Two former breweries get facelifts, as the San Antonio River Walk expands.
- Coleman Wood

One of San Antonio's most famous success stories is the San Antonio River Walk. The iconic entertainment district, which is also known as Paseo del Rio, was almost lost in the 1920s, after a severe bout of flooding caused city leaders to want to pave over the river. The waterway was saved, and it was later made into a park by the Works Progress Administration, which added walkways, bridges and tree plantings. Over the years, businesses moved to riverfront locations, providing residents and visitors with a variety of dining, retail, hotel and entertainment options, and the River Walk has expanded as its reputation has grown.

The city is in the process of extending the River Walk in both directions, opening up large tracts of the city for redevelopment. While many projects are under construction or in talks along these new corridors, two stand out as especially creative and unique. Both are former breweries that once used the San Antonio River for their livelihood and are now being given a second chance.

Lone Star Brewery

On the south side of San Antonio, the city is working on a $124 million extension of the San Antonio River Walk that will expand its system of parks and trails 1.75 miles through the city's Mission Reach neighborhood to Mission Concepcion, one of San Antonio's five historic missions. Back when this project was still on the drawing board, Austin developer B. Knightly Homes was looking at a property that the new extension would pass right by - the Lone Star Brewery.

The brewery, which was founded in 1884, had closed its doors in 1996, when its owner moved brewing operations to Longview, Texas. The vacant 400,000-square-foot building was ripe for redevelopment, though, and the approval of the River Walk expansion sealed the deal.

"It was obviously very fortuitous timing for us, because we actually started looking at this project before those envisioned improvements were actually funded," says Mark Tolley, CEO of B. Knightly Homes. "The funding actually came through while we were doing our due diligence and, frankly, cemented the deal for us."

B. Knighlty acquired the 22.8-acre brewery and set forth redeveloping it into what the company hopes will be San Antonio's next great residential development. The first phase of the project will comprise the conversion of the brewery building into 180 residential units and 10 ground-floor commercial units. The site has been approved for up to 700 residential units, which will consist of new construction on the property after the brewery building is complete.

With prices that start at $129,000, B. Knightly is hoping to attract a diverse group of residents to the Lone Star Brewery. Marketing efforts by AMP! Marketing are attempting to appeal to a hipper crowd. Last month, the brewery held a concert for prospective buyers at the brewery's newly reopened entertainment space, which was once used by the brewery to entertain distributors. The space has a stage, a bar and a dance floor; it is currently pulling double duty as the sales office for the project during the week, and an entertainment venue for prospective buyers on the weekends. Tolley says that there are currently 750 registered buyers that have toured the property or looked at the plans online. First move-ins are expected to occur in summer 2009.

The concert venue is only the first of many amenities at Lone Star Brewery. Residents will enjoy an Olympic-size swimming pool fed by an on-site natural spring, a gym, a spa, and 6 acres of green space that feature mature oak and pecan trees. The brewery's two beer gardens are being restored and the 2-acre pond that the spring previously fed is being converted into a sunken garden.

The 42,000 square feet of commercial space at Lone Star Brewery will be in keeping with the River Walk's destination appeal. Units will be divisible from a 1,000-square-foot bar space, to a 21,000-square-foot parcel that has caught the interest of two microbreweries.
"I see it being kind of a vibrant, artist-oriented anchor to the southern end of San Antonio," Tolley says.

The project also features sustainable elements, such as a photovoltaic array that is being constructed by CPS Energy, stormwater collection in the building's existing cisterns, high efficiency building systems and low-e glass windows. Tolley says that they are shooting for LEED-Gold certification but are hoping for LEED-Platinum.

"At the end of the day, we'll have a very efficient project with hopefully extremely low electricity and water bills and an extraordinary amount of open space, all within gate-guarded security on the River Walk, in, what is one of the greatest cities in Texas, if not the world," Tolley says.