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The city renewal effort across the outdated Sundown Station confronted quite a few hiccups over time.
Cityscrapes is a column of opinion and evaluation.
This time of the 12 months it’s conventional for columnists to look again on the occasions of the previous 12 months and mirror on what they imply for the long run. However now, as we face 2024, there are massive, costly issues on the horizon.
The thrill round a brand new downtown enviornment for the Spurs is rising louder and extra persistent. After which there’s the on-again, off-again discuss a minor league ballpark downtown as nicely — maybe even together with that new enviornment to create a complete new “sports activities district” that can increase our stumbling downtown core.
The time appears proper to look again a bit additional, again to the beginnings of the revitalization of St. Paul Sq., the approaching of the Alamodome and the promise of the Sundown Station growth — and the way these issues fared, or not.
The place to start out is 1975, with the town’s first city renewal effort on the East Aspect, a plan to revive and revitalize the “as soon as thriving however now deteriorated part” east of downtown described by the San Antonio Specific in April 1976 as having “acquired an unappealing popularity over time, changing into considerably of a small haven for dope addicts, petty crime, winos and prostitutes.”
The plan on the time was to enhance the Victorian-era buildings round Sundown Station, together with the infrastructure, with the “growth of a market, vacationer heart, leisure services, eating places, residences and different small companies.” However a decade later, the realm was principally workplace area for skilled corporations. There have been some eating places, a boot maker, a pharmacy and a nightclub. However the imaginative and prescient of a bustling vacationer space with specialty retail outlets merely hadn’t come to fruition, partly due to the realm’s separation from downtown and the barrier posed by I-37.
Nonetheless, there was hope. The opening of the brand new Rivercenter Mall simply to the west promised elevated property values, growth and extra exercise. After which, within the wake of the January 1989 vote, there could be the brand new Alamodome proper subsequent door. As a part of its deal to finance and construct the dome, VIA Transit had acquired the Sundown Station complicated and moved forward to discover a developer for the power and its environment. The announcement in September 1993 that Zachry Realty, Charles Martin Wender and a bunch of native buyers could be liable for the brand new growth was hailed as a boon for the East Aspect.
The Sundown Station Growth Group employed theme park guide Buzz Value to evaluate the market potential and sure efficiency of their proposed themed leisure and restaurant complicated. Value had labored on the creation of each Disneyland and Disney World. In San Antonio, he had delivered a remarkably correct, if futile, evaluation of Sea World’s doubtless efficiency.
However for Sundown Station, he was constructive and upbeat. Noting {that a} Dallas developer was planning a 400-room “upscale” lodge as a part of the mission, he additionally defined that “there is no such thing as a themed downtown attraction that’s pushed by dwell leisure and complemented with eating.”
Value forecast 1.7 million annual attendees and $27 million in yearly revenues. His optimism was based mostly largely on the efficiency of the Alamodome. He projected that the domed stadium would draw 3 million attendees a 12 months based mostly on its first 12 months — much more than the 1.5 million to 2 million metropolis workers had forecast in 1988.
However there was a elementary drawback with that logic.
The dome by no means managed attendance of three million a 12 months. It didn’t even hit 2 million. When the Spurs had been enjoying there, dome attendance averaged a bit over 1.5 million. With out the NBA crew, attendance dropped to about 950,000 from 2005 to 2015. And the place the town had estimated the Alamodome would accommodate 1,000,000 conventioneers yearly, many of the dome’s attendees had been locals with plenty of choices for meals, drink and leisure.
Because the dome noticed fewer individuals, Sundown Station suffered. We by no means noticed the “upscale” lodge, solely a 138-room Staybridge Suites. The dwell leisure flopped, and Zachry fired Graham Brothers Leisure in 2000. Eating places — Ruth’s Chris, Aldaco’s, Smoke — got here and went, as did the College of Houston’s hospitality program.
Zachry ended up promoting the station and surrounding buildings to REATA Actual Property in 2017. The brand new proprietor deliberate to create an leisure district with eating places, bars and live performance areas just like the Pearl, all boosted by a dedication from the town of $1.3 million for enhancements. Maybe that new possession and imaginative and prescient will work this time.
The proposed new Spurs enviornment and the imaginative and prescient of a downtown sports activities district will little question include plenty of guarantees and hopes and forecasts. There’ll certainly be guide research providing up massive numbers for jobs and financial affect. Speak of an “leisure district” will ensue. Alongside the way in which, native leaders and information media will virtually definitely level to profitable sports activities initiatives elsewhere. Nonetheless, we — and so they — must be taught the teachings of our earlier public investments.
Builders will make plenty of guarantees. However these grand new venues received’t essentially revitalize a downtown. And even the realm throughout the road.
Heywood Sanders is a professor of public coverage on the College of Texas at San Antonio.
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