Austin Highway Corridor: From Seedy to Swank

San Antonio’s Austin Highway Corridor has long been a run down and seedy stretch of town, but that’s all changing. In the middle of the push is Guillermo Nicolas, who is about to deliver 1111 Austin Highway, a luxury multifamily community. (Maybe he'll add a rooftop garden, so it can still be seedy.)

Guillermo tells us he automatically improved the Austin Highway neighborhood by tearing down two sleazy hotels and an apartment complex. That’s par for the course for Guillermo—he emphasizes recycling land, saying it’s smarter to redevelop underutilized sites rather than spend more tax money adding infrastructure to virgin tracts. He laid out reasons the City named the Austin Highway Corridor a revitalization zone (making developments there eligible for funding)—it’s near Terrell Oaks and is in the highly coveted Alamo Heights School District. It’s close to Downtown, but offers more services for residents (like the Target and HEB just down the street from his property). 

Property manager LYND’s Mitzi Ramirez showed us around 1111 Austin Highway, which will complete interior construction in the next 90 days. It’s a 278-unit community that features three wings, each with a distinct personality. (One has a lounge pool for social butterflies, one has a lap pool for cardio butterflies, and one has relaxed outdoor seating with a giant TV for couch potato butterflies.) Local art will be showcased throughout the property—Guillermo is a major art lover, and leaps at any chance to support San Antonio’s large vibrant art community. Preliminary activity has been great—the team first put up a temporary leasing banner last Friday and nine people toured on Saturday.

Guillermo tells us he’s not done in the corridor after the apartments deliver—he’s got room on this tract for an 8k to 10k SF shopping center. He wants something really special to serve both as art and as a service to his residents and the area. He’s already turned down three big chains who wanted onto the site because they don’t fit his vision, which includes a restaurant on the corner with a patio under the existing oak, and a cool coffee shop and/or brew pub. (There's a man who's been to Brooklyn.) After that, Guillermo will refocus on Downtown; he has a potential large apartment with a hotel component in the early stages of planning.