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Posted Dec 15, 2007, 1:56 AM
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Loving SA 365 days a year
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Join Date: Feb 2007
Location: San Antonio
Posts: 3,891
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http://www.mysanantonio.com/business...t.12a966f.html
Quote:
What's so lucky about an abandoned mall, unused big-box retail and strip centers, empty green space and an out-of-date subdivision?
A lot, if that place is in Windcrest and renowned planner Andrés Duany is in charge of re-creating it into an urban neighborhood.
"This is a lucky site," Duany said. "If this project gets built the way it can be, the excitement's not going to stop. This could be a really important square mile in the history of American planning."
Duany is a principal at Miami-based Duany Plater-Zyberk & Co., which has helped design more than 300 communities across the country and the world, including a master plan for City South in San Antonio. Duany and his DPZ colleagues just finished a weeklong charrette, a meeting in which designers and architects create plans with input from civic leaders and residents.
The plans for this project, on 303 acres, include 3,700 residential units and 1 million square feet of retail and office space.
It's a project the city of Windcrest hopes will revive its slowing economy, that a new corporate neighbor — Rackspace Managed Hosting — hopes will cater to its tech population and that developers hope will launch growth on the Northeast Side.
"This has to be thought of as a progression of San Antonio's history," former Mayor Henry Cisneros said at an opening meeting last week. "This kind of prosperity creates a platform that launches us into a greater economic phase."
Rackspace is in the process of renovating Windsor Park Mall into its new headquarters. There eventually will be 4,000 employees working at this site, which was annexed into Windcrest in September.
The development Duany designed will be on two parcels. One is along Interstate 35 and Rackspace's future headquarters at the mall. The other is in between Walzem and Eisenhauer roads.
"The city of Windcrest had to have something happen to Walzem Road," said the city's mayor, Jack Leonhardt. "It had to be something dramatic."
Walzem Road has lost a lot of its retail stores, mostly due to the closure of the mall. And the road hasn't had new growth in years. The city has not seen its property values increase as quickly as it would like either, and officials hope new growth would fix that.
"It will absolutely increase the values of the current property," said Ronnie Cain, Windcrest's city manager. "Property has continued to appreciate at a slower rate than other areas of San Antonio. We feel this project will give property the opportunity to catch up."
Those involved with the property hope it will have a larger effect than on just Windcrest.
"I think this project is going to set the standards for development regionally," said Gary Cain, chairman and chief executive officer of Urban Real Estate Group, the developer for the land.
He said he expects the first signs of development to show around March.
Living units would include not only traditional homes but also townhomes, apartments and condos.
The plan would keep several of the abandoned big boxes along Interstate 35, yet they would be freshened up with new façades. In addition, the side of the buildings that face the highway would look different from the sides facing a more walkable area, which Duany wants to feel like a Main Street. The area around the interstate also would include a hotel.
Duany envisions the stretch along Eisenhauer Road as a place with live-work units, for doctors, architects and real estate agents.
And he wants places that Rackspace employees will want to go to.
"We need to build an Austin-kind of place," Duany said. "We have a kind of college, except they're making $70,000 a year."
Rackspace hopes the development will cater to employees, both for living and for playing.
"We believe wholeheartedly in the Northeast Side of town," said Randy Smith, Rackspace's real estate manager. "San Antonio doesn't have a place for tech people to gather. We see this potential as being a place where the tech community can be together."
Smith did say there should be careful planning for new retail in the area, which he has dubbed "tech town," and that any stores, restaurants and bars need to be unique.
"For tech town as a whole, we need to be smart about retail because 1.2 million square feet recently failed," he said, referring to the mall.
The project will not cater just to Rackspace, though. Windcrest hopes to tap into Fort Sam Houston's job growth, which could include 11,000 more employees because of military realignments.
"I don't think it's limited to Rackspace," Gary Cain said. "I think it appeals to people of every age group because it's a quality of life."
But just because Rackspace will be within walking distance doesn't mean its employees automatically will move there. The housing and entertainment there will compete with many other neighborhoods.
"One of the reasons this has to be great is they can live anywhere on Interstate 35," Duany said. "They're not going to live where it's closer; they're going to live where it's cool."
Don't look for the new Windcrest to be high-class only. Duany believes it's important to have affordable housing, especially for the creative class.
"They need cheap space," he said. "It has to be cool and inexpensive."
Duany also believes in green, sustainable characteristics, such as water recycling and community gardens. One vital environmental requirement is that the neighborhood is walkable.
"It doesn't do much good if you've got green buildings, but you have to drive everywhere," he said. "Today, there is the assumption that people will drive everywhere. This is no longer a wealthy enough country to be building highways to go buy hamburgers."
While there would be a master plan to follow, Duany wants to allow some creativity by builders. This is why he's trying an idea of splitting the land into 10- to 15-acre parcels, each of which could have a different feel.
"We'll code only the most fundamental thing within it," Duany said. "But what you do inside, let's run an experiment."
One experiment Duany dreamed up has been re-creating an area to resemble La Villita. This could help maintain San Antonio's culture and history while building to the new urbanism style. And it would be healthy.
"These guys were environmental because they didn't have a choice," Duany said.
There are current residents that could be affected by a new neighborhood.
Camelot I, a neighborhood with about 1,600 homes, separates the two parcels Duany and his team have been designing.
"If they continue and do what I saw today, and they continue to do what they say they're going to do, I think that it will be positive," resident Kay Polansky said after attending a day of planning meetings during the charrette.
Duany hopes to connect some of the streets in Camelot I with the new development.
One challenge is a row of apartments along Walzem Road. The apartments have become run-down and have been affected by crime. Though not in Duany's immediate property, they are nearby.
"I literally don't know what to do with them," he said.
Riley Davison is a real estate agent who sells commercial property in Windcrest. He envisions the plans breathing life into the Windcrest economy and looks forward to re-creating an urban environment of years ago.
"These designs are throwbacks to things we loved that we lost," Davison said. "This is going to be so normal that it will be radical."
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