A NEW URBANIST PROJECT
An aerial rendering shows Vicinia, a master-planned community being built on the Far West Side. Credit: Courtesy Image
At the intersection of West Military Drive and Potranco Road, less than a half-mile from Northwest Loop 410, a group of developers and city officials dipped shovels into a former cornfield to celebrate the start of Vicinia, a 97-acre mixed-use infill development.
The project, which could see construction start as soon as next year, is fulfilling the longtime dream of downtown developer Ed Cross to bring urban design and transit-oriented development to the suburbs.
“I’ve been involved with a lot of different development in my career, including land development,” said Cross, CEO of San Antonio Commercial Advisors. “And I’ve always hoped to have a chance to pursue a project like this.”
An urban design movement that began in the 1980s, New Urbanism promotes healthy and environmentally friendly development, walkable neighborhoods with smaller blocks and narrow streets, a wide range of housing types and prices, and transit-oriented development.
The concept began in the United States at Seaside, Florida, and has spread to other areas of the country, including Addison Circle in Dallas and the Mueller community in East Austin.
The name VICINIA comes from the Latin word for neighborhood.
“We wanted something that had some character to it, and I love Latin and Greek names. We put a lot of thought into that name,” Cross said, adding that images of corn figure into the logo design because the land was once the Persyn family farm.
Built around a town square, Vicinia also will be the first project developed under San Antonio’s Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) zoning code that encourages density near transit facilities. Plans call for mass transit facilities within the development that will connect it to other nodes of the city.
A group of developers led by Cross acquired from VIA Metropolitan Transit more than 59 acres of land assessed at $3.6 million in August 2017. Since then, the group bought up five smaller tracts surrounding the property.
“When we bought the tracts from VIA, we were very deliberate in our conversation,” Cross said. “We wanted them to be a partner with us on the development of the project. And in fact, when we had a charrette for the land plan, the first two people that that appeared were Jeff Arndt [president and CEO of VIA] and Brian Buchanan [former senior vice president of development at VIA].
We’ve really been thoughtful about providing an alternative to being dependent on a car.
The project is also unique, Cross said, in that it is an infill site, sandwiched amid suburban sprawl that stretches from Westover Hills to the city of Castroville – and the traffic tie-ups that come with it. But two major thoroughfares in the area also will be completed along with the project, opening new routes.
“The site had never been developed because it was a disproportionate burden on [the developer of] the site,” Cross said. “The cost to put in the streets was more than the land was worth.”
“We hope to provide housing for a mix of ages and a mix of incomes,” Cross said. “We’re not focused on one job generator. We want this to be a new location where families, singles, retirees, a mix of incomes can find a place to live. So the fact that the NSA is right out the front door is just icing on the cake.”
Vicinia will offer single-family homes, townhomes, condos, and mixed-use buildings, many with ground-floor retail space. The town square is a major feature of the master plan and is intended to be the center of community life. A new transit center will be located adjacent to the square.
“Vicinia is a modern revival of how neighborhoods used to be and should be – walkable to everything that’s needed but with the addition of vehicular and mass transit options,” Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff stated.
But any comparison to the catalytic Pearl development isn’t accurate, Cross said. “The Pearl project is an existing urban environment,” he said. “The majority of the first buildings there were all renovations. So, I really don’t want to compare ourselves to the Pearl.”
Site work has begun for Vicinia, a master-planned community on San Antonio’s far West Side.
Melissa Cabello Havrda, the current councilwoman, said the development is an example of what “SA Tomorrow” can look like.
“Vicinia is providing a real alternative to typical suburban development models, helping to encourage walking and incorporate more diverse means of transportations into the design phase so that citizens can utilize healthier and more enjoyable ways to get where they need to go,” Havrda stated.
Cross’s interest in New Urbanism traces to his time on the City Planning Commission in the 1990s and a presentation he heard by architect and urban planner Andrés Duany
To educate others in San Antonio on the concept, Cross invited Witold Rybczynski, professor emeritus of urbanism at the University of Pennsylvania and author of Charleston Fancy: Little Houses and Big Dreams.in the Holy City, for the groundbreaking and a lecture Thursday evening.
In Charleston Fancy, Rybczynski uses the story of a group of youthful architects, builders, and developers based in Charleston, S.C., to convey the importance of architecture and design and the role individuals play in transforming local urban landscapes.
Dignitaries symbolically break ground for Vicinia on November 21.
“[New Urbanism] is not really new and a lot of people say it’s really the old urbanism,” Rybczynski said prior to
the groundbreaking at Vicinia. “But it’s the older urbanism trying to deal with the new problems because the
world has changed since then. We have a lot more cars. We have all sorts of different technology that we want
to take advantage of. We have much smaller households and much more variety of households.
And people want more choice.
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