In January 2010, eight months into his job as mayor, Julián Castro delivered his vision for San Antonio to the city’s business and political elites. Inside a packed ballroom at the Grand Hyatt Hotel downtown, Castro vowed to create thousands of new jobs, invest in renewable energy and focus on education and boosting student achievement.
Perhaps Castro’s greatest promise, however, centered on the physical transformation of the city. During his first state-of-the-city speech, Castro heralded a grand urban redevelopment project that would, in his words, make the 2010s the “decade of San Antonio.”
On the streets just outside the hotel, the challenge was obvious. While the city’s tourism trade banked off the nearby convention center, the River Walk and Alamo Plaza, the rest of downtown San Antonio was pockmarked with blocks of empty storefronts and abandoned office space, thanks largely to decades of neglect and suburban sprawl. Hardly anybody lived there. Castro wanted to reverse those trends by goosing development downtown — stores, restaurants, parks, apartments — in order to lure people back to San Antonio’s core.
