Mayor Castro talks about bringing grocery store and more housing to downtown

[sirkingwilliam]

I really like what they're doing. Castro and Sculley are two great and powerful allies for urban development.

We're not the only ones who think about a grocery store.

"You would be surprised by how much we've thought about that," Mayor Julian Castro told the San Antonio Downtown Residents Association last night at the Grand Hyatt.

Castro revealed to the group that he has talked with City Manager Sheryl Sculley about creating an incentive package for a company to build a store downtown, one that would include an abatements of taxes, waiver of city fees and, possibly, flat out cash.

"We're going to end up looking at what kind of incentive package we can put together," Castro said. "As that starts to heat up, it will go through a council committee. There will be a public aspect to it. It's just a matter of what's going to be included in the incentive package."

Though Castro did not give a timeline, he said the biggest obstacle is the lack of enough residents to support the store.

"The challenge for us right now is to create more housing units, more residents downtown, to make the economics work for a grocery store," Castro said. "We are taking a very aggressive approach at creating housing units. Of course, it also has to be an investment that's supported by the market. You see cities like Miami and others that got way ahead of themselves in terms of condo investment that just was not supported by a weak market. We don't want to make that mistake."

The creation of more residential units in recent years is reason to be optimistic, he said, not just for a grocery store, but for downtown's overall health.

Castro pointed to the completion of the Vistana apartment building and Vidorra condo high-rise, both completed a year ago this month. The projects combined to add 393 new units to downtown proper.

"Downtown is being infused for the first time with significant numbers of new residents that add a new component that goes beyond the tourists," Castro said.

Other physical signs of growth, Castro said, are ongoing plans to revitalize HemisFair Park, the transformation of Municipal Auditorium into the Bexar County Performing Arts Center and a streetcar system he hopes will be operational by 2014.

More to the point, the arts are something he feels can bring a true San Antonio flavor to downtown.

"They are the reason that somebody would choose to live closer to the city, instead of living in a neighborhood that could just as easily be in suburban Minneapolis, Kansas City or Boulder, Colo.," Castro said. "There is a flavor in San Antonio that you can only experience in its fullest in the downtown area."

The City Council's recent broadening of development incentives is another example of how the city is trying to spur urban growth.

"These policy changes, I believe, won't result in an overnight, wholesale change in our downtown in terms of our investment," Castro said. "But over five years, 10 years, 15 years, it will make a very significant dent in getting us where we need to go."

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