San Antonio | Deep In The Heart.

[Dubya61]

in Dignowity Hills

no diggity ... no doubt

[josh]

Oracle bringing 200 high paying jobs to San Antonio

Oracle, the computer technology company headed by tech heavyweight Larry Ellison is setting up an operations center in San Antonio and will add 200 new tech jobs to the city's growing high tech work force, 1200 WOAI news reports.

The Redwood City, California based firm says it plans to use the operations center to provide technical support to clients in North America and Latin America, as well as provide financial services.

I'm hearing average salary will be in the $75k a year range.

[josh]

no diggity ... no doubt

Ha! lol

I also just realized that I wrote it as Dignowity Hills when it's actually Dignowity Hill. My mistake.

[josh]

Found this gallery on another website and I thought it was pretty cool. It compares the San Antonio freeway system to other metro areas, including Oklahoma City.

For those wondering, the San Antonio system has a sort of a "spoke" design. There's two loops, the inner loop (410) and an outer loop (1604). Then there are interstate highways (10,35, 37) and State Highways (281, 90, 151) that intersect with the loops.

San Antonio


Atlanta


Charlotte


Dallas


Denver


New Orleans


Honolulu


Houston


Indianapolis


Las Vegas


Los Angeles


Milwaukee


Nashville


Oklahoma City


Orlando


Phoenix


Sacramento

[Plutonic Panda]

That's really neat! It's almost time for OKC to complete the somewhat done loop around our city. I'm actually in the process of making a map of what I think OKC should do.

[ljbab728]

It seems like a fairly pointless comparison for most of the cities. They aren't all developed the same way and comparing it to Honolulu is really ridiculous.

[josh]

It seems like a fairly pointless comparison for most of the cities. They aren't all developed the same way and comparing it to Honolulu is really ridiculous.

I think it was just to.show the vast size.of the freeway system not to compare freeway system to freeway system.

[ljbab728]

I think it was just to.show the vast size.of the freeway system not to compare freeway system to freeway system.

There's nothing wrong with it but many cities have vast freeway systems so it's not particularly remarkable.

[josh]

And it was comparing the SA freeway system with both large and small highway systems. I think you're making a deal out of nothing. For instance, the SA system looks giant compared to Las Vegas and Nashville but is outsized by LA and Dallas. It's a neat series of images.

[Plutonic Panda]

There's nothing wrong with it but many cities have vast freeway systems so it's not particularly remarkable.

I thought it was neat. Never really realized how big OKC's was for its size

[josh]

Plans are to frame new downtown civic park with buildings

Hemisfair Park in downtown San Antonio is currently undergoing a major redevelopment. Millions are being spent to transform the park by increasing the amount of park land as well as creating a mixed-use neighborhood within it.

This includes:

1. Three new parks within the overall Hemisfair development area.
   • Civic Park
   • Tower Park
   • Play Xscape
2. There will also be small neighborhood green spaces.
   
3. A 325 million dollar expansion of the convention center to the east.
   
4. Restoring the old street grid within Hemisfair to allow for the new mixed-use neighborhood.

[JoninATX]

The San Antonio loop fits very well with in Oklahoma City, Denver, & Sacramento. Seems like you can just place it right in.

[josh]

Developer wants to bring 300-700 units to St. Paul Square in potentially two residential developments

The redevelopment cat left the bag when University of Houston regents last week approved spending $2.5 million to rent a building at St. Paul Square for a branch of its Conrad N. Hilton College of Hotel and Restaurant Management. Starting Aug. 25, the college will begin offering classes at St. Philip’s College, until the three-story building at 122 Heiman St. is ready, which could be as soon as January, said Graham Bowcher, the college’s assistant dean.

Plans for the school hinted that there is much more in store for the historic St. Paul Square, much of it Zachry Realty LLC either owns outright or leases from the city of San Antonio.

“The current thinking includes urban living, educational components and dining and retail opportunities that will transform the area into San Antonio’s next great mixed-use neighborhood,” said Rene M. Garcia, vice president of Zachry Realty.

The company is partnering with REATA Real Estate to revitalize St. Paul Square, which sustained a heavy blow when anchor tenant Ruth’s Chris Steak House moved in July 2013. Many of the historic buildings remain vacant. Once a hotbed for concerts, the pavilion at Sunset Station, which Zachry is leasing to the RK Group, just sits. In short, St. Paul Square has been a ghost town recently.

Zachry Realty and REATA hope to capitalize on the cache that the University of Houston will bring to the historic district.

The strategy is to start with signing office tenants, which could come within year’s end. From there, they’ll look to fill street-level spaces with retail and restaurants.

Down the road, they’re looking to add 300-700 residential units — possibly two separate developments — to the area; construction could start next year, they said.

St. Paul Square is east of Hemisfair and just north of the Alamodome.

[josh]

Rezoning makes way for 75 million dollar, 600-unit mixed-use development just south of downtown, along the Mission Reach, in the Riverside neighborhood.

The San Antonio City Council voted 6-4 Thursday night to approve the rezoning of an area home to the Mission Trails Mobile Home Park.

Council approval paves the way for a $75 million retail and residential development to be constructed in the 1500 block of Mission Road, forcing residents who live in the mobile home park to vacate the property.

[josh]

Google sends out email proclaiming San Antonio is "one step closer to Google Fiber".

[josh]

Tech company, VYSK, relocates headquarters to San Antonio.
Plans to add 50-75 high paying jobs (65k/yr) and 350 manufacturing jobs

The 18-month-old cell phone security firm VYSK announced Thursday its plans to hire 50-75 more San Antonians in the coming months in addition to the more than 25 employees already hired by VYSK.

Most jobs created by VYSK will be high-paying engineering, technology, and project management positions paying upwards of $65,000 a year, said VYSK Co-founder and CEO Victor Cocchia. By early 2016, the cellphone security startup plans on bringing 350 high-tech manufacturing jobs to San Antonio.

To double-down on their investment in San Antonio, VYSK is moving its manufacturing facilities from San Francisco and the Silicon Valley to San Antonio. ”We think Texas and San Antonio is the place to be (and) a great place to do business,” he said.

VYSK's River North headquarters along the Museum Reach

[josh]

Here are some before and after GIF images of the future 281 freeway expansion, which will begin construction sometime next year and cost nearly 1 billion dollars.

281/1604 Interchange


281 at Redland Rd. - South view


281 at Redland Rd. - North view


281 at Encino Commons Blvd - North view


281 at Stone Oak Parkway - South view


281 at Stone Oak Parkway - North view


281 at Wilderness Oak - Northwest view


281 at Marshall Rd. - South view


A few more here.

[HangryHippo]

I just don't get Texas' endless expansion of highways. At some point, that new highway is going to be congested too and $1 billion dollars would've built a lot of rail with a lot fewer impacts on the environment while being much, much easier to expand.

[Plutonic Panda]

I just don't get Texas' endless expansion of highways. At some point, that new highway is going to be congested too and $1 billion dollars would've built a lot of rail with a lot fewer impacts on the environment while being much, much easier to expand.

yeah, at some point it will be congested and hopefully so. It's called growth. The more a city grows, the more traffic it gets. You can't expect them to build a 40 Lane Highway when traffic counts don't justify it either.

[josh]

I just don't get Texas' endless expansion of highways. At some point, that new highway is going to be congested too and $1 billion dollars would've built a lot of rail with a lot fewer impacts on the environment while being much, much easier to expand.

First off, 1 billion doesn't get you much light rail and even New York and Chicago and San Francisco have highways, congested highways at that, and they're full of mass transit options. Some of the best in the nation. From streetcars and light-rail to rapid transit trains. But that doesn't mean they don't need freeways. This is America. A country that is incredibly car oriented. Americans like their cars, no amount of light-rail is going to change that.

Second, there's a reason this is happening. It's not to just build it, it's to relieve some of the worst congestion in the state. Stone Oak is a small area some 15 miles north of downtown San Antonio that grows by 5,000 people a year. Stone Oak first broke ground as a master-planned community in the early 1980s, and as of 2013 has a population of nearly 80,000. In 2000, it had a population of 20,000. That's 60,000 people in just 13 years! And that's Stone Oak. Cibolo Canyons has exploded in growth since the mid 2000s and 281 north of 1604 is sandwiched right between both master-planned communities.

The traffic in the Stone Oak area is insane. The traffic on 281 that runs just east of Stone Oak is even more insane.

During rush hour and post rush hour, traffic is at a stand still for miles.

The following two pictures of the 1604/281 area were taken at two different times of the year back in 2012.

Spring 2012:

281/1604 viewing south



Fall 2012:

281/1604 viewing north


This is 281 a few miles north of 1604/281:


This is 281 a few miles south of 1604/281:

As I said: This is a daily and nightly occurrence.

The freeway expansion is long overdue and actually should have/would have begun construction back in 2006 had it not been for anti-toll groups suing and causing the county to do environmental study after environmental study, which caused them to lose their funding which caused even more delay. Now, there is funding, everything has been approved and everything is set.

Btw, just for reference, the 281/1604 interchange is the same distance from downtown San Antonio as downtown Edmond is from downtown OKC.

[Plutonic Panda]

That will be soooooo nice. Wish OKC could get nicely and constructed highways like that with real interchanges that are actually efficient.

[ljbab728]

That will be soooooo nice. Wish OKC could get nicely and constructed highways like that with real interchanges that are actually efficient.

Somehow I knew you would like that.

[josh]

BIG TEX DEVELOPMENT TO HAVE OFFICIAL GROUNDBREAKING THIS FRIDAY

The dirt will be flying soon on one of the latest multifamily projects within the center city.

This Friday, James Lifshutz of Lifshutz Cos. LP and Dan Markson Sr. of NRP Group LLC will join city officials to celebrate the start of construction on Big Tex — a $50 million plan to turn the former Big Tex Grain Co. into an eclectic urban residential community.

Plans call for 336 units and 6,000 square feet of ground-floor retail space.

Mayor Julián Castro and Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff will also be on hand for the event.

The project is now being hailed as the gateway to the Mission Reach portion of the San Antonio River.

[josh]

MIXED-USE DEVELOPMENT, ON CLAY STREET, PLANNED FOR SOUTHTOWN
212-UNITS WITH GROUND FLOOR RETAIL

[josh]

Both the Clay St. mixed-use and the Big Tex development are in the same area of Southtown.