Goodwill Gets Office Building Bargain in Downtown San Antonio

Goodwill San Antonio doesn’t just offer great deals; it gets them too.

The nonprofit retailer, which operates stores and donation stations in San Antonio, Cibolo, Kerrville, Laredo, New Braunfels and Seguin, has purchased Rosa Verde Towers, an 11-story medical office building downtown, the San Antonio Business Journal reported.

The 141,000-square-foot building, at 343 West Houston Street, was acquired for under $40 per square foot, a bargain that will enable the organization to allocate funds toward future renovations. The exact price wasn’t disclosed.

The decision to acquire the mostly vacant building stems from Goodwill’s need for more space to accommodate its growing operations throughout the region, which include its numerous job training programs.

Its largest training facility occupies just 7,000 square feet, which is insufficient to support the number of people seeking training for jobs like nursing assistant, pharmacy technician and commercial truck driver.

“We’ve been talking to our board for quite some time about both things: the level of need in the community and then our physical inability to really scale,” Goodwill San Antonio CEO Carlos Contreras said.

Goodwill’s real estate search focused on downtown San Antonio because of its accessibility by public transportation, which is critical for many of its clients.

The building likely will serve as the local headquarters for Goodwill’s administrative staff as well, a move designed to consolidate operations and improve collaboration and efficiency, Contreras said.

A capital campaign may be launched later to fund renovations, which include reconfiguring the medical office layout to better accommodate training spaces. Design firm RVK Architecture will oversee the project.

Goodwill evaluated the option of constructing a new building but decided that repurposing a second-hand building was more aligned with its values, Contreras said.

— Andrew Terrell