San Antonio Roundup July 2025
Two big losses this year – the Texas Pavilion (Institute of Texan Cultures building) has succumbed to demolition, seemingly accelerated by the Conservation Society’s failed attempt to get an injunction or even a hearing at either District Court or the 15th Court of Appeals. The unfortunate precedent being set is clear – if you want to demolish a property, make sure it is owned by an institution of higher learning, because they have a special carve-out in the State Antiquities code and may be willing to enter into a transaction for that privilege.
That loss was followed by the lame duck City Council approving the Digital Arts and Media Pilot Program, a digital billboard scheme that was opposed by 71% of those surveyed. Now we will have 10 Times-Square styled digital billboards attached to buildings and accompanied by artwork. All because one billboard company couldn’t play by the rules. Sigh. You can read my earlier blog here.
Speaking of public opposition, the City just wrapped up a couple weeks of workshops on the proposed Sports and Entertainment District previously known as Project Marvel. (Side note: one of the ways you know something doesn’t have great public support is that you have to keep renaming it. The Digital Arts and Media Pilot Program used to be Urban Entertainment Districts). The Express-News today had a feature on the “No Project Marvel” movement. I attended workshop sessions and it was actually pretty tame and useful. I should note that the Conservation Society has not taken a position on the Sports and Entertainment District. Some people did use the mapping workshop as a mechanism to vent.
It has been a difficult and chaotic time for most things, including historic preservation funding, as I blogged about in May here. The historic preservation tax credit did survive the OBBB, along with New Market tax credits, and the 2025 Historic Preservation Fund money was finally released. Solar credits were cut though, dampening one of Texas’ leading industries and giving China a big advantage.
On the plus side, a very cool 1906 Craftsman building in my Beacon Hill neighborhood that we deliver newsletters to is becoming a local landmark. I call it the house of Seven Gables.
Also on the plus side, the design and planning for the Civil Rights exhibit in the Woolworth Building that is part of the new Alamo Visitor Center and Museum is coming along very well. Can’t preview it but safe to say some great stakeholder input and some excellent design.
The biggest news has been the killer floods which claimed 13 lives in San Antonio and then more than 100 in Kerr County on the 4th of July when the Guadalupe River gained 20 feet in an hour and a half. The grim total may well exceed 200 including the flash floods in Travis and other counties. A combination of changing climate, Hill Country geology and limited notification systems came together in this catastrophe which has made the news worldwide and caused great grief and sorrow.
Preservation cuts proposed
The random, awkward budget cutting process finally reached the heritage conservation world last week as the Historic Preservation Fund was nearly zeroed out by the administration. This would decimate state and tribal historic preservation offices and make compliance with the National Historic Preservation Act nearly impossible. The Historic Preservation Fund comes not from taxes but from offshore oil leases, a detail significant to those of us who do the work, but perhaps not to those doing the supposed cutting.
The Creamery – an historic tax credit project in San Antonio – I should have included it with my last blog about Art Deco – which included three other Art Deco buildings in San Antonio being restored with tax credits.
Historic Preservation Offices review both federal undertakings under Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act as well as buildings being restored with historic tax credits. The National Park Service also has a role in both activities, and the cuts look to be deep there as well.
Stilwell House, part of the National Historic Landmark Fort Sam Houston, San Antonio.
Now, as with the other chaotic and uncoordinated cuts proposed during the recent recrudescence, one has to consider 1. Will it change on its own or, less likely, by action of legislature or judiciary?, 2. Will it remain in its present colossal form or shrink?, 3. Are the cuts the actual goal? Other goals manifest recently include: chaos and disorientation; maintaining presence in the news cycle; performative “sin” or “virtue” signalling; or a desire to distract attention from an earlier performance.
St. Anthony Hotel, San Antonio. One of the first projects to combines the 2015 Texas historic tax credit with the federal historic tax credit.
Burns Building – one of two historic tax credit projects on Houston Street that our Capital Club donors will be touring next week.
Time will tell. In the next week or so. The National Preservation Partners Network recently joined other national groups objecting to the colossal cuts, and you can see the statement here. Everyone has been lobbying for the continuation of historic tax credits, and even their enhancement, which has bipartisan support. In Texas in the last decade the federal and state tax credits have created 515 projects worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
“A Little Learning…
is a dangerous thing” said Alexander Pope, and he recommended going whole hog (until Alps on Alps arise) or abstaining. Heritage conservation/Historic preservation is a specialized field, and like many specialized fields, the wider world has misapprehensions or misunderstandings about it. We can try to impart a little learning. There are pitfalls though, because misapprehension often rings truer than fact.
A case in point is the National Register of Historic Places. Its name is often misapprehended as “The National Registry” just because that sounds, well, classier. When a building, site, district or structure is listed on the National Register of Historic Places that means it can’t be torn down, right?
Wrong. Also, Wrong. And Wrong again. The list has been around since 1966 and provides no protection against demolition. It DOES provide a review process that MIGHT make demolition less likely, but that is only if it is literally a federal case. It is kept by the Secretary of the Interior, who will have no idea if anyone is going to tear it down unless a federal agency tells the Secretary they are going to. And they can still tear it down, but only after going through the process.
310 W Polk, Chicago, demolished 1991 by the Postal Service because they knew that the National Register doesn’t prevent demolition.
Now, you can explain that time and time again, but it won’t stick, because the misapprehension is so much more plausible. That’s what it SHOULD mean, right? What really amazes me is that people in high positions dealing with real estate and so forth not only don’t get this, but they suspect there is some weird detail of the National Register that is going to somehow – magically – thwart them. Because it is a specialized field. Fear is always based on lack of knowledge.
Even though the National Register can’t prevent anyone from tearing down anything (there I said it again, but you still don’t believe it, right?) it can provide – since 1976 – preservation tax incentives that can be used to restore the resource. Part of the reason we have so many buildings on the National Register is that real estate developers put them there in order to get a 20% investment tax credit. $2 million off your taxes for a $10 million rehab. Not bad.
But wait, there’s more! In Texas, you can get an additional 25% tax credit ON TOP of the federal one, so your $10 million rehab only costs you $5.5 million. Or, in the case of the St. Anthony above, more than $24 million in tax credits. So who wouldn’t want the National Register – it can finance your rehab or, you can ignore it and tear it down! No downside, right?
Another historic tax credit project, right across the street.
And another, across the street again. Not rocket science.
No downside unless you are a victim of misapprehension, or magical thinking. Case in point: the Conservation Society of San Antonio has nominated of the Texas Pavilion/Institute of Texan Cultures building (1968, Caudill, Rowlett & Scott) to the National Register of Historic Places. Its owner, the University of Texas at San Antonio, is going to oppose the nomination because they want to “monetize the site.”
Okay. Site. Money. Weren’t we just talking about a tax incentives worth 45% of rehab cost? That would be an attraction to someone buying it. BUT, they assume it will be torn down so Spurs Stadium IV (A New Hope) can be built on a smaller site than the Spurs II and III. So? You are the UT System, you can do what you want. In fact, the State and the UT system don’t even have to ask the city for a demolition permit like the rest of us.
As they proved with the Sutton Building in 2019.
So why would you oppose National Register listing if it adds potential incentives and doesn’t prevent demolition? How could you be so powerful and not understand your power? You don’t quite believe that truth because it doesn’t feel true – this is the National Registry (sic) after all!
Civilization and the current moment are saturated with people following courses of action that contradict their fiduciary responsibilities because they have a better storyline. This National Register thing has got to be a big green dragon – it can’t be as innocuous as they say, right?
Oh look, another historic tax credit project!
A good storyline beats the bottom line any day.
A little learning is a dangerous thing.
JANUARY UPDATE: We got a unanimous vote from the State Review Board so now it is up to the State Historic Preservation Office to forward the nomination to the Keeper of the National Register (or not). We had 9 speakers in favor at the hearing in Galveston and they also received 47 letters of support and many more online expressions of support. UTSA provided the sole opposition to the listing.
FEBRUARY UPDATE: University of Texas Board of Regents voted in secret to either lease or sell the ITC to the City for a new Spurs arena. No one is talking, though.
The Spurs probably have enough tax liability that they could use the historic preservation tax credits themselves, avoiding a syndication!