The downtown developer GrayStreet Partners has put the historic and architecturally distinctive Villita Assembly Building back on the market less than six months after buying it with plans to upgrade it as a gathering venue.
The UFO-shaped, Sputnik-era building, sitting on the River Walk in La Villita, was listed for sale this week by CBRE, the same real estate firm that brokered its sale in March for $5.3 million on behalf of prior owner CPS Energy, the city-owned utility. Daniel Wall, an associate with the firm, confirmed the listing in a phone call but declined to comment.
Peter French, GrayStreet’s director of development, declined in a text message to offer comment.
Best known to local residents as hosting Fiesta revelry during the annual A Night in Old San Antonio, the building is also cherished as a creation of the mid-century architect O’Neil Ford, known for design work that includes the Tower of the Americas and the Murchison Tower on the campus of Trinity University. The building’s “bicycle-wheel” roof — so-called because it features an inverted dome suspended with 200 steel lines strung between rings — was unprecedented in Texas when it was constructed in 1958.
The 24,785-square foot building sits on a 1.2-acre property that the Bexar Appraisal District assessed at $5.3 million this year. It features a banquet hall, kitchen and basement and is available to rent for private events.
In the decade since its founding in 2013, GrayStreet has earned a reputation for taking on difficult and ambitious development projects located downtown. Its extensive rehab of the historic Light building on Broadway — turning it from an abandoned eyesore into sparkling modern office space — is one example.
Yet the re-listing of the Villita Assembly highlights another pattern in the firm’s working history: Over the years, it has often backed away from its plans, selling properties in which it had said it would invest great resources.
Last year, GrayStreet and its partner, the Houston firm Midway, decided to sell the iconic Lone Star Brewery on the South Side rather than proceed with a $596 million project to redevelop it with a hotel, nearly 360,000 square feet of office space and 1,282 housing units. It is still listed for sale by the real estate firm JLL, but GrayStreet General Partner Kevin Covey recently told the Express-News that the firm was still considering developing the site when capital markets improve.
GrayStreet had once planned to build a 23-acre mixed-use community in the Government Hill neighborhood east of the Pearl before deciding in 2021 to put the land back on the market. Covey told the San Antonio Heron that year that the COVID pandemic had had a “dramatic effect” on the project. The firm went on to sell much of the land to the locally based Fulcrum Development.
Meanwhile, GrayStreet has continued to tackle new projects. It plans to renovate several buildings it owns in west downtown near the Bexar County Courthouse and UTSA’s downtown campus, French confirmed Thursday in a text message. The plans were first reported by the San Antonio Express-News.
After buying the Villita Assembly in March, GrayStreet rebranded it as the Riverwalk Event Center on a new website, calling it “the premium event venue in the heart of the San Antonio Riverwalk.”
CPS Energy sold the Villita Assembly to GrayStreet — after receiving multiple bids — as part of a four-year effort to unload surplus properties to help cover the cost of its $212 million new headquarters at 500 McCullough Ave. The properties included its 10-story former headquarters at 145 Navarro St., which the national real estate company Blueprint Hospitality bought in 2021 for $19 million.
In February, the Dallas architect Marcela Rhoads submitted plans with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation to start work in April converting the building into a 243-room hotel named El Portal, part of the Autograph Collection by Marriott, at a cost of $55 million.
CBRE’s listing for the Villita Assembly touts its location on the River Walk and next to the La Villita Historic Arts Village. The village includes Maverick Plaza, which the City of San Antonio is remaking into a culinary destination with restaurants developed in partnership with Chef Johnny Hernandez.
The Villita Assembly is only about a football field west of Civic Park at Hemisfair, a public park which is set to open in September. The local developer Zachry Hospitality plans to build a giant mixed-use development around the park, but the project has been bogged down in several years of delays.
