other major cities schools have hindered the growth because the lack of quality education which has led to the sprawl of homes and development moving the outer limits of the cities. San Antonio has started to follow suit with other major cities and started incentivizing developers to move downtown through TIF’s, tax abatements, and land leases.
The next people we met with was the city architect, Betty Feldman, and Laurence Doxsey from the Office of Environmental Affairs. We spoke with Betty in regards to where she expects development to happen in the city and where she expects it to go. Mr. Doxsey talked with us in regards to some of the things that the city is doing to ensure developers are keeping the environment in mind with their projects. The Property Accessed Clean Energy (PACE)program has implemented. Our last meeting with the city was with the Sylvia Cortez and Ray Herrera who spoke with us in regards to some of the rules and regulations involved in the city inspection process of residential and commercial properties. Overall it was great visit to the city offices.
After lunch we visited a project off of 287 and 35 which was described as what happens when a developer doesn’t know what he is doing. The original plan of the project was a mixed use development with office space, parking , and residential housing right off the Riverwalk. The project started in 2002 and has been just sitting there since 2005. The project currently is about ¼ of the way done and is looking to start construction back up in the next 3 weeks. The new developer is Ed Cross who happened to be the developer of the Vistana, which happened to be our last stop of the day.
The Vistana, developer Ed Cross, is also the first residential mixed use development in downtown San Antonio. The Vistana encompasses parking, residential apartments, and retail space. Ed Cross started it 2007 and opened it 2009 and now is 96% leased on the residential side. Some of the challenges during development was making sure the building was built and structured to realize all the goals of the development. From this project I learned that San Antonio is ready for downtown development.
We met with Ed Cross for drinks at 5 and he spoke in regards to how he got into development and what young people need to do to get into the business. He also spoke with us about some of his new projects and challenges with his current projects. Overall the meeting with Ed Cross and capped off a great day of Real Estate.