It would be interesting to hear why some companies located where they did. Of those you listed:
Valero was downtown and moved to a building on St Mary's and McAllister Fwy. They merged with Diamond Shamrock who had been up on I10 and was building a campus on 1604. It made sense to move where they had the office space and room to expand.
Tesoro was north off 410, then off of McAllister and decided to locate where the majority of their workforce was (north).
I believe NuStar, a Valero spin-off, decided to locate near the mother ship. I think there is still a chance they could eventually re-locate again.
Whataburger took Tesoro's old space, probably because it fit what they were looking for since much of the office space downtown was converted to hotels.
USAA is adding 1000 to their workforce and needed space. Apparently they were shown downtown options but decided on space near the main office. They did move about 200 or so downtown to a building they purchased.
I would say in each of these cases HDRC was a non-factor. None had proposals that were abandoned. It was more the overall nature of doing business in San Antonio and downtown.
Are there costs tied to going before a review board and meeting guidelines? Of course, not unique to San Antonio. Are there considerations and costs associated with preservation? Sure. Again, not unique to San Antonio, but not something every city places an importance on.
I'm in favor of design review as long as it is smart and helps create a good environment/experience. That's really problem with HDRC. Overall, their decisions can be criticized more than praised. They seem to go by a silly checklist and have failed to protect buildings of significance and fought battles that amount to pittance.
Oh yeah, and this is way off-topic.
But we are posting
