Posted Oct 3, 2008, 1:40 PM
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Join Date: May 2008
Location: The Triangle
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Re-energizing the Mission Road plant
From MySa.com:
Quote:
By Creighton A. Welch - Express-News The revitalization of a South Side landmark is one step closer to reality.
CPS Energy's Mission Road Power Plant has been decommissioned since 2003, but the utility company plans to spend the next few years transforming the 100-year-old plant into a mixed-use development.
There will be around 200 apartments, a small amount of retail and restaurant space and open public areas in a combination of new and existing buildings.
“Certainly there's something to be said for preservation and sustainability,” said Xavier Gonzalez, chairman of the Historic and Design Review Commission, which gave conceptual approval of the project at a meeting Wednesday night. This plan “addresses the river, neighbors and still respects the power plant.”
The 5-acre site, which sits along the San Antonio River, likely will be a public-private partnership that could cost about $34 million to redevelop, said Scott Smith, director of environmental planning and compliance for CPS. He envisions a complete project within five years.
“We became aware that the San Antonio River Authority was going to improve the river, and we saw an opportunity that we'd have a building that was just sitting there,” Smith said.
After sending out surveys to the surrounding Roosevelt Park neighborhood, CPS decided on pursuing a mixed-use plan.
“Architecturally, it's probably one of the best sites for adaptive reuse in the city,” said Steve Thurlow, a broker with Thurlow & Co., which is involved in several projects along South Flores Street and in the Southtown area. “It would certainly help us. Its proximity to the expanded river is absolutely key.”
The site is another cog in what could become a larger revitalized area of the city.
In August, the nearby Lone Star Brewery was sold to an Austin developer that has plans for the 23-acre site to become 190 condos and a mix of restaurant, retail and park space.
The CPS plant is also along the Mission Reach portion of the $250 million river improvement project. Crews broke ground on the Mission Reach in June.
Phase 1 of the Mission Reach runs 1.2 miles south from the Lone Star Brewery to the convergence of the river and San Pedro Creek. Work on Phase 1 is expected to be complete in a year and a half.
“This whole area could really become an urban node,” said Andrew Douglas of Douglas Architects, the firm designing the project.
There is also a bridge connecting the site to another 11 acres of undeveloped land that CPS owns. The land eventually will be developed, but the plan is not yet finalized.
CPS has spent about $5 million cleaning up the plant grounds to meet residential environmental standards.
The next step for CPS is to hire a company to clean out the plant, a year-and-a-half process that will involve removing asbestos, lead and all the old turbine and boiler equipment. A developer then will come in to finish the project.
CPS hopes to make the site LEED certified.
“Our vision is to create a structure that will represent the future of energy,” Smith said.
Several of the existing structures will be kept, such as the boiler and turbine rooms. The smoke stack also will stay. New structures will be added, which will bring the final build-out to around 256,000 square feet.
The metal and red bricks of the buildings will help give the site an industrial loft feel.
“We want to embrace the tradition of the power plant,” Douglas said.
Other nearby power plants are seeing new life in a similar manner.
In New Braunfels, developer Larry Peel bought the power plant in Landa Park in 2003 from the Lower Colorado River Authority and has spent the past five years converting it into eight floors of loft apartments and about 15,000 square feet of retail space, renaming it the Landmark.
And in Austin, the 8-acre Seaholm Power Plant is slated to undergo a $117 million transformation. A group of developers is funding most of the work, along with an $18.6 million investment from the city.
“There is no reason why we can't do that here,” Smith said. “We're connected by a linear park other cities could only dream of.”
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The Raleigh Connoisseur It is the city trying to escape the consequences of being a city
while still remaining a city. It is urban society trying to eat its
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- Harlan Douglass, The Suburban Trend, 1925
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