Amegy Bank Increases San Antonio Footprint in Office Lease

Amegy Bank is expanding its San Antonio footprint in a downtown move that will help chip away at the pile of empty office space in the city’s core.

The Houston-based bank has leased 40,000 square feet in the 28-story building at 300 Convent Street, the San Antonio Business Journal reported. Amegy, a division of Zions Bancorporation, will relocate next year from 10001 Reunion Place on the city’s North Side, where it occupies 26,000 square feet.

Amegy’s new space will feature 100 offices and workstations across the 21st and 22nd floors, along with a banking center on the building’s ground floor.

The 534,000-square-foot building, constructed in 1983, has been owned by Affinius Capital, formerly USAA Real Estate, since 2017. The previous owner, Houston-based Griffin Partners, completed a renovation of the site before selling it.

USAA ditched its office space at 300 Convent in 2022, creating a massive hole and raising questions as to whether the company would sell the building. The property is roughly 86 percent vacant, with just over 460,000 square feet of available space.

The Alamo City’s office market is faring better than most U.S. cities on the path to recovery from the pandemic, which ignited the remote-work era and wreaked havoc on the asset class for years to come. San Antonio’s office vacancy rate stands at 11 percent, down from the national average of 14 percent, according to real estate data firm CoStar. That’s also lower than in Dallas, Houston and Austin, where vacancies were at 26 percent, 21 percent and 19 percent, respectively, in the first quarter.

CoStar projects that San Antonio will lead the nation in office rent growth over the next four years, with rates expected to increase by 1.5 percent annually.

Downtown San Antonio is still struggling, though, with vacancies hovering near 20 percent in the CBD, according to Partners Real Estate.

—Quinn Donoghue