Closing off Main Avenue faces roadblocks

Local leaders and downtown dwellers have pressed for an inner-city grocery store. But they'll get far more than that if H-E-B executes the $100 million plan disclosed last week for its headquarters.

In addition to doubling its downtown workforce by 2030, the company anticipates opening an urban market and pedestrian and bike path within a year of winning city approval. It also wants to construct several mixed-use buildings and improve public spaces in the area.

H-E-B also is no longer insisting on the city's controversial $1 million incentive to build the grocery store.

But its proposal to close a portion of South Main Avenue remains, and so do its vehement opponents.

The street, which opened in 1949, currently bisects the grocer's Arsenal campus just north of the King William neighborhood. H-E-B insists the closure would protect employees who cross Main Avenue each day.

Company executives also note the Arsenal once served as a military base and hope historic preservationists support restoring its former boundaries, which they say the South Main closure would accomplish.

“This is the old footprint of the original Arsenal property,” Craig Boyan, H-E-B's chief operating officer, said of the master plan. “There was never a Main street before.”

But many of H-E-B's neighbors, including the King William Association and San Antonio Conservation Society, already have made their opposition clear, and some residents created a grass-roots organization dubbed Main Access to fight the street closure.

“We're not against a store. We'd love to see a thriving grocery market,” said Eloy Rosales, a 62-year-old resident of the area. “We just don't feel it's a good idea to close the street. The city should use it as leverage because it's in the public domain.”

City leaders, however, appear more inclined to support the idea, though they say they'll wait for the results of a traffic study that will measure the impact of cutting off public access to Main Avenue.

Recently, a vice president for H-E-B told King William residents the company needs to grow its headquarters and may do so in Dallas or Houston if it can't find room in downtown San Antonio, though a company spokeswoman later said the company's home is here.

For his part, Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff, who in 2008 witnessed AT&T move its headquarters from here to Dallas, said he suspected H-E-B's statement might be smoke and mirrors.

He doubted the grocery chain would leave its home base, but worried it might decide to invest elsewhere in town.

“I clearly think if we don't do this, they sure as hell could build on the North Side,” Wolff said. “Our whole goal is to create inner-city development, and we're lacking corporate offices there.

“When you get one of these deals, you better not (expletive) it up,” he added.

Different sides of street

At a cost of about $40 million, the first phase of H-E-B's plan includes a culinary school and test kitchen, renovation of its 1601 Nogalitos St. location, the downtown store — called Flores Market — and a connected gas station, as well as a pedestrian and bike path.

The second phase, with an estimated price tag of between $60 million and $80 million, spans over the next decade and would add green space near San Pedro Creek, some mixed-use buildings just north of the culinary center and a new office building, perhaps with underground parking.

Considering the scope of the project, Wolff urged homeowners in the King William area to reconsider their opposition to the Main Avenue closure.

“It will increase their property values. There's no doubt about that,” he said. “People smart enough to buy those homes ... should be pleased by this.”

Not everyone agrees with him, though.

Signs bearing the slogan “Save Our Streets” dot the yards of houses around H-E-B's headquarters. And as of Friday, the Main Access group had collected nearly 900 signatures on an online petition against the street closure.

(A majority of those signatures appeared to come from San Antonio residents, though some signers listed hometowns in California, New Mexico and Florida.)

The Conservation Society, for its part, hasn't bought the historical argument in favor of shutting down Main Avenue.

“Street closures can be impediments to the fabric and pattern of a city's design and layout,” said Sue Ann Pemberton, president of the organization, which is headquartered in King William and has waged numerous fights — many of them successful — to preserve historic sites in its nearly 90-year history.

Earlier this month, before H-E-B shared its master plan with the Conservation Society, its board voted to oppose Main Avenue's closure.

Board members may meet again soon to reconsider the issue, but Pemberton said many still bristled at a similar closure of a portion of the street as part of the Main Plaza makeover in 2006.

“That one still rings very strongly in everyone's mind,” she said.

New Southtown?

In late September, the King William Association board also voted against the closure, in part due to concerns about access to the historic Commander's House, Executive Director Cherise Bell said.

Visitors to the city-owned senior center currently access the building through Main Avenue, though H-E-B wants to help open the front entrance on South Flores.

Boyan said the pedestrian and bike trail also could increase public use of the Commander's House, but stressed the entire project could spur economic development along that street.

“We are trying across many different ways to help partner with the city to make this is a great place to live. That is in our corporate ethos,” Boyan said. “That's more important to us than anything, and that's where we feel wounded when people think that's not our intention.”

H-E-B's investment in the area, he said, could turn the South Flores and San Pedro Creek corridor into “another Southtown.”

Yet some critics questioned whether an expanded H-E-B campus actually would help boost more business activity between the area and the neighboring South Alamo district.

“The plan's fine and would probably do OK, but it leaves a lot to be desired,” said Steve Yndo, a real estate broker with King William Realty. “It has the potential to be so much more, and that's where it falls flat.

“It would have so much more an impact if it served as a connector and less of a separator.”

Yndo especially took issue with the proposed Main Avenue closure, and wondered why H-E-B hadn't studied the Pearl before presenting its plan. He said the redeveloped brewery had roads, with strict speed limits, snaking around the businesses and residential units there.

“None of the people who live and work there feel unsafe,” Yndo said. “As it is now, Main Avenue could easily go down to two lanes and be as intimate and boutique-ish as you see at the Pearl.”

Balancing act

While city leaders understood neighbors' frustration with the proposed closure, they also emphasized the potential benefits of allowing H-E-B to invest so much money in the urban core.

Councilman Diego Bernal, whose district includes H-E-B's headquarters, cited the estimated 1,600 workers that the grocer plans to bring to the area by 2030, essentially doubling its current downtown workforce.

A spokeswoman explained those positions will be a mix of new jobs and transfers from other H-E-B offices. No decision has been made yet on which departments may be folded into the Arsenal campus or which existing ones there might expand, she said.

“The last number I heard was an average of 100 jobs a year through 2020,” Bernal said. “That grabbed my attention. That's significant.”

He responded to criticism that even if H-E-B planned to spend $100 million on its expansion, the investment would only help its bottom line.

“Is there a difference?” Bernal asked. “You can argue that they're only doing it for themselves, but they're still bringing those jobs downtown.

“Those buildings and those jobs — they're very attractive things,” he added.

One of the main features of H-E-B's master plan that appealed to Bernal was its decision to increase the size of the grocery store.

Previously, the company said it would open a market between 6,000 square feet and 8,000 square feet, well below the size that the city had requested. Now, Flores Market will be at least 10,000 square feet, though Boyan suggested that could change in the future.

“We're going to have a great store that's going to be here forever,” he said. “In fact, we have additional property that we could consider a larger store over time, if that (downtown residential) population comes.”