Question about San Antonio

[Complex01]

Originally Posted by jtk1519

Downtown San Antonio is for tourists... that's why it's not any taller and that's why the tallest "building" is a hotel. I found that out after living there. I would say most San Antonians almost never go downtown. In terms of the buisness and dense(r) center of San Antonio... the downtown for the real people, I frankly found that to be the Medical Center area.

What, wow. That is something else. The medical center is so dead after the M-F work week. Granted they have some bars/clubs, but nothing over whelming and Honestly i worked downtown for a while and plenty of people came there from "other parts of the city"...

Originally Posted by starvinggryphon

What a sickening thing to say.......Medical Center is not downtown for the real people, just for the detached suburbanites. I hate to hear people say that they have lived here and never gone south of North Star Mall. There are obviously two San Antonios, the real one with downtown as it's CBD and the suburban sprawling mess to the north with Medical Center as it's CBD. I dont live downtown but I work there and support it's bars/clubs/restaurants because it's the real city. The tourists have to share it with me, not the other way around.

I agree fully...

[21bl0wed]

I can't tell you how many dates i've taken downtown and pretty much every one said they'd never been on the tower, or gotten on the boats on the riverwalk. Not a lot of people go downtown, and i think its the mainly due to the fact that everyone i know isn't from SA. I think its a native thing, and it should stay that way go away tourists! lol jk

[westernmost]

I'd always thought the height atop the pyramid parts of the spire where everyone looks to, expecially when lit at night, was around the 500 or 510 mark, does anyone have the blueprints or any records of what parts are at which heights on the rivercenter, this is one subject that's always needed a further look into it

[ydoc14]

Originally Posted by westernmost

I'd always thought the height atop the pyramid parts of the spire where everyone looks to, expecially when lit at night, was around the 500 or 510 mark, does anyone have the blueprints or any records of what parts are at which heights on the rivercenter, this is one subject that's always needed a further look into it

I'd like to know too

[jtk1519]

Originally Posted by starvinggryphon

What a sickening thing to say.......Medical Center is not downtown for the real people, just for the detached suburbanites. I hate to hear people say that they have lived here and never gone south of North Star Mall. There are obviously two San Antonios, the real one with downtown as it's CBD and the suburban sprawling mess to the north with Medical Center as it's CBD. I dont live downtown but I work there and support it's bars/clubs/restaurants because it's the real city. The tourists have to share it with me, not the other way around.

When I say I lived "there", "there" = downtown San Antonio. I lived in the Cadillac Lofts at Lexington and Augusta. I have a bunch of friends that have lived in San Antonio for years and when I first got down there, I called them up to see if they wanted to go downtown and whatnot. They all laughed at me. Locals don't go downtown is what I heard and after a few months of roaming the streets at all hours of the day and night, I found that to be pretty true. On weeknights, I found that out-of-towners out-numbered locals a good 4-1 and that figure jumped to 10-1 on the weekends (I'm not counting all the homeless BTW).

I found that for the locals, the highest concentration of jobs and post-job fun was found around the 410/10 area including the Medical Center. That's not to say that is the only place, I just found it to have the highest concentration in the area (and I explored that whole damn city). There were some cool areas just outside of downtown. I loved Broadway where it ran just outside of downtown past Brackenridge park and up past the University of the Incarnate Word. There was a lot of awesome stuff there and down Fredricksburg from just outside of downtown to the Medical Center.

The sad reality is that a vast majority of locals don't go downtown very often. I say that as somebody who lived there, but maybe I didn't live there enough to grow tired of it because I still loved it.

[mikeelm]

Originally Posted by Jeeper

Forgive me if this has been answered before, but I'm curious why San Antonio doesn't have more highrises than it currently does. The city's population would seem to support them, and the River Walk would appear to be a magnet for commercial and residential towers. I'm just kind of surprised that SA's tallest is a hotel, and that a city of SA's stature doesn't have something more substantial.

So what if they don't?

[sirkingwilliam]

Originally Posted by ydoc14

Northwest San Antonio, west of I-10 and Fredericksburg, north of 410

lol, no no, I know what the medical center is and where it's located, lol, my fault on the wording, I mean I don't understand what he meant by the medical center being downtown to most "real" people.

[sirkingwilliam]

Originally Posted by jtk1519

The sad reality is that a vast majority of locals don't go downtown very often.

That's the sad reality everywhere. What city/metro area do you know where the vast majority of a million+ or four million+ go downtown often. None. Why? Becuase there's areas throughtout those places that fullfill whatever needs they have.

[KevinFromTexas]

Originally Posted by westernmost

I'd always thought the height atop the pyramid parts of the spire where everyone looks to, expecially when lit at night, was around the 500 or 510 mark, does anyone have the blueprints or any records of what parts are at which heights on the rivercenter, this is one subject that's always needed a further look into it

I would like to know some more details about the spires and heights up there also, but 546 feet to the spires and 441 to the roof seems about right. As for finding the blueprints, well, I doubt the general public could see them anymore. Your best bet is to contact the architect, RTKL Associates, Inc, and ask them. They would have the original blueprints on file somewhere in storage. I've not had a whole lot of luck getting building heights in San Antonio, though. And not living there makes it hard to be able visit every building and talk to their building managers to get them. Also, never trust what anyone at the front desk says, they don't know, they don't have that info available at the desk and would likely not take the time to bother with finding it for you. Believe me, I've tried, even here in Austin people at front desks are useless. They might as well be broken robots.

As for the "real people" comment and where they go, (downtown vs elsewhere), I know what jtk1519 was talking about. He was distinguishing between out of towners (tourists) and actual residents of San Antonio and where they go. I sort of agree that certain areas of downtown can be slow, even during the week save for the tourists. That's not to say that San Antonioians don't go downtown, of course they do, just that it isn't "the place" they go in large numbers. And as for a large percentage of the city's population going downtown, why not? With a typical major city having 80,000 to 100,000+ people working in downtown, they're already there for work, why not have them live there also and squish traffic problems. Then you have all the other people who do go down there for entertainment type stuff. Why not have them live there also? They obviously like being there otherwise they wouldn't be going. The lack of people in downtown Houston or a centralized entertainment hub has led to some identity issues with Houston since everyone is spread out. This is also bad since it inevitable ends up separating everyone. Whites over there, blacks over here and Mexicans over there. Not good. Why do you think Austin's 6th Street and Warehouse Districts are so revered? It's because they're THE place to be. Of course there are others, but those two are the real people magnets anywhere in the city.

It's always sort of interested me in what residents of very popular touristy cities do on their free time. What do they do for fun? Where do they go to hang out in their city? This is something I always wondered about on trips down to the coast to Corpus Christi and Port Aransas. We'd be there for vacation, fishing, swimming in the ocean, walking the beach and just hanging out there. I'd see homes in those towns and always wondered what those people did for fun.

[jtk1519]

Originally Posted by sirkingwilliam

That's the sad reality everywhere. What city/metro area do you know where the vast majority of a million+ or four million+ go downtown often. None. Why? Becuase there's areas throughtout those places that fullfill whatever needs they have.

You're talking to a former New Yorker so perhaps you already know the answer.

Let me put it this way, I think, based on my experiences, among all major Texas cities, San Antonio has the smallest percentage of it's citizens living and frequently visiting their downtown. I'm just talking cities here so I don't want to hear anything about people in Frisco not going to downtown Dallas and I wont mention people in Boerne not going to downtown San Antonio. It was kind of weird living down there. I met more people downtown from Ohio than I did from San Antonio and that is not a joke.

[ydoc14]

Originally Posted by sirkingwilliam

lol, no no, I know what the medical center is and where it's located, lol, my fault on the wording, I mean I don't understand what he meant by the medical center being downtown to most "real" people.

Ok lol, I started to say.............