Posted Nov 11, 2020, 4:28 PM
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Paradise
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Join Date: Jul 2009
Location: L.A.
Posts: 586
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Tornado
additional article from SABJ about Thompson project
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The Alamo City wasn’t top of mind for DC Partners, according to its CEO, Roberto Contreras, until it encountered an opportunity presented by a Boerne developer, Universal Service Group, and a downtown San Antonio site too good to pass up.
Now, despite the challenges Covid-19 presented in bringing a 20-story hotel and condominium project to completion, Contreras has a much different impression of San Antonio and is already contemplating his Houston firm’s next potential development in the nation’s seventh largest city.
“Honestly, we were not looking to do anything in San Antonio,” Contreras said. "But San Antonio is definitely the jewel of Texas right now. It’s the place to be.”
The 162-room Thompson San Antonio, one of the newest additions to Hyatt’s upscale lifestyle brand, Thompson Hotels, is set to open early next year in a portion of the tower. The 60-plus condos in The Arts Residences portion of the tower are in high demand as nearly 90% have already been sold.
Contreras said the firm nearly pulled the plug on construction when the pandemic hit.
“We looked at putting everything on the shelf,” Contreras said. “Right now, hotels are losing money every day. We talked to our lender to see if it was OK with them to shelve the project.”
The construction continued — in part because of the demand for the residential units. What DC Partners discovered, unlike in Houston, is a hungry condo market with local buyers who plan to make these new condos their home. Those condo sales should help offset an anticipated ramp up on the hotel side as the coronavirus has disrupted travel and affected hotel bookings across the nation.
“Having strong sales on the condos makes our hotel project super safe,” Contreras said, noting also that the development's site along the Museum Reach of the San Antonio River will also be a major plus.
DC Partners is also banking on the fact that San Antonio is a popular drive-to destination, which could draw more leisure business to the hotel early on.
While DC Partners is sold on the city now, it wasn’t always that way.
“Sometimes, you may not see it because it’s gradual, but absolutely San Antonio is becoming a big market. It has many good things happening,” Contreras told me.
He believes the demand for such projects in San Antonio will only increase, especially as more people take note of what's happening some 70 miles to the north.
Said Contreras, “Frankly, why would you go to Austin where it is a lot more expensive?”
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Interesting. If you had said, 10-15 years ago, San Antonio has a burgeoning condo market, I'd laugh. For awhile I think it's had the least amount of condos being built compared to the other big 3 TX cities? Maybe the other TX cities are becoming saturated, so S.A. is like the final frontier. Granted, the condo market in the U.S. is really only huge in a handful of cities I can think of (NYC, Miami, etc.), unless I am assessing it wrong.
Curious if the other project he mentioned is Dream Hotel or something else.
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