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Posted Mar 8, 2021, 8:13 PM
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Registered User
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Join Date: Jan 2021
Posts: 45
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Two things.
1) Look at this absolutely metal rendering I found. Never going to happen, but I can wish...
2) Construction is set to begin!
https://www.expressnews.com/real-est...s-15940958.php
Quote:
Work on a nine-acre public park at Hemisfair is expected to begin this fall, but officials are reassessing elements of a planned mixed-use development nearby, in part because of challenges brought on by the coronavirus pandemic.
Leaders of the Hemisfair Park Area Redevelopment Corp., a nonprofit responsible for revitalizing the site of the 1968 World’s Fair, and city officials envision Civic Park as a gathering place for events and outdoor activities.
The park to be built next to the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center will include a sprawling lawn, a promenade and water features.
Families using the jungle gyms and splash pad at Yanaguana Garden, which opened in 2015 as the first iteration of Hemisfair’s redevelopment, or visiting on-site businesses will be able to access the park by crossing East Nueva Street. Visitors to the River Walk and La Villita Historic Village can wander over to relax.
Civic Park will be built in phases. The outdoor amenities that are part of the first $27 million phase are financed by $21 million from the city’s 2017 bond package and the rest from philanthropic gifts and lease revenue, said HPARC chief executive Andres Andujar.
HPARC is working to secure funding for the second phase, which will include the park’s entrance and is estimated to cost $20 million.
The organization will start accepting bids Monday for construction of the first phase, which is expected to start this fall. The park is slated to open in 2023.
“We’re super excited that we’re at this stage,” Andujar said. “This is a big deal to us and for our community. This is the place that we’ve been promising that will hold 10,000, 15,000 people for large events after the pandemic.”
A third park at Hemisfair, Tower Park, is also in the works. But it’s unclear when work on the mixed-use project planned around Civic Park will start.
City Council gave the green light in 2017 to lease about five acres there to Zachry Hospitality, a Zachry Corp. company, for up to 97 years. Under the public-private partnership agreement, the company, which bested 10 other bidders for the deal, would pay HPARC about $1.5 million a year and a slice of retail revenue.
The Zachry family has deep ties to Hemisfair. H.B. “Pat” Zachry helped bring HemisFair ’68 to San Antonio and built the Hilton Palacio del Rio for attendees. David Zachry sat on HPARC’s board from when the nonprofit was set up in 2009 until 2011, and later pushed state legislators to reduce restrictions on hotel development at the site.
Zachry Corp. laid out its designs for the Hemisfair project in 2018: a $200 million development with a 14-story hotel, an eight-story office tower, a food market, an underground parking garage and an apartment complex built by national developer NRP Group. The company planned to complete it early this year.
But the expense and difficulty of building underground parking — and the pandemic’s roiling of the hospitality, retail and office sectors and financing for such developments — is prompting Zachry, HPARC and the city to re-assess those plans.
“We have an agreement with Zachry, and we’re going to do everything to continue to work through all the difficulties that have been brought to the redevelopment by the pandemic and financial markets,” Andujar said. “Our goal right now is to re-frame the deal as needed to execute what we had originally intended.”
The uses will remain the same but the size and square footage devoted to different components could change because of how the pandemic is affecting demand, executives and city officials said at a briefing to council members Wednesday.
Prior to the pandemic, the NCAA Men’s Final Four tournament in 2018 also delayed planning, Omar Gonzalez, HPARC’s director of real estate, told council members.
Zachry is still in discussions with the city and Hemisfair executives, said Tara Snowden, the company’s vice president of public and government affairs.
NRP Group has not been involved in the development for some time.
The cost of building the structure originally proposed “could not be supported solely on the rents that could be realized,” said Debra Guerrero, the company’s senior vice president of strategic partnerships and government relations.
NRP came up with an alternative with different materials and size, but it didn’t align with what officials wanted at Hemisfair and so the company stepped aside, she added.
Local developer David Adelman built the first apartments at Hemisfair in 2019, a complex dubbed The ’68, and said he’s interested in potentially building more there.
“We are happy with our investment there and looking forward to potentially doing another project,” he said. “I’m super excited about (Civic Park) moving forward and glad that HPARC and the city of San Antonio have the fortitude, through challenging times, to keep moving forward. I think they see the long run, the big picture, the future, which is going to be bright.”
At Wednesday’s briefing, council members said they were enthusiastic about the construction of Civic Park and Hemisfair’s redevelopment moving forward.
“This project is transformational and will add a gem in the heart of the center city,” said District 1 Councilman Roberto Treviño.
Some also expressed concerns about when the mixed-use development will be built and the costs.
“It’s taken a long time and we don’t have much to show for it,” said District 9 Councilman John Courage. “Yanaguana Garden is great and the apartment complex we built over there, that’s great. But the biggest part of this project was the economic generation that was supposed to come out of all the development around Civic Park, and there’s nothing there.”
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