Originally Published in San Antonio Report
The recent release of Tech Bloc’s report on the state of the information technology industry in San Antonio was a wake-up call for those committed to building a more vibrant and prosperous downtown.
Job growth in the sector is happening just about everywhere but downtown. That was no surprise, really, but hearing it from Tech Bloc CEO David Heard, once one of the leading voices supporting the emerging tech district along East Houston Street, has forced other boosters to face post-pandemic reality.
Those of us wishing for a resurgence in the central business district have come to realize there will not be a “return to normal.” Bosses ordering workers back to the office risk losing those workers. Skilled professionals have far more options than they enjoyed pre-pandemic. Tech workers are no longer the only ones who can work wherever a Wi-Fi signal is found.
It would be premature to organize a wake for downtown San Antonio, but nearly three years after former Mayor Julián Castro’s Decade of Downtown came to an end, it’s time to shape a new vision for the downtown bordered to the north by River North and the Pearl, and to the south by Southtown.
That vision, I believe, is going to have to be built on a housing-first foundation. Start with a name change: the central business district, it now seems, is a last-century chamber of commerce construct.
Centro CEO Matt Brown said Friday that downtown housing is one of his organization’s three top priorities.
“There is the hen and there is the egg,” Brown said. “In this instance, the hen is residential housing, and the eggs that follow are retail, business and commerce.”
San Antonio’s oldest urban streets were once home to the people who founded this town and eventually built it into a city. The Decade of Downtown set what seemed like ambitious goals at the time to add 7,500 residential units to the urban core, a number that was comfortably exceeded.
Downtown San Antonio needs a new initiative with a new goal for significantly expanding new residential housing, along with the necessary public incentives to spark the free market and make it actually happen.
