Lisa Nungesser rarely leaves downtown San Antonio.
She walks up to five miles a day with her dog Scout, starting out from her condominium above the Dick’s Last Resort bar on the River Walk and following the walkways along the San Antonio River.
Nungesser, 69, greets police officers patrolling on bicycles, chats with a barista at the Grand Hyatt hotel and tells confused tourists how to find the Alamo.
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She said her 16-year-old Honda CR-V only has about 74,000 miles on it. She’s racked up some of that mileage driving to grocery stores outside of downtown when H-E-B’s small South Flores Market store doesn’t have what she’s looking for.
She goes with friends to shows at the Tobin Center for the Performing Arts and Majestic Theatre and meanders through Civic Park at Hemisfair. Most nights, she enjoys the mariachi music that wafts up from the River Walk as she’s going to sleep.
She said she hasn’t experienced any crime since moving to the center city in 2019.
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“It’s the perfect place,” Nungesser said. “I can’t imagine living in the suburbs. I would cry every day.”
Downtown San Antonio resident Lisa Nungesser often walks with her dog, Scout, through Hemisfair. Nungesser is on the board of directors of the Hemisfair Conservancy.
Sam Owens/San Antonio Express-News
Nungesser is something of an anomaly in San Antonio, where many residents are down on the inner city. They see it as a tourist trap where parking is hard to come by and too expensive, horse-drawn carriages clog narrow streets and homeless people mill around, making passersby nervous.
As of 2020, U.S. Census estimates that 3,800 people lived downtown, an area bordered by César E. Chávez Boulevard to the south to Brooklyn Avenue to the north, between highways to the east and west. That was up from nearly 3,400 in 2010.
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The current population is almost certainly higher than it was six years ago, given the number of apartments built since then.
Government officials, real estate developers and University of Texas at San Antonio leaders want to drive up the number of people living downtown. They’re pouring billions — in both tax dollars and private capital — into trying to transform the area into an appealing place for locals to spend their time and money, and to make their homestead.
For a city’s downtown to boom, it needs amenities, such as parks, museums and concert halls, that attract both locals and out-of-towners; big employers with armies of office workers who fill shops and restaurants on their lunch hours; and residents who help keep the area humming after hours.
The chance to turn San Antonio’s downtown into a hot spot is a big reason the city and Bexar County are steering tax dollars to the construction of a Spurs arena at Hemisfair, the linchpin of the sports and entertainment district known as Project Marvel, and a Missions baseball stadium near Fox Tech High School.
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But the urban core continues struggling on the corporate front, with no relief in sight. It’s got no Fortune 500 headquarters or major satellite offices to brag about, and its aspirations of creating a web of technology and cybersecurity companies haven’t panned out. And the pandemic set off an exodus from office buildings, resulting in far fewer white-collar workers.
Economic development leaders say a lively downtown could help them attract companies whose employees want to live in walkable, urban neighborhoods.
Are boosters convincing more urbanites like Nungesser to move downtown?
They’re not stampeding down Houston Street, but there are signs that in the years ahead many will call the area home.
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UTSA leaders are planning to move thousands of students, faculty and researchers to their downtown campus. They built a pair of buildings for AI and cybersecurity programs and moved colleges into an office building they acquired from Affinius Capital.
Their goal is to enroll 10,000 students at the campus by 2028. Some 4,178 students were attending classes there as of last fall.
As the university brings more people downtown, the thinking goes, some portion of them will want to live in the area.
Theirs aren’t the only public funds at play.
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The still-under-construction University of Texas at San Antonio School of Data Science and National Security Collaboration Center is seen Wednesday, Jan. 26, 2022 next to Commerce Street next to Section 2 of Phase 1 of the San Pedro Creek Culture Park. UTSA held a virtual groundbreaking for the 167,000-square-foot, six-story building on Jan. 25, 2021 according to the university website and they expect to have classes in the building this year.
William Luther/San Antonio Express-News
The city and county are giving developers subsidies, such as San Antonio Water System fee waivers and property tax exemptions, to build housing downtown to keep the area active around the clock.
Weston Urban, the most active downtown development firm, opened its Frost Tower office building in 2019 and has constructed more than 600 apartments since then. The firm plans to build hundreds more apartments around the Missions ballpark in the northwest corner of downtown. The firm’s founders, former Rackspace Technology chairman Graham Weston and developer Randy Smith, are part of the group that owns the Double-A minor league team.
On the other side of downtown, more apartments are in the works at Hemisfair, near the site of the future Spurs arena.
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People swim in the pool at the InterContinental San Antonio Riverwalk hotel. Local officials are trying to draw more residents, not just tourists, to downtown.
Sam Owens/San Antonio Express-News
Urban living
Nungesser grew up in San Antonio but she spent her working life in other big cities, several of them much more cosmopolitan than her hometown: Los Angeles, Mexico City, Austin, San Diego and Baltimore. She bought her River Walk condo in 2001 but didn’t start living there full-time until seven years ago when she retired as a transportation and environmental planner.
She returned to San Antonio to live near family.
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The urban lifestyle Nungesser loves is appealing to some young adults, empty-nesters, retirees and couples without kids. But to many San Antonians, it’s not attractive or affordable. They may drive downtown a handful of times a year to show visitors the Alamo, catch the holiday lights on the River Walk or take in a concert at the Tobin. Otherwise, they stay away.
People with children want larger houses with yards in better school districts, and renters can find cheaper apartments in the suburbs. Downtown is noisy and crowded during events like Fiesta and the NCAA Men’s Final Four tournament. Traffic cones and torn-up streets vex drivers and often pedestrians, and Project Marvel’s development will mean years of such construction.
When Nungesser invites friends over from other neighborhoods, she said they often complain about parking, even though “there’s plenty of it.” A recent study commissioned by the city and Centro San Antonio, which advocates for downtown residents and businesses, says there’s ample parking downtown at a variety of rates — it’s not all expensive. But many locals don’t see it that way.
If government officials and developers want to draw more residents to the area, it needs more affordable housing and sidewalks that are e-scooter-free and safer for pedestrians, Nungesser said.
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She praised the work of the Haven for Hope homeless campus and Centro San Antonio’s yellow-shirted ambassadors, who often help people struggling with homelessness. But she said suburbanites spending time downtown are often anxious about the number of homeless people they see.
People walk along the River Walk in downtown San Antonio. Many residents rarely go downtown in part because it is geared toward tourists.
Andrew J. Whitaker/San Antonio Express-News
Class attendees bow to close out a Mobile Om yoga class at the San Pedro Creek Culture Park on Monday, Aug. 12, 2024, in San Antonio, Texas.
Josie Norris/San Antonio Express-News
Residents who live downtown said they enjoy walking to events, restaurants and the River Walk.
Andrew J. Whitaker/San Antonio Express-News
Residential growth
In 2009, the year Mayor Julián Castro took office, a partnership that included local developers Ed Cross and David Adelman opened the Vistana, which has since been rebranded as Inspire Downtown.
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The 247-unit apartment building at 100 N. Santa Rosa St. was the largest residential project built downtown in decades, and it received plenty of public assistance — a tax abatement, a loan and fee waivers from the city.
Castro launched his “Decade of Downtown” initiative a few months after renters started moving in. The linchpin of the effort was construction of market-rate housing, with the city providing tax rebates, loans and fee waivers to developers to build in the urban core, where land costs are higher and projects are harder to finance.
Mayor Julian Castro has been in office for 100 days. He had political aspirations from an early age. Sept. 2, 2009.
Billy Calzada/San Antonio Express-News
City and county leaders were also spending millions to make the area more attractive.
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The Museum Reach linking the River Walk to Pearl opened in 2009, the same year that City Council created a corporation to oversee Hemisfair’s redevelopment. That same year, the San Antonio Housing Trust Public Facility Corp. was established to help finance mixed-income apartment complexes. The Mission Reach connecting the River Walk to the Missions National Historical Park was completed in 2015.
The programs worked. Developers receiving public subsidies built thousands of apartments and condominiums, which helped turn Pearl and Southtown into urban destinations.
“These incentive programs led to a substantial amount of new construction and units that probably wouldn’t exist today,” said Danny Khalil, director of market analytics at real estate data firm CoStar.
But council members and community activists questioned whether the city should keep subsidizing high-end housing while neglecting affordable housing, and the incentive programs were overhauled in 2018 and allowed to expire in 2020.
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But the city and county have continued providing tax breaks and fee reimbursements for downtown housing, including Weston Urban’s 300 Main high-rise, the firm’s Continental Residences at 110 S. Laredo St. and the conversion of the Tower Life office building at 310 S. St. Mary’s St. into apartments, a project spearheaded by the McCombs family and Cross.
The number of apartments downtown has jumped 115.6% since 2018, though the 3,500 units comprise just a sliver of the inventory city-wide, according to CoStar. The average rent downtown is $1,695 per month, compared with the citywide average of $1,220 a month.
Local officials are trying to draw more residents, not just tourists, to downtown.
Andrew J. Whitaker/San Antonio Express-News
The housing options are stratified, ranging from aging public housing to multi-million-dollar condominiums and new high-rises, with little in the middle.
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Weston Urban plans to demolish the 381-unit Soap Factory Apartments, a 1970s-era complex that’s a rare example of non-subsidized affordable housing, to make way for market-rate apartments tied to financing for the Missions ballpark.
Many of the employees who work at hotels, restaurants and stores downtown don’t live in the area. Community activists and housing advocates worry that more development may put downtown housing farther out of reach for them.
As rent at his North Side duplex skyrocketed during the pandemic, Frank Raines said his case manager at the Center for Health Care Services — which provides services for people with mental health and substance abuse disorders and developmental disabilities — suggested he visit the Robert E. Lee Apartments, an affordable building downtown.
Raines, 62, said he was apprehensive because he’d never lived in the urban core. But he is on a fixed income and rent at the circa-1923 property would be less than half of what he was paying in Alamo Heights.
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Six years after he moved into a one-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment at the Robert E. Lee building, he said he doesn’t want to live anywhere else.
An artist, Raines supplements his income by selling his paintings outside San Fernando Cathedral and on the River Walk, as well as through social media. He chats with tourists and residents, which he said helps with his mental health. When he needs groceries, he bicycles or takes a bus to H-E-B’s South Flores Market store.
“There are no cons for me,” Raines said of living downtown.
The nonprofit San Antonio Housing Trust Foundation bought the deteriorating Robert E. Lee building last year and plans to spend $22 million renovating it. The trust has said it will help residents find temporary housing during construction, and they will have the option to move back when it’s complete, which Raines plans to do.
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“If I didn’t live here, I couldn’t live downtown,” he said.
Frank Raines and his dog, Chica, sit outside of the San Fernando Cathedral and paints on Thursday, May 14, 2026, in San Antonio. Raines lives at Robert E. Lee apartment building, which is a couple of blocks away, where he supplements his income by selling his paintings outside.
Andrew J. Whitaker/San Antonio Express-News
The Robert E. Lee Apartments, an affordable building downtown, is slated to undergo a major renovation.
Andrew J. Whitaker/San Antonio Express-News
Soft market
Construction has waned, downtown and across the city, in part because it’s harder to secure financing in the wake of the pandemic. Interest rates are higher and investors are skittish.
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The only project underway is the Tower Life building’s transformation into 242 apartments, which is expected to be complete in early 2027.
It’s unclear how much the owners will charge for rent. They have a list of 1,700 people who have expressed interest in leasing a unit, Cross said on a recent episode of the Real Estate Council of San Antonio’s podcast.
“I really see the next chapter of downtown being this warm, comfortable, residential neighborhood,” he said.
A visual icon of downtown San Antonio, the Tower Life building is going through a transformation into a residential building.
File/San Antonio Express-News
But the condo and apartment buildings that are already there aren’t full. About 25% of the apartments in the area are empty, compared with around 15% across San Antonio, according to CoStar.
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The vacancy rate has risen because of an influx of new apartments in recent years and a sluggish rental market that’s taken hold in almost all parts of the city, Khalil said.
Rents in the urban core are down about 0.3% year-over-year, compared with a decline of 2.9% across the city, Khalil said.
There’s a small pool of San Antonians interested in renting downtown, but many of them are willing to pay a premium for upscale amenities and views. Nora Sophia is one of those renters.
She moved into 300 Main soon after Weston Urban opened it in 2024, drawn in part by the expansive views of the skyline and amenities such as a gym and lockers for groceries delivered by H-E-B.
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“It’s like living at a resort,” said Sophia, 53.
The area is very different from the downtown of her childhood, when she skateboarded in the streets during family visits to the center city because there was no traffic. Sophia, a writer and personal coach, moved away from Texas and then returned to live on three acres in Bulverde before eventually relocating to the urban core in 2022.
She said she and her husband, who works in data center construction, pay around $5,000 a month for a two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment on the 28th floor — a great spot to watch downtown fireworks displays.
The couple view their social connections as another benefit of living in the city center. Sophia said they enjoy walking to events and restaurants, often bumping into friends along the way and chatting with neighbors in their building.
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“We’re designed for living in community,” Sophia said.
Nora Sophia said she and her husband, Jack Harrison, enjoy living downtown because of the social connections they’ve formed and the events and restaurants they can walk to. Sophia said the views from their apartment at 300 Main are stunning and she likes the amenities, including a gym and pools.
Sam Owens/San Antonio Express-News
Nora Sophia and Jack Harrison’s two-bedroom apartment at 300 Main, a residential high-rise completed in 2024, offers a sweeping view of downtown San Antonio.
Sam Owens/San Antonio Express-News
Cathey Meyer, 66, and Tony Cantú, 80, can’t imagine living anywhere else.
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The couple were both born at the Nix Medical Center hospital overlooking the River Walk.
Cantú’s family operated Audry’s Mexican Restaurant on the first floor of a house at Camden Street and McCullough Avenue. He lived above it on the second floor. He later opened Audry’s City Center Café at Main Plaza before retiring. He remembers visiting the Joy Theater and the Alameda Theater in what was then a Mexican-American business and cultural district.
Meyer lived in many other cities before moving back in 2004, determined to live on the river. She started at the Toltec Apartments, which was one of the first apartment buildings near what was then Municipal Auditorium. (Today, it’s the Tobin.)
“It was dark, dank and dangerous,” she said.
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Meyer later bought a condo at the Judson Candy Factory Lofts in Southtown and then moved to the La Cascada Condominiums on the River Walk with Cantú after the couple met at a downtown residents association meeting.
“It’s not cheap,” said Meyer, a retired educator.
But the couple said it’s worth the money. They enjoy going to civic and cultural events and restaurants. Meyer, who’s on the board of directors of the Main Plaza Conservancy, often rides her bicycle to Pearl.
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“We’ve seen downtown really come of age,” she said. “It’s just getting better and better.”