Using funds from the city’s housing bond, the San Antonio Housing Trust is seeking to buy a piece of vacant land near the Alamodome for building affordable housing as plans take shape for a sports and entertainment district and rapid bus route in the area.
The board of the housing trust’s public facility corporation gave the go-ahead Friday to negotiating a deal for 1220 E. Commerce St., a 4.7-acre site next to St. Paul Square that’s owned by a limited partnership affiliated with Dallas-based Quadrant Investment Properties.
A purchase price hasn’t been finalized, but the organization plans to ask the city to OK using funds from the 2022 housing bond. About $8.9 million in the $150 million bond is reserved for acquiring property in the urban core and along VIA Metropolitan Transit’s Silver and Green rapid bus routes. The Bexar Central Appraisal District values the site at $9 million.
Pete Alanis, the housing trust’s leader, said the property’s proximity to downtown, businesses at St. Paul Square and a future Silver Line station are appealing.
“There are a lot of hospitality workers, a lot of essential workforce, that really drive the economy for downtown, and we need to make sure that there are opportunities for them to live and enjoy our downtown,” Alanis said. “If the site doesn’t work out, we have other sites that we’re interested in as well.”
The site was previously the headquarters of the RK Group, a local catering company that sold the property to Quadrant in 2019 and moved its offices to the Red Berry Estate farther east.
Quadrant proposed constructing a six-story building with 187,000 square feet of offices, 40,000 square feet of retail and a parking garage, a project it called East End. Then the pandemic hit, and East End didn’t get off the ground.
Fort Worth-based Vaquero Ventures sought to buy the property in 2022 to build a five-story complex with about 340 apartments and parking, but the transaction never closed and Quadrant put it up for sale.
Quadrant didn’t respond to a request for comment Friday.
The city plans to eventually renovate the aging Alamodome as part of the sports and entertainment district known as Project Marvel, which will be anchored by a new Spurs arena surrounded by development at Hemisfair. City staff also are proposing expanding the Convention Center and converting the former John H. Wood Jr. federal courthouse into a performance venue.
The housing trust has purchased multiple properties in the center city in recent years, including a cluster of buildings and vacant sites in Cattleman Square on the West Side and the Sonesta ES Suites extended-stay hotel and Robert E. Lee Apartments downtown.
The organization primarily partners with real estate companies and nonprofits and provides property and sales tax exemptions, tax-exempt bonds and other financing for preserving or building thousands of lower-priced apartments. Its 13-member board of directors includes five City Council members.
The city has so far committed $7.5 million from the $150 million housing bond to the housing trust, including $3 million for apartments at the Vida master-planned community on the South Side and $4.5 million for rehabilitating the Robert E. Lee apartments.
