Attracting shopping and restaurants has helped make the former military base into a booming neighborhood.
Over the last two decades, innovative developers have turned a former Air Force base on the South Side of San Antonio into a thriving core of retail and residential growth.
Brooks Air Force Base, once home to test flights, space initiatives and research for 100 years, is now a vibrant South-Side community embracing the “live, work, learn, play or stay” philosophy. The area, now known as Brooks, has seen immense change across its 1,308 acres, but one sector has been key to its radical transformation — retail development.
Today, Brooks is home to over 150 businesses and has completed over $1.4 billion in development in the last decade, with $700 million in the previous year, according to Brooks President and CEO Leo Gomez.
It started in 2002 when Brooks Air Force Base was transferred to the Brooks Development Authority, resulting in its transition to Brooks City-Base. This created a new partnership to establish a public-private redevelopment initiative. According to Gomez, this came after the BDA failed to support the research initiatives the United States Air Force had been conducting on the base.
“They tried to leverage what the Air Force had been using as a private development and research development, and that really didn’t take hold. So, it wasn’t until about 12 years ago or so that the mission and vision changed to creating one of a mixed-use community where you could learn, work, play, stay, heal, etc.,” he explained.
The redevelopment, which initially was meant to prioritize attracting more major employers to the area, Gomez said, officially took off when a local developer, Mark Granados of Hill Granados Retail Partners, approached the BDA about developing retail on 60 acres of the base.
Find the full story here: How retail reshaped Brooks