http://www.mysanantonio.com/business...s.2cb2a9f.html
NRP Group LLC closed Wednesday on the purchase of a 10-acre tract just south of downtown, where the Ohio-based company is planning luxury apartment lofts.
The $60 million project, which will include almost 500 apartments and 20,000 square feet of retail space, is planned for the area just west of La Tuna icehouse, on East Cevallos Street between Probandt and South Flores streets. It is the first new large-scale rental development to be announced for the South Flores area.
Thurlow & Co. Urban Properties brokered the transaction.
Several old warehouses currently sit on the land, which the group bought from developer Charlie Acuña. The warehouses will be razed. A building at 1344 S. Flores, which NRP Group also bought in the transaction, will be re-used as part of the project or resold, said Daniel Markson, a San Antonio-based partner with NRP Group.
Details for the project, including a name, are still sketchy.
But the plan does call for an extension of Peden Street, which would run through the complex as a pedestrian- and bicycle-friendly connection between the Blue Star Arts Complex and South Flores Street.
Markson sees this "magic connection" as a needed improvement to the area, as currently pedestrians must compete with cars and trains to travel from Blue Star to South Flores."This is a real new-urban design. It will read like a neighborhood that has been there forever," he said. "It should read like an extension of SoFlo and the loft district."
Alamo Architects is designing the project.
Jim Bailey of Alamo Architects says his firm envisions a design similar to that of the Pearl Brewery redevelopment, the design of which is led by Lake/Flato Architects."It'll have the feel of an urban plaza," he said.
It could take about six months to complete the final design, but demolition and site work are expected to begin in the next few weeks, Bailey said.
The first phase of 200 apartments should be completed sometime in 2009.
Once the entire project is completed, the area will be home to about 1,000 loft-renters, Markson said. The South Flores area has two completed for-sale condo projects — the Camp Street Lofts and the South End Lofts — and several others are under construction or in the planning stages.
La Tuna is expected to become the neighborhood hub, and NRP Group plans on making its project blend with the famous icehouse by adding picnic tables and planting trees on the eastern end of the property, closest to the bar.
Rental rates haven't been set for the project.
The development hasn't been named yet, either, but those involved with the project are calling the area the "Cevallos Street neighborhood."
"It's not SoFlo and it's not King William and it's not Blue Star, so the area deserves a name unto itself," Markson said.
NRP Group normally builds affordable housing, and this is Markson's first market-rate project in San Antonio.
"We have one of the greatest downtowns in the United States, and we don't have enough housing. It's really that simple," Markson said. "Everybody who lives in this city, with rare exception, comes downtown on a regular basis, yet if you look at what your housing options are, they're extremely limited."
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