The eighth largest city in the United States (its population is approximately 1.2 million), and one of the oldest, is undergoing a metamorphosis. For a good part of the past century, San Antonio was a military town that happened to have a nice river promenade running through its decaying downtown area. Now, with the continuing growth in tourism, San Antonio's number two industry -- it has an annual economic impact of approximately $7.2 billion -- the city is increasingly perceived by outsiders as a place with a terrific river walk.
Although the city's outlying theme parks and central area attractions are also benefiting from increased visitation, and work continues on the redevelopment of the River Walk for 13 miles from Brackenridge Park to Mission Espada, downtown is by far the most affected section. The city's Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center doubled in size at the end of the 1990s, and its $187-million expansion was completed in the beginning of the new century. And, as though the Alamodome, the state-of-the-arts sports arena built in the last decade of the 20th century, wasn't high-tech enough for the Spurs, the huge new AT&T Center opened nearby in 2002 (the Spurs apparently took to their new home, winning NBA championships in 2003 and 2005). But the biggest trend is recycling: Suddenly historic is hot. The Majestic Theatre was restored and reopened in the late 1980s, the Empire Theatre followed in the late 1990s. And every time you turn around it seems as though another old building has been converted into a hotel.
Middle-class residential growth still lags a bit behind commercial development in this area. San Antonians who moved downtown in the past decade initially patted themselves on the back for their prescience, but many are now beginning to second-guess the changes they helped bring about. Not only are there few residential services (the area still has no major supermarket, for example), but the huge success of the riverside Southbank and Presidio complexes, opened in the mid-1990s, destroyed what little quiet there was at night. The result was ordinances to cut down on late-night noise and the opening up of a dialogue between residents and businesses.
This is not to suggest there's no growth in any business sectors besides tourism. The city's number one industry, healthcare and bioscience, has a total economic impact of at least $12.9 billion, including medical conferences and the many people who travel to San Antonio for medical treatment. Boeing and Lockheed Martin are among the aviation companies that have been attracted to the former Kelly Air Force Base, now KellyUSA, while other businesses like AT&T (formerly SBC, formerly Southwestern Bell) moved their headquarters to San Antonio in the mid 1990s. Washington Mutual opened a new regional headquarters in San Antonio in 2006, intending to provide more than 4,200 jobs over 7 years. And an $800-million Toyota truck manufacturing plant brought more than 2,000 jobs into the area when it began producing full-size pick-ups in November of 2006.
The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), signed in 1994, was also a boon for the city, which hosts the North American Development Bank -- the financial arm of NAFTA -- in its downtown International Center. Representatives from the various states of Mexico are housed in the same building as part of the "Casas" program. With its large Hispanic population, regular flights to Mexico City, cultural attractions such as the Latin American wing of the San Antonio Museum of Art, and the Centro Alameda project -- the first cornerstone of which, the Museo Americano Smithsonian, is opening in 2007 -- and a history of strong business relations with Mexico, San Antonio is ideally positioned to take advantage of the economic reciprocity between the two nations. And the fact that Meximerica Media, which is starting a chain of Spanish-language newspapers, established its headquarters in San Antonio in 2004 strengthens the city's status as a major center for marketing and media aimed at the U.S. Hispanic population, including some of the country's top Hispanic advertising firms.
Even with its rosy outlook, the city is facing some major problems, ones it shares with other rapidly growing Southwest urban centers. San Antonio and Austin are 80 miles and political light-years apart, but the two cities are growing ever closer. Although they haven't yet melded to form the single, huge metropolis that futurists predict, the increasing suburban sprawl and the growth of New Braunfels and San Marcos, two small cities that lie between San Antonio and Austin, are causing a great deal of congestion on I-35, which connects all four cities.
An even more serious concern is the city's water supply. Currently, the Edwards Aquifer is the city's only source of water, and ominously, no one knows exactly how many years' worth of water it contains. Even that supply is being threatened by development: Although the original plans to build a vast new golf complex, PGA Village, were scrapped as a result of an outcry by environmentalists -- they contended that the project, slated to be built on the aquifer's recharge zone, would damage the city's water supply -- a new version, said to be more environmentally sensitive, is currently under consideration.
