Plans to redevelop the West Side’s Scobey warehouse complex have been put on hold due to financial challenges, VIA Metropolitan Transit Authority President and CEO Jeffrey Arndt said Tuesday.
VIA owns the the former industrial site at 301 N. Medina St. and signed an agreement with private developer DreamOn Group to turn it into residential and commercial spaces that would pave the way for San Antonio’s first walkable, transit-oriented community.
Nearby Centro Plaza is the busiest “transit-rich” hub in Bexar County, and VIA is headquartered just across the street.
VIA opened Centro Plaza in 2015 and bought the 2.6-acre Scobey property northwest of it for $5.2 million two years later, with hopes of spurring an economic revival around its transit hub.
The idea received significant pushback from residents who say the plan would create housing that’s unaffordable to many current Westside residents.
Arndt said Tuesday that VIA and DreamOn had mutually agreed to terminate the agreement because “the economic and financial markets are not conducive to being able to do what we had put on the table back originally in 2020.”
“Right now [the Scobey complex] is just a big empty area, and we want something in there, which is why we bought the building and why we hired someone to put together a development plan,” Arndt said. “But neither DreamOn nor VIA controls interest rates or materials costs, and right now those things are working against our ability to bring that [together].”
DreamOn’s plans called for 54 residential units to be offered at market rates and 54 below market, at varying rates of affordability tied to the area’s median income. VIA also would have had office space in the complex, alongside retail and potentially a grocery store.
“We have been working on this project for almost three years. It was time that we made a decision, and I feel good of all the great work we accomplished together,” DreamOn President Julissa Carielo said. “DreamOn will continue looking at opportunities and will work where we are needed the most.”
VIA’s website touted plans that would “rehabilitate and repurpose the structures to create a community asset from a dangerous eyesore.”
Affordable housing advocates called for the entire building to be public housing, and said local partners who can make that happen have already shown interest in the property.
“This plan [DreamOn] presented is not affordable to people this community,” said Coalition for Tenant Justice Director Kayla Miranda said Tuesday. “This is more unaffordable housing that is under the guise of affordable housing, getting huge tax credits but not benefiting the community in any way.”
Arndt said there’s work to be done informing the public about the nature of the project and VIA’s role in it as a publicly funded transit agency.
He said putting the plans on hold would give VIA time to continue the public outreach process over the next several months, starting with a Dec. 16 meeting at the Mexican American Unity Council at 10 a.m.
A new agreement could entail a new request for proposals or an agreement with a governmental partner that could do the work.
“There are multiple opinions about what might or should happen at that building,” Arndt said. “We’re going to continue working on that so at the time when we either have a partnership, or we go on with another RFP, we’ll have a better idea of exactly what we’re looking for.”
Increasing attention on transit corridors
The Scobey project’s woes come as the city is gearing up for a bigger debate about how to approach development around transit.
A north-south Advanced Rapid Transit line is expected to open service in 2027, and plans are in the works for an east-west route aligning with Centro Plaza.
Transit experts say that for the routes to be successful, they need to be surrounded by dense housing and amenities with adequate lighting, sidewalk and greenspace. VIA was awarded $1.5 million in federal grants to help lay the groundwork for such development.
The Scobey complex could offer an early indication of the challenges bringing that kind of development to the ART corridors.
“I look at this beautiful transit center across the street where we’re running superlative service for San Antonio,” Arndt said, referring to Centro Plaza. “And then I see this large empty building across the street, which of course doesn’t generate any kind of traffic, any kind of transit opportunity.”
While developers are eager for incentives to avoid that kind of stagnation around an expensive transit investment in ART, Miranda said the Scobey project is an example of how VIA’s visions are geared more toward expanding its ridership into the middle class, not serving its current riders.
“[VIA’s] not considering the fact that the people that are supposed to be trying to help, bus riders, the majority are low income,” Miranda said.
The north-south ART route will be under construction from 2025 to 2026, while the east-west route should be under construction from 2027 to 2028, Arndt said. Development along those routes “will depend upon the financial, economic markets at that point in time.”
