San Antonio Office Tower To Become Residential

A historic San Antonio office building is set to be redeveloped into housing with mixed-use facilities on the street level, reports Iris Dimmick for the San Antonio Report.

According to Dimmick, “While full details of the building renovation and unit rental prices are pending, according to building owners, the initial plan is to convert the office space into 234 housing units, half of which could be reserved for households who make 80% or less than the area median income (AMI) and 23 of the units for households making 60% AMI.”

At present, San Antonio’s Tower Life building is only 40 percent occupied, and the retail space on the ground floor has been vacant for more than two decades. The plan is a harbinger of the future of urban office buildings, many of which will likely be converted into housing as demand for physical office space falls and the housing shortage grows.

The plan to revitalize the building calls for removing the concrete barrier that blocks access to San Antonio’s River Walk, which at the time of the building’s construction in 1929 was still an untamed river that posed flood risk. Today, the River Walk is downtown San Antonio’s main attraction.