Growth & Development Posts

As local organizers prepared for the inaugural Texas Scrabble Classic in San Antonio in April last year, thousands of fans poured into the city in a fever of anticipation. They were coming, of course, not to play the board game but to support the Fl…

San Antonio is sometimes blessed, sometimes cursed, by the latest national survey ranking U.S. cities and their people, economies, and quality of life. After 37 years here, I tell people that I live in a great city to raise a family. It’s also a ver…

If you missed Tuesday’s announcement by ​Texas Public Radio​ and the ​San Antonio Report​, the two are joining forces on July 1, a significant change in the local media landscape and what could be a harbinger of the future for nonprofit news organiz…

There’s a new medium in town, and it’s calling itself ​The Civic​. Its first newsletter was released Tuesday by Philip Reichert, the Substack site’s editor and executive director. Reichert, who attended West Point and served in an intelligence role …

For the second time this month, the ​bigcitysmalltown​ podcast and this newsletter are putting a spotlight on two multi-billion-dollar, publicly funded infrastructure plans that would inflict irreversible environmental damage and a loss in land valu…

San Antonio’s two major municipal utilities, CPS Energy and SAWS, have both briefed city Council on the need for future rate hikes. CPS Energy’s board recently approved a budget with a $50 million deficit, a signal that trustees believe a rate hike…

If President Trump really wanted to help Texas, the massive sum of $46.5 billion allocated for border wall construction in Big Bend in the absurdly named Big, Beautiful Bill of 2025 could be spent on many other transformative initiatives. Instead, …

Who says office towers struggle to find new tenants? Last week, a few hundred downtown advocates gathered on the garden patio of the One Riverwalk Place office tower for what may be the most important real estate occupancy since the pandemic. “It’…

One thing about inflation: money isn’t what it used to be, right? If you need proof, try checking into the $185 million, 200-room Monarch Hotel at Hemisfair, San Antonio's newest upscale downtown hotel destination. News reports peg starting room rat…

As a District 1 resident, I am fatigued, as are many of my neighbors and fellow downtown workers, by the daily challenge of navigating urban street improvement projects that take years to complete. Completion of one project seems to signal the start…

It’s a new year, and that means yet another developer has announced plans to bring the long-dormant Lone Star Brewery Complex back to life. The 33-acre blighted site was once home to a brewery that, like the Pearl, was synonymous with San Antonio. …

There is a reason I joined with former San Antonio Mayor and U.S. Secretary of Housing & Urban Development Henry Cisneros and former San Antonio Express-News business columnist David Hendricks to report and write The Austin-San Antonio Megaregion: O…

Texas has long been an anti-science state, one where state elected leaders cling to the 19th-century past and keep their heads planted in the soil rather than accept responsibility for governing smartly in the 21st century. There is no better examp…

Mayor Gina Jones may have found an issue that will deliver a significant, much-needed win with her colleagues on City Council. The mayor wants to move city elections in odd-numbered years from May to November in an attempt to overcome dismal voter t…

I am spending more and more time each week delving into the world of AI-powered search tools, and I know I am not alone. How about you?  These tools — new ones are seemingly launching faster than I can test-drive the existing ones — are changing my…

317 W. Jones Avenue was a fitting address for supporters of Bexar County’s Propositions A & B on the Nov. 4 ballot to gather and await vote returns Tuesday night. A former dilapidated warehouse is now the city’s new icehouse, simply named River Nort…

It’s a noble gesture on the part of Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones and many of San Antonio’s major employers and charitable foundations to mount a $1.6 million emergency campaign to provide $150 H-E-B gift cards to an estimated 11,000 economically challenge…

Week one of early voting in the Nov. 4 Bexar County election concluded with only 62,937 registered voters turning out to the polls. Another 2,600 mail-in ballots were received, and by the looks of it, even more mail-in ballots were returned to count…

If you’ve lived in San Antonio as long as my family, you probably recall the UTSA poll showing tepid support among voters for using the county’s “tourist taxes” to help fund a new arena for the San Antonio Spurs. I’m not talking about the latest UT…

San Antonio and Bexar County voters: This is no time to stop. Don’t do all the hard work to run a marathon and drop out halfway after hearing how hard it will be to finish. Let’s push through to the finish line and celebration. I am talking, of cou…

It was big news in 2002 when Trinity University announced the rebirth of Trinity University Press and the hiring of its new champion, the poet and publisher Barbara Ras. Backed by a $2.1 million grant from the Ewing-Halsell Foundation and an additio…

I had the honor Friday of serving as emcee at the Dee Howard Foundation’s 2025 San Antonio Aviation and Aerospace Hall of Fame luncheon at Port San Antonio’s Boeing Center at Tech Port. The annual gathering celebrates the city’s historic role in the…

With municipal elections completed, San Antonio’s most anticipated and biggest investment in downtown in history takes center stage. It’s time now to give the public a more focused picture of the ambitious plan’s individual projects, their cost and …

There is nothing traditional about this political season in San Antonio. Early voting concludes Tuesday before the Saturday, June 7, runoff election. For the first time in my lifetime, two candidates who did not emerge from City Council service are …