[AndresAndujar]

Fun reading your commentaries about the 300 foot approval on Crocket Street, as well as other threads related to Downtown San Antonio.

Good question about when we will see a project go up at Rio Plaza (Presidio). First, the ownership must conclude legal activities. At that time, they might sell the project to a developer. Whoever controls the site eventually will have to push the 300 foot height to get their money back.

The concept does take the whole site and includes excavation, possibly four stories down, to provide parking. Clearly we have to keep the retail access at River Level, but the biggest challenge for this density is parking.

While we are recommending 0.5 cars per hotel room in the downtown area, parking drives many concerns, particularly if the project goes mixed use with condos. unfortunately in Texas, condos are dificult to sell if we don't provide, generally speaking, one car space per bedroom.

Anyway, since the Rio Plaza announcement, we are now working on several other downtown projects, including the one mentioned on Ninth Street, an aLoft on the 400 block of E Houston Street, an Element at Neisner, the 27 story W at Kress, and River North...

San Antonio is definitely going vertical, despite the complications of getting higher densities.