Port San Antonio office highrise needs architect

Port San Antonio needs an architect for a centerpiece office building in the ongoing redevelopment of the former military base.

Plans call for a 300,000-square-foot highrise whose tenants could include DeLorean Motor Company, the San Antonio Business Journal reported. Officials with the property at 907 Billy Mitchell Boulevard sent out requests for proposals.

“We want an iconic building that becomes the gateway, the front door for the campus, the signature for what we’re doing,” Port San Antonio President and CEO Jim Perschbach told the outlet.

The office market was hit hard by the pandemic generally, but demand for space within the campus has been strong, he said.

Adding approximately 12 stories of space would be filled easily and prevent the port from turning away interested tenants, he said.
“We’re sitting on a campus where we’re pretty close to a zero-percent vacancy level,” Perschbach told the outlet. “But we’ve got people knocking on our door. We’ve got a waitlist for what’s on the campus already.”

Downtown San Antonio’s net absorption of office space fell to a five-year low in the first quarter of 2022, even though no new space was delivered.

Port officials aren’t the only ones betting on the recovery of the Texas office market. Houston-based Fuller Realty acquired the five-building Network Crossing office complex at 5250 and 5253 Prue Road along with multiple downtown San Antonio office properties in a 2022 buying spree that also included two office buildings in Houston’s Energy Corridor.

— Victoria Pruitt