On the record is brought to you by Steve and Adele Dufilho San Antonio is a fast growing, fast moving city with something new happening every day.

That's why each week we go on the record with Randy Beamer and the newsmakers who are driving this change.

Then we gather at the Reporters Roundtable to talk about the latest news stories with the journalist behind those stories.

Joining us now as we go on the Record with Randy Beamer.

Hi, everybody, and thank you for joining us for this edition of On the Record.

I'm Randy Beamer.

And this week, we are starting with a different way that San Antonio could be going green literally in your backyard or right behind your backyard any way in an alley.

And joining us to tell us all about it is District five council member Terry Castillo.

Thank you very much for coming in.

Now, you filed what's called a council consideration request, CCR, to talk about a green alleyway program, pilot program.

What?

What is that?

Yes.

So our office filed a council consideration request to initiate the conversation about a green alleyway.

Pilot program.

And what that means is that the city of San Antonio has a wealth of service and non service alleyways, which oftentimes serve as areas of illegal dumping, overgrown vegetation and areas that need repaving.

And sometimes they cause drainage issues into the backyards of folks who live next to the alleyway.

So with this proposed pilot program we're modeling off of the Chicago Green Alleyway pilot program, which allows flexibility to the needs of the neighborhoods and the communities.

Right.

So what we mean by that is, for example, if your green alleyway is overgrown with vegetation and you feel that it's unsafe, there's opportunity for us to repave if it's necessary with impervious cover to ensure that water is able to seep and not necessarily sitting there stagnate, causing erosion issues.

So that's one piece.

And there's also opportunity to activate that alleyway if the neighbors want that.

Now, you mentioned service alleys and non-service alleys.

What are those?

What's the difference?

Yes.

So a non service alley is an alleyway that does not have utilities.

You don't put your trash bins back there, but it serves as a way for fire to get through, if necessary, a service alleys where there are utilities and you put your trash bins.

So there's services that go through there.

And the city of San Antonio, with the proposed budget, we are now going to include service maintenance, rather, for non service alleys, which is going to be helpful because when we look at the needs for the non service alleyways, there's not necessarily funding in place with the passed budgets to help repave and address and maintain those non serve.

We talked about paving with permeable pavement.

What what is that we think of you know asphalt when you're paving something non permeable.

What is it that you're looking at.

Yeah.

What's really exciting is that the city of San Antonio currently has a cool pavement pilot program for streets, so there's opportunities for us to apply that in the non service alleyways and with this pilot project.

But it could look like a number of things it could look like including vital swells to collect rainwater runoff.

It looks like bricks with vegetation in between so the water can sweep through rather than running into backyards.

So there's a large number of models an opportunity for us to explore, to help ensure that when we're creating safe alleys, that we're activating while also ensuring that they're sustainable.

How many will you have to go through and just get rid of things that are overgrown and and trees that mean you can't even get there and the fire department can't get back into those alleys?

Yeah, absolutely.

There are alleyways, non service alleyways in the city of San Antonio that are overgrown with vegetation.

And we get a lot of those calls with our constituent services team about, hey, who's going to maintain this?

If there's trash, sometimes the abutting property owner will get the notice that they're responsible for maintaining it.

They will.

They're responsible for maintaining that way.

Depending on the type of alley the abutting property owner can hold responsibility for that alleyway.

So that's why there's a huge appetite from community for us to do something about non service alleyways to to provide a helping hand to, to ensure that there is, there's maintenance, there's activation.

We're helping addressing the illegal dumping and again, creating that safe walkability as well within the alleyway.

So if I don't have an alley, I don't know how many neighborhoods in San Antonio have alleyways or the older neighborhoods.

Where are these alleys that we're talking about?

Mainly, yes, they're all throughout the city of San Antonio.

I believe District ten has a large amount.

District five, District seven.

They're all throughout the city.

And there's a huge desire for us to to start tackling these non services and to talk about activation.

That means different things to different people and different projects.

What do you what do you mean by that For an alley?

Yes.

So the the recommendation is not too prescriptive, right?

Because we want to ensure that we're not going in doing something in someone's backyard without their input.

Right.

So if there's opportunity that folks want to see hopscotch on the alleyway, if they want to see maybe specific types of vegetation along the alleyway, that we're allowed to collect that input and put what the neighbors want to see there too.

We've into the pilot program.

So how will you get that input having conversations with folks at the doors, literally knocking on doors and things like that, not just input online because people may not know that you're looking for this kind of input in their neighborhood for a pilot program.

Yes, absolutely.

Our office ensures that we're always at the doors within community, whether it's rezoning, noticing them of a of an event that we're having.

We're always knocking on doors, letting them know that there's something coming to their neighborhood or we'd like to gauge their input about something we're exploring.

Now, you mentioned this is similar to a program in Chicago.

What prompted you to do this?

Yes.

So our office received so many phone calls about their Non-Service Alley ways and the need for maintenance, and they've identified a number of concerns.

And with that, we've explored helping address those issues within the current budget, but also realizing that we're running into a wall that there's only so much opportunity and funding to tackle so many alleyways.

And it's definitely something that our office receives a high number of calls and with that we were exploring alternatives on how can we tackle this issue that our constituency is having.

And we know that the city of San Antonio is receiving funding or what we're now calling race funding, and it's an opportunity to tackle infrastructure in a sustainable manner.

And that's an opportunity to to to fund these much needed improvements in our neighbors.

Some people are going to ask, where's the money going to come from?

And hey, I need sidewalks and maybe some drainage is in my neighborhood is going to come from that because I'd rather they work on that than alleys.

Yes.

So, no, it's not going to come from streets or sidewalks or drainage funding.

This is Reese funding, that is.

I'm sorry, what fund reached funding which is intended for sustainability.

So, Reese Meaning what is resiliency?

The acronym Silver, in my mind is city Money or a federal grant.

It's city funding sources specifically for sustainability.

And then with the proposed 2024 budget, I'm really pleased to see that there's inclusion for funding for non service alleyways at a rate that we hadn't seen before.

So a specific funding allocation for non service alleyways is with what's being proposed in the budget.

So you don't have to worry about it being taken from your sidewalk or drainage and these council to consideration requests usually take some time.

What kind of response have people cite?

Other council members signed on to this and when do you think it will be taken up?

Yes, so we've already filed it.

We've gotten the support of our colleagues to get the signatures to file it.

We're hoping that now council committees have been settled.

We've all been assigned.

We've just had our first meeting.

We're hoping within the next governance agenda that it's on there and we can get things moving.

Yesterday we had a budget town hall and folks were asking about it.

How do I get on with this?

How do I find out if I'm on the list to have my alley tackled through this program?

So there's definitely excitement and eagerness from community to get this moving.

What are you telling those people?

That word initiating the conversation will be a while and we hope to see you at public comment when we're discussing the policy at the committee level.

Now, we talked to some other councilmembers, including Mark White, about these CCR City Council request to get it on the agenda, to get it before the whole council, that it's taking too long for many council members.

What's the process look like now in terms of changing that?

Is that going to be changed, sped up?

Yes.

So I have had an opportunity to have a conversation with the councilman and he's looking to help facilitate the process in which those cars get to the governance committee.

Right now, it's up to the discretion.

My understanding of the mayor agenda is those and he wants to explore alongside with the mayor to have a timeline of when those get agenda.

So that way there's a clear structure of when we know it's going to be on the governance committee and then delegated to how big is a pilot program going to be just in terms of numbers of people, These there are a number of neighborhoods.

I hope it's large, but again, we want to not be too prescriptive and allow the committee to make those to shape those parameters.

All right.

Well, thank you very much, Terry Castillo, City Council District five.

I hear a lot to work on, including the budget.

Come back.

We'll talk more about the budget as it as it develops.

Thanks for coming.

Thank you.

On September 1st, many new laws go into effect here in Texas, and one of them will affect growth across the state, especially just outside city limits.

And that is because of what's called the extraterritorial jurisdiction and fewer restrictions on that.

Now, to tell us all about it and what it means for Texans San Antonio in this area, analyst Annalisa Peace, who is the executive director of the Greater Edwards Aquifer Alliance.

Thank you very much for coming in.

Oh, thank you.

Now, this is Senate Bill 2038 that passed in the last session of the legislature.

What does it mean in practical terms and why are you so concerned about it?

Well, what it means is that any property owner in the way the bill is written, a majority property owner can petition the state to be released from the extraterritorial jurisdiction of a municipality.

So that means that none of those laws that the municipality of the cities have put in to make sure that development is consistent with the development that's already inside city limits will be able to be applied.

And this is kind of an extension of what the legislature has done over the past number of sessions about limiting how much cities can annex.

And San Antonio has grown tremendously over the past 30, 40 years because of annexation and grown in terms of population and land size, I guess you say.

But what are some of those things that the JAS allowed cities to do that they will no longer maybe be able to do depending on the landowner?

Well, for example, a tree ordinance and twice in the legislature, they tried to do bills that said you couldn't enforce city's tree ordinance in the H.J., which had always been legal.

Those bills failed, so they came at it a different way.

So it's things like tree ordinances with cities in the area talk for region, it's or water quality protections.

It's all all sorts of different powers which are limited but that the cities aren't given to enforce.

And you're concerned about this because of possible degradation of the Edwards Aquifer, because there's fewer limits on development.

Well, we are, but there's also I believe that this will also impact the cities ability to charge new developments for infrastructure like roads, sidewalks and all that.

So you to be putting more of a burden on the taxpayers.

And now you mentioned there's a development up in Austin, high density development that's over Edwards Aquifer.

I don't know if it's a recharge on one of the zones, but also could affect Barton Springs.

Tell us about that.

Yeah, that's a it's in between and it's kind of where the development it proposed would be in between the city of Hayes in Hayes County and the city of Boston.

So it's in the 80 G's of both of those.

Now, City Boston has really strict water quality ordinances to protect Barton Springs.

This bill would allow if the property owner, which I think is a single owner of the developer, to petition the state and say be released from all those regulations, which is really serious.

And this is backed by developers who wanted fewer regulations that they would have to go through hoops, arguing that they would have to go through these hoops with different municipalities like Austin, like Hayes County, like can do brothels, that kind of thing.

Yeah, Their main argument was they'd like to see consistency and regulations and that was what was behind a lot of the legislation that took away powers from from cities this last session.

But there's not a lot of things regulations that the state requires of developers and out in the county will say.

That's absolutely correct.

They they are very much limited county governments, especially from any kind of land use authority.

So, for example, counties can't do zoning.

They can't even prohibit an incompatible land use like an industrial operation right next to a neighborhood.

Well, now that also affects within cities as well.

Like up in Denton, they were allowing fracking in the city limits, even though Denton had tried to limit that.

The state says no, they can't limit that.

What are you worried about specifically up in the Hill country and over the aquifer that could be allowed by this?

Well, we're seeing development patterns that are totally unsustainable.

A lot of these developments plan to draw water from the Trinity fire, which is going into water deficit.

And that's a really serious concern.

And you you will have it actually drives up the land prices because if you're just saying anything goes, developers are bidding higher because they can put six or eight houses per acre in these areas, like I'm at Woodstock for recharging contributing zone.

That's of great concern because those population densities actually threaten our water supply.

And we think here in San Antonio there's the Edwards Aquifer Authority and limits overall on pumping and restrictions even outside of the, you know, in the counties and things like that.

Is that not the case in some areas of the state that there are no groundwater districts?

So this.

Oh, no.

That photographer authorities actually kind of a groundwater district on steroids.

And because of the words, the concerns were so great at the legislature, gave them a lot more power, including the power to enforce impervious cover limits, which we would like to see them do, but say in the Trinity Aquifer area, that's not the case.

No, H There's about 100 groundwater districts and each one has different enabling legislation that the legislature gave them different powers.

And so most of them have very little power authority and now developers still have to petition are groups like the greater Edwards Aquifer Alliance going to be fighting some of those petitions?

Are you keeping up with that or how does that work?

Well, people who are concerned that the way the way the bill is written, the municipality has to inform people, you know, when this petition comes in.

But the way the bill is written, if if it's the the majority of landowners in the area to be D annexed sign the petition, it's it's pretty much automatic.

And if the city does not comply and annex the area within 45 days, the state will do it.

And how fast do you think some of these petitions are going to happen?

And I expect they're going to be rolling in pretty quickly.

And some of them have been on the books for a while, are on the drawing board, I should say, for a while.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And how are we doing?

And we don't have much time, but over all in terms of protecting the aquifer right now.

Well, I mean, we're we're still we've got a lot of challenges.

I mean, our organization is constantly fighting like wastewater permits that we feel would not be protective of the aquifer and different projects.

And so we really need better state regulations.

All right.

Well, thank you very much.

Come back when we know a little bit more about how this is affecting the aquifer and leaks a piece.

Executive director of the Greater Edwards Oxygen Alliance.

Thanks for coming in.

Thank you.

On Reporters roundtable this week, we are talking some developments within the real estate world in San Antonio.

And the woman who knows every thing about that is Madison Esler, who is a business reporter for the San Antonio Express-News.

Thank you very much for coming in.

First of all, we had, I guess it was kind of a flipping of the veto building downtown.

I guess it was called something else for a while.

But what's happened there are Gray Street partners and bought it from CPS and they're now trying to sell it.

And what's happening there and why?

Yes.

So CPS put that building on the market back in 2019.

It was part of seven properties that CPS put up for sale to help pay for their new headquarters on McCullough.

Gray's Street Partners bought it about six months ago and said they planned to restore it and upgrade it.

It's a very distinctive building in a great location.

It's at La Vita, it's circular.

It kind of looks like a UFO a little bit.

It has a flower on the top.

And niacin has been held there for years.

So very prominent real estate for Grace Street.

When I last talked to them a few weeks ago, they said they were still trying to figure out what to do with it.

Different options.

One of those mentioned was a food hall.

Food and beverage businesses do very well on the Riverwalk.

And Kevin Covey, who's the leader at Gray Street, said he thought the building might be suitable for that.

But then just last week, Gray Street put it back on the market.

It's not clear what price they're looking to sell it at.

They bought it for 5.3 million and it's not really clear why they're selling it.

I reached out to them and didn't hear, but they have done this with some other properties where they have they've bought some prominent real estate, laid out plans for it and then put it back on the market.

And their plans were different than CPS, I guess had used it for not just Diosa or it's been used for now also, but venues for events and things like that.

They're just not in enough business for that.

And also CPS owned that other building that was right next to it, their headquarters.

They really didn't.

They moved, so they didn't need that.

And they sold that, I believe.

Yes.

Yeah.

CPS said that this building and the headquarters building and a couple others, they had a service center on the north side were all surplus properties.

So properties that they weren't using a lot that needed some upgrades, maybe needed some repairs to be done.

So that was part of the the seven properties that they they put on the market.

And Grace Street is also in the past, like you mentioned or alluded to, the other things that they have sold I guess include the Lone Star property on the South side.

They had big plans for that and that changed as other developers have had in the past.

Yes, Grace Street had very ambitious plans for Lone Star.

They bought it and said they wanted to turn it into a big mixed use development.

It's an enormous property.

It's about 36 acres right on the river, and it has kind of a storied history of failed attempts to redo it.

So Grace Street came and teamed up with Midway, which is a Houston developer, to redo it, laid out these grand plans and then a couple of years later, put it back up for sale.

And it's still up for sale now.

And there was something with Midway where they kind of broke apart from Grace Street Partners that they had.

I don't know if it was financing or whatever.

That was the thing.

Yeah.

Grace Street also teamed up with them on another large mixed use project near Pearl.

And that was another case where a few years later, Grace Street put that property on the market.

They did actually sell most of that to a fulcrum development, which is a local developer, but in both cases they had planned to team up with Midway and then the plan seemingly fizzled.

But Grace Street is still developing other properties in the downtown area.

It's not like it's getting out of the business.

And what are some of those?

Yes, Grace Street most recently has developed the Light, which is a historic building on Broadway, where the Express-News and other tenants are based, and that's 100% leased as of right now.

It's a new building.

It's a historic renovation, very much gutted it put a new wall on the South.

And how was it, by the way?

It's beautiful.

Lots of natural light, big windows, very pretty.

And some of the other properties that they're working on right now, I guess, near UTSA downtown.

Yes, they own a couple of clusters of buildings near UTSA, near the courthouse, near City Hall, rather small buildings.

But they've said that they're planning to redo those for retail tenants and some co-working office space for law firms.

And in general, after the pandemic or during the pandemic and after now.

How is commercial space and development around San Antonio?

It's a difficult time right now in terms of the finances.

Interest rates are going up.

Lending standards are a little bit tighter than they were.

There's been some fears of a recession.

And so figuring out financing, figuring out how to make the numbers work right now is just difficult, more difficult for commercial developers.

And they're also contending with higher construction costs.

And now that was one of the stories you had also recently talked about the data centers out on the West Side and what's going on with those.

That's one area of real estate that's doing really well.

There's a lot of demand, in part because of the growth of AI and cloud based technologies.

And the West Side has kind of become a hub, the far west side.

And that's in part because there's power and fiber infrastructure.

KPIX has a number of substations over there.

The land is fairly flat, so it's easier to build on.

There's and there's a NSA and some other things that have come in and really is that like a hub for the tech industry in San Antonio or some of those data centers?

It's become more of a hub for the data centers, but those are not super tech Heavy in terms of jobs are actually a pretty low number of jobs.

They're basically just big buildings that house servers and routers and other equipment.

So not the tech jobs like you would see with engineers or other higher level.

And now that leads into the housing market, because the housing market out there was one of the hottest areas in San Antonio, New Braunfels, the whole region for a while.

Is that still the case?

Yes, that's still the case, yeah.

The far west Side has by far outpaced other areas in terms of whole homebuilding for a while.

There are a ton of homes being built there and of course, retail follows rooftops.

So a lot of new stores, a lot of new restaurants.

That's still a hot spot for growth in the San Antonio area.

And what about prices?

Prices we've seen fall a bit recently and San Antonio wide, not specific to the far west side.

That's also happened as sales have been going down with interest rates just being higher and prices still being higher than pre-pandemic.

It's just a tough market right now for buyers to find something affordable.

What kind of homes, especially in that area, if you say there's not a real tech heavy presence there, is it maybe smaller homes, less expensive homes?

Yes, a lot of the homes out there are new homes, which actually has been a portion of the market that's been doing well compared to existing homes.

New homes have have seen an increase actually in sales while existing homes have fallen, in part because they are more affordable.

And builders can offer different incentives to make it easier for buyers.

And if people haven't been out there, you know, everybody lives in their bubble and they don't drive too much out of their region.

But that is just booming, growing traffic as well.

Yes, there's been a ton of growth out there.

It's just a booming area around Sea World, all the way out past 1604.

There's a lot being built there.

It's still a lot of land.

Still a lot of land, Yes.

Although the amount of land is is shrinking.

And so there's some some thought that maybe some of the data center work might migrate over to the east side where there's more available land and less building has been done.

All right.

Well, what are you working on next?

Anything coming up?

I know you keep track of everything, especially housing prices up and down and the future.

Yes.

More to come about housing prices, how homebuilding is doing in this environment, More about commercial real estate projects, that hemisphere.

There's a lot to cover in San Antonio.

That's right.

Especially hemisphere.

We'll come back when we have more about that.

We have more time.

Thank you very much, Madison Esler, who knows everything about business and reports about it for the San Antonio Express News.

Thanks for coming in.

And thank you for joining us for this edition of On the Record.

You can see this show again and other shows.

Just go to Clarin dot org.

You can also download the podcast there.

I'm Randy Beamer and we'll see you again next time on the record is brought to you by Steve and Adele Dufilho