Centro San Antonio Economic Development Director discusses new public database, major projects

SAINT ANTONIO – If you’ve been downtown lately, you’ve probably noticed the construction, the cranes, and the big projects.

Sarah Esserleiu Khalil, Director of Economic Development at Centro San Antonio, spoke to Leading SA about the new public database and the big projects on the horizon.

“We’ve been working on building this tool for about a year, but this really comes off because we built a lot and had a lot of questions about this build… We wanted to have a way to just look at it and demystify some of the builds. [The map is] separated into private and public [projects,]said Khalil.

The database is publicly accessible and aims to be user-friendly.

“You don’t have to be demanding [or] Know technical terms related to development or construction. You can just go to the tool and click on it. When we speak to companies and they might be considering opening a downtown location, they want to know what exactly is going on and what they can count on in the years to come in terms of office workers or tourism or more downtown residents to find out if it’s a good place for them to open. Therefore, we wanted this tool to be open to the investment and business world, but also to the general public. This is curious about the construction in downtown,” Khalil said.

A key initiative right now is Downtown 2.0, where people live, work and play in the urban core of our city.

Khalil spoke about why inner city population growth is critical to the initiative, adding how other inner city residents have been impacting their cities during the pandemic.

“One is that walkability and vitality can only come when there are more residents supporting retail. And what we’ve seen in the pandemic is, you know, hospitality and the office went away for a couple of years, and that’s made it tough for the downtown residents there. There weren’t many residents in our downtown area [like] in some other inner cities. It was really the residents that kept their downtown alive… Offices remain kind of a new challenge, but we’re seeing more housing, and downtown can be a very livable place,” Khalil said.

Khalil even highlighted some current and future aspects of downtown life.

“We have the Pearl is fantastic. Downtown is great, but the core is really built around that walkability. You have the River Walk, you have many other great things that have come about. I mean Legacy Park. And when the weather is great, you want to go there and hang out. Hopefully, when Civic Park opens, you’ll be able to hang out on the grass later this year, too. And there’s just a lot to do and we have a very urban, walkable environment,” said Khalil.

Copyright 2023 by KSAT – All rights reserved.