Cityscrapes is a column of opinion and analysis.
On my way to a concert at the Carver Community Cultural Center last Friday night, a lengthy freight train at the East Commerce Street crossing allowed me to inventory the storefronts and businesses of St. Paul Square and Sunset Station. It wasn’t a pretty picture.
While there was more activity than in years past, “For Lease” signs filled many windows, and they remained largely dark, with the notable exception of a single pizza shop. Far from the hopes for a bustling restaurant and entertainment district, the Square’s sidewalks were empty and the area uninviting.
But that isn’t a new story.
The “redevelopment” of St. Paul Square began in the mid-1970s with the city’s acquisition of many of the buildings of what had once been the grand gateway to the city from the Southern Pacific Railroad station. The area soon attracted the interest of developers, including Dallas Cowboys players Harvey Martin and Drew Pearson.
The developers’ plans included a barbeque restaurant, a nightclub, new offices and boutiques. By 1981 they were joined by the local architectural firm Ford, Powell and Carson, which renovated a former hotel on Commerce Street, and the San Antonio Express ran an editorial headlined “St. Paul Square Becoming Asset.”
The developers did manage to bring some new business to the Square. But the area sputtered along through the 1980s. It was finally with the completion of the adjacent Alamodome and the prospect of hordes of visitors that development finally came to life.
Local developer Marty Wender together with Red McCombs, the Zachry Corp., Tom Frost, caterer Rosemary Kowalski and the Cortez family of Mi Tierra joined in 1993 to propose the development of “several exciting theme restaurants, lively entertainment clubs, specialty retail shops and colorful plaza vendors with a major on-site hotel.” Their plan, modeled on downtown Orlando’s Church Street Station, called for a mix of restaurants and entertainment venues, supplemented by new offices and a 400-room hotel.
For an economic and market assessment of the project, the organization dubbed the Sunset Station Development Group turned to consultant and theme park guru Harrison Price’s firm. Price’s 1994 report endorsed the concept as an “an exciting restaurant and entertainment attraction” likely to “result in consistently high levels of patronage … provided the electricity of Church Street Station is achieved.”
To achieve that “electricity,” Sunset Station would need to attract a large volume of paying customers. Price based his forecast of success significantly on the project’s location adjacent to the Alamodome.
“Sunset Station is located next to the Alamodome, which expects to host 110 events per year,” he wrote in the report. “This extrapolates to about 3 million annual attendance. The Alamodome will generate significant traffic past the front door of Sunset Station, much of it in the winter months for basketball games.”
Yet Price was also realistic about the appeal of Sunset Station to locals, noting the Spurs games at the Dome would only be a draw for 30% of the year. “Moreover, this is primarily a local crowd, many of whom otherwise would seldom visit the downtown area,” added. “The suburban market is inclined to satisfy their restaurant and nightclub needs in their neighborhoods.”
In the end, Price forecast that total attendance at Sunset Station would ultimately come to 1.85 million annually, predicting that tourists would outnumber locals two-to-one. Recognizing the likely dependence on visitor business, Zachry and the developers persuaded the city and VIA to invest in a new streetcar station at South Alamo and Losoya, with an elevator linking the Riverwalk to the street level and ultimately St. Paul Square.
It all sounded so promising.
But the development envisioned in 1994 never really took off after its 1999 grand opening. Even with a city subsidy involved, the promised hotel took years and shrank to a 138 room Staybridge Suites. Then Ruth’s Chris Steak House moved out in 2013 and long time restaurant Aldaco’s left in 2015.
A revival of the Square area was heralded under new owner REATA Realty in 2017, and then came the promise of a new satellite campus of the University of Houston’s hospitality school. But that campus shuttered during the COVID-19 pandemic, and despite some restaurant additions, the area has struggled in the years since.
The long tale of St. Paul Square holds real lessons as we look to the promise of downtown realization from the new Spurs arena and Project Marvel. Just as Price observed 30 years ago, local have lots of options and preferences when it comes to entertainment. They need not stay downtown.
And a reliance on visitors — long San Antonio’s answer for every downtown ill — is a highly uncertain market to bank on.
Finally, and most important, the grand vision of planners and developers will inevitability face a truly tough market reality. If we don’t have a real understanding of that reality, together with alternative plans and options, we all are very likely to come up short with little to show for a massive public investment.
Heywood Sanders is a professor emeritus of public administration at the University of Texas at San Antonio.
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