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  #81  
Old Posted Aug 2, 2018, 3:39 PM
mhays mhays is online now
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Big companies tend to favor downtowns and towers in cities with more density and transit, particularly in industries that have a lot of well-paid 20-somethings. Some of that is for recruitment.

Another big reason is basic economics of real estate...building Downtown requires using less land, and generally a small fraction of the parking (or a big fraction in Texas's case). But is transit strong enough in your city to make even a semi-urban ratio work?
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  #82  
Old Posted Aug 2, 2018, 3:48 PM
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Originally Posted by mhays View Post
Big companies tend to favor downtowns and towers in cities with more density and transit, particularly in industries that have a lot of well-paid 20-somethings. Some of that is for recruitment.
True to an extent with tech but I think that depends on the city they are in. The Silicon Valley is sprawlville thus you wind up with Apple/ Google/ Facebook and others with their massive suburban complexes. Salesforce and Amazon are in more dense cities have have their HQ's in their respective urban centers. All these companies have offices all over the country and the type usually varies by the layout of the city. Most of Austin's tech presence are rather suburban as opposed to NY or SF where they are urban.
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  #83  
Old Posted Aug 2, 2018, 4:14 PM
ATXboom ATXboom is offline
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Originally Posted by JAYNYC View Post
SBC/AT&T's relocation to Dallas was definitely a major blow to San Antonio's corporate image.

On a related note, I've often wondered why none of the major companies (SBC/AT&T, Clear Channel, Valero, Frost, etc.) that have been headquartered in San Antonio never sought to build a downtown tower, and instead opted for the "campus" approach (ugh). Even OKC was blessed with a tower from Chesapeake Energy; as odd as it may look rising solo above the flat and barren OKC terrain, at least it's something.
It all comes down to the work force demographic at various types of corporations. Young techies want urban. Older types with kids wants burbs. The companies simply go where the target workforce is or wants to be. Supply all meet demand. Often times they want both demographics. U see that play out in Austin where tech firms have both downtow and suburban campuses.
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  #84  
Old Posted Aug 2, 2018, 4:27 PM
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Originally Posted by ATXboom View Post
It all comes down to the work force demographic at various types of corporations. Young techies want urban. Older types with kids wants burbs. The companies simply go where the target workforce is or wants to be. Supply all meet demand. Often times they want both demographics. U see that play out in Austin where tech firms have both downtow and suburban campuses.
Tech companies pretty much do that everywhere. In Austin, the vast majority are in suburban office parks.
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  #85  
Old Posted Aug 2, 2018, 6:35 PM
ATXboom ATXboom is offline
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Tech companies pretty much do that everywhere. In Austin, the vast majority are in suburban office parks.
Staying on thread... describing why downtown Austin is booming and SA isn't:

While young techies have driven a lot of downtown residential development over the last 10 years (not happening in SA), big office development downtown has been a more recent phenomenon driven by young tech (less than 5 years ago) E.g. see google tower under construction. SXSW tower under construction. Facebook leasing multiple buildings, etc.

You are absolutely right that it is common in bay area, NY, Seatle, Boston, Chicago, etc... but only recently in Austin. Makes sense since most people moving in are younger and from those places so they demand similar context. But it's non existent in SA - there is much less demand for significant office or residential downtown because of the type of people drawn to the types of jobs/businesses there.

Last edited by ATXboom; Aug 2, 2018 at 6:46 PM.
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  #86  
Old Posted Aug 3, 2018, 2:15 AM
Dariusb Dariusb is offline
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Originally Posted by N90 View Post
No, Ft. Worth still has its airport. Meacham Intl airport is going back to commercial again in 2 years after upgrades are made.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbc...1.html%3famp=y

DFW will have its 3rd airport
Do you think having a 3rd airport would hurt the others/take away a lot of business or no?
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  #87  
Old Posted Aug 3, 2018, 5:53 AM
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Do you think having a 3rd airport would hurt the others/take away a lot of business or no?
No, because American and Oneworld have squeezed the market share at DFW. And Southwest is squeezing the market share at Love Field. So airlines that have diminishing returns at DFW and DAL can just operate from Meacham Intl airport instead. I think seeing 3rd airports get commercial destinations in the cities people from that area vacation to the most makes the most sense.

Plenty of 3rd airports exist just to do this.
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  #88  
Old Posted Aug 3, 2018, 11:51 PM
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No, because American and Oneworld have squeezed the market share at DFW. And Southwest is squeezing the market share at Love Field. So airlines that have diminishing returns at DFW and DAL can just operate from Meacham Intl airport instead. I think seeing 3rd airports get commercial destinations in the cities people from that area vacation to the most makes the most sense.

Plenty of 3rd airports exist just to do this.
If/when this happens, the DFW area would join the NYC, LA, and SF Bay area in metros with the most international airports.
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  #89  
Old Posted Aug 5, 2018, 2:40 AM
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As others have said, it’s just a demographics thing. SA has (relatively) low-wag service jobs and is mostly centered on families, who want a mortgage, yard, and short commute. This doesn’t lend itself to a demand for urban living.

Austin is filed with young, highly educated individuals and tech companies, which does lend itself toward a certain type of urban living and amenities.

This doesn’t answer the chicken/egg question, but basically both cities have developed their own niches. That said...

I think SA’s military culture has held it back in a sense. The military is very conservative (in terms of culitrual continuity and a suppression of expressive individuality) and I think that’s shaped the city’s culture to an extent, as it has in other military towns. Austin had the opposite cultural influencer of a major university campus, which is more progressive and encouraging of creativity. I say that as someone who first lived in SA as a proud military kid so this isn’t a jab at SA/the military, just an observation.
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  #90  
Old Posted Aug 5, 2018, 3:18 AM
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As others have said, it’s just a demographics thing. SA has (relatively) low-wag service jobs and is mostly centered on families, who want a mortgage, yard, and short commute. This doesn’t lend itself to a demand for urban living.

Austin is filed with young, highly educated individuals and tech companies, which does lend itself toward a certain type of urban living and amenities.

This doesn’t answer the chicken/egg question, but basically both cities have developed their own niches. That said...

I think SA’s military culture has held it back in a sense. The military is very conservative (in terms of culitrual continuity and a suppression of expressive individuality) and I think that’s shaped the city’s culture to an extent, as it has in other military towns. Austin had the opposite cultural influencer of a major university campus, which is more progressive and encouraging of creativity. I say that as someone who first lived in SA as a proud military kid so this isn’t a jab at SA/the military, just an observation.
Although I appreciate your perspective I think the military part towards the end might be a little off.

San Antonio's most important demographic stat is its Hispanic population. Hispanics make up over 60% of the 1.5 million people. No doubt, the military is a large component of the city's makeup but I think it has less to do with conservatism and more to do with a transient population. Where I live, Norfolk, the Navy is king. The whole region is incredibly reliant on the Navy. We have the largest jet base and largest Navy ship port. These people( I just got out) for the most part don't care about their local community. They will *always* vote against a new tax. It makes sense, why raise their taxes for say a transit package that wont be finished for a decade when they have orders to California in a year? Its a bad situation but it is what it is.
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  #91  
Old Posted Aug 5, 2018, 2:02 PM
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Originally Posted by jtown,man View Post
Although I appreciate your perspective I think the military part towards the end might be a little off.

San Antonio's most important demographic stat is its Hispanic population. Hispanics make up over 60% of the 1.5 million people. No doubt, the military is a large component of the city's makeup but I think it has less to do with conservatism and more to do with a transient population. Where I live, Norfolk, the Navy is king. The whole region is incredibly reliant on the Navy. We have the largest jet base and largest Navy ship port. These people( I just got out) for the most part don't care about their local community. They will *always* vote against a new tax. It makes sense, why raise their taxes for say a transit package that wont be finished for a decade when they have orders to California in a year? Its a bad situation but it is what it is.
I agree that the transient population is part of the equation. My point was just that military cities tend to have a similar cultural feel and, for whatever reasons, they tend to not be magnates for great urban growth. I’m struggling to think of a military city that has a “hip” reputation like Austin (San Diego?), which I think is in part due to the conservative influence of a large military population. Conservative areas (in the sense I explained above) generally aren’t hotbeds for new tech industries or the creative arts that draw the type of Austin-bred millenial growth.

Obviously there is a LOT more to SA culture than the military and it is a pretty unique place because of the huge Hispanic influence. I agree with other posters that SA should capitalize on that fact and become a sort of Miami of the Southwest.
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  #92  
Old Posted Aug 5, 2018, 3:43 PM
Hindentanic Hindentanic is offline
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It might be useful to consider where San Antonio's military installations are located: in the city's suburbs and fringes. So too is UTSA and the city's other universities and colleges, with the state public university being the furthest from the downtown core. USAA, Valero, Tesoro, Toyota, the Medical Center, and Port San Antonio are also in the suburban ring city, with USAA's headquarters and it's floor equivalent of New York City's former 1 World Trade Center not providing any greater boost to downtown activity or skyline. The economic engines to produce large numbers of stable middle and upper level jobs in San Antonio are all diffused outside the downtown area, leaving a core with a larger proportion of lower wage hospitality jobs serving outfits where the profits are sent away to national chain hoteliers. And "diffused" is the key word--San Antonio sprawls such that Manhattan, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, Miami, and Pittsburgh all fit within its city limits, but San Antonio does not have anywhere near those combined populations or city GDPs. Maps from the 1960s boasted San Antonio's built or planned triple rings of highways, at the time seemingly more extensive than other cities in Texas and even more than most cities in the U.S., and much of this infrastructure was driven by San Antonio's many military installations into a feedback for suburban sprawl and patchwork development.

Austin's suburbs sprawl too, but it now has a stronger downtown, which has long been made up of three components: the commercial CBD, the state capitol, and the University of Texas campus. The latter two are huge economic engines of state largess operating almost as cities in themselves and around which large amounts of investment capital accrues. UT alone puts 74,000 people with high paychecks or attached Federal financing and grants right into the city center. The commercial CDB, however, was in no better shape in the 1990s than that of San Antonio, with a few local bank and insurance branch office buildings surrounded by empty warehouse and light industrial districts all of whose vitality had been sapped by sprawling suburban growth, which is where Dell and IBM are located. What has changed are general economic and demographic trends nationally to favor dynamic downtown cores of urban professionals, and Austin's has the immediacy of UT and State government to drive demand and investment and then retain them, for even Millennial lifestyles still gravitate around concentrations of Millennial money. Smaller Austin never built a highway network to the extent of that of San Antonio, and while that has made for terrible traffic, it may have restricted pressure to further sprawl as city growth later mushroomed and magnified additional growth pressure instead on the core, where the two large state-powered economic generators operate successfully regardless of traffic.

San Antonio's downtown still does not have the immediacy of investment that comes with a flagship state institution like UT or state government, and its comparable downtown redevelopment without such giant economic engines has been predictably slower. Had UTSA been built within the same proximity and connectivity to downtown that UT had done in Austin, then San Antonio's downtown core and inner suburbs would have been in much more advanced economic and developmental position. They are only now discussing the types of core development plans that Austin had discussed 20 years ago, and while San Antonio now has a downtown UTSA component campus and a new boom in downtown and inner ring construction with Frost, Pearl, and riverwalk expansions, San Antonio is still well behind the curve despite its seeming advantage over Austin in size of area and population. Suburban UTSA has long been spurring large developments not unlike UT Austin, but that development is lost into the sprawl. Density matters, but particularly density of capital, and for a downtown area, a flagship state university and permanent state governmental institutions continually cycling money on the scales of state budgets have greater economic heft than distant suburban sprawl or a river lined with enchilada restaurants.

Last edited by Hindentanic; Aug 5, 2018 at 6:01 PM.
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  #93  
Old Posted Aug 5, 2018, 6:53 PM
ATXboom ATXboom is offline
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Good point about transportation infrastructure. Austin’s lack of investment has hurt mobility making proximity much more important. That is evident in central Austin property values which are significantly higher than SA... really all major Tx cities. That dives investments in dense development - in order to get a decent ROI on expensive property developers need to build more dense.
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  #94  
Old Posted Aug 6, 2018, 5:05 AM
JAYNYC JAYNYC is offline
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Originally Posted by Hindentanic View Post
It might be useful to consider where San Antonio's military installations are located: in the city's suburbs and fringes. So too is UTSA and the city's other universities and colleges, with the state public university being the furthest from the downtown core. USAA, Valero, Tesoro, Toyota, the Medical Center, and Port San Antonio are also in the suburban ring city, with USAA's headquarters and it's floor equivalent of New York City's former 1 World Trade Center not providing any greater boost to downtown activity or skyline. The economic engines to produce large numbers of stable middle and upper level jobs in San Antonio are all diffused outside the downtown area, leaving a core with a larger proportion of lower wage hospitality jobs serving outfits where the profits are sent away to national chain hoteliers. And "diffused" is the key word--San Antonio sprawls such that Manhattan, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, Miami, and Pittsburgh all fit within its city limits, but San Antonio does not have anywhere near those combined populations or city GDPs. Maps from the 1960s boasted San Antonio's built or planned triple rings of highways, at the time seemingly more extensive than other cities in Texas and even more than most cities in the U.S., and much of this infrastructure was driven by San Antonio's many military installations into a feedback for suburban sprawl and patchwork development.

Austin's suburbs sprawl too, but it now has a stronger downtown, which has long been made up of three components: the commercial CBD, the state capitol, and the University of Texas campus. The latter two are huge economic engines of state largess operating almost as cities in themselves and around which large amounts of investment capital accrues. UT alone puts 74,000 people with high paychecks or attached Federal financing and grants right into the city center. The commercial CDB, however, was in no better shape in the 1990s than that of San Antonio, with a few local bank and insurance branch office buildings surrounded by empty warehouse and light industrial districts all of whose vitality had been sapped by sprawling suburban growth, which is where Dell and IBM are located. What has changed are general economic and demographic trends nationally to favor dynamic downtown cores of urban professionals, and Austin's has the immediacy of UT and State government to drive demand and investment and then retain them, for even Millennial lifestyles still gravitate around concentrations of Millennial money. Smaller Austin never built a highway network to the extent of that of San Antonio, and while that has made for terrible traffic, it may have restricted pressure to further sprawl as city growth later mushroomed and magnified additional growth pressure instead on the core, where the two large state-powered economic generators operate successfully regardless of traffic.

San Antonio's downtown still does not have the immediacy of investment that comes with a flagship state institution like UT or state government, and its comparable downtown redevelopment without such giant economic engines has been predictably slower. Had UTSA been built within the same proximity and connectivity to downtown that UT had done in Austin, then San Antonio's downtown core and inner suburbs would have been in much more advanced economic and developmental position. They are only now discussing the types of core development plans that Austin had discussed 20 years ago, and while San Antonio now has a downtown UTSA component campus and a new boom in downtown and inner ring construction with Frost, Pearl, and riverwalk expansions, San Antonio is still well behind the curve despite its seeming advantage over Austin in size of area and population. Suburban UTSA has long been spurring large developments not unlike UT Austin, but that development is lost into the sprawl. Density matters, but particularly density of capital, and for a downtown area, a flagship state university and permanent state governmental institutions continually cycling money on the scales of state budgets have greater economic heft than distant suburban sprawl or a river lined with enchilada restaurants.
Very insightful and thorough assessment.

I'm surprised, though, that so few people have cited SXSW and ACL - two globally renowned events that bring hundreds of thousands of visitors and media to Austin annually - as a large factor in promoting Austin's public profile, image and growth over that of San Antonio. I know people from NYC, L.A. and the Bay Area who, upon visiting Austin, automatically designate it as the best city in Texas by far and also credit it for many of the cultural offerings (Tex Mex cuisine / breakfast tacos, etc.) that actually started (or became best known regionally) in San Antonio.

The value of this intangible yet widespread PR on Austin's behalf (basically putting Austin in the nationwide spotlight and showing its hip and innovative side twice yearly) from influencers and thought leaders carries a ton of weight in shaping the domestic perception of Austin, particularly among millennials.
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  #95  
Old Posted Aug 6, 2018, 2:37 PM
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I think the contrast between the two will be the region's greatest asset as time goes on and the two metro's gradually merge. It's like Dallas and Fort Worth; Dallas is more cosmopolitan, glitzy, hipper city where as Fort Worth is more laid back and the last major city to still exude "Texas"
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  #96  
Old Posted Aug 6, 2018, 4:11 PM
ATXboom ATXboom is offline
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AGREE... Its a no brainer to connect these cities via high speed transit (rail). However I would imagine SA's airport would not like that... would just expedite the manifestation of Austin's airport being the main point of entry/departure for the region.
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  #97  
Old Posted Aug 7, 2018, 12:12 AM
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What on Earth is up with this "Triangle" area in Austin looool. On Google Maps it looks like some backwoods low density projects. Huge ugly parking areas and green spaces. That is barfville. Never quite seen anything like that. How has it not been scrapped and redone?
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  #98  
Old Posted Aug 16, 2018, 2:38 PM
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San Antonio's economy is much more than just tourism.
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2020 S. A. Pop 1.59 million/ Metro 2.64 million/ASA corridor 5 million Census undercount city proper. San Antonio economy and largest economic sectors. Annual contribution towards GDP. U.S. DOD$48.5billion/Manufacturing $40.5 billion/Healthcare-Biosciences $40 billion/Finance-Insurance $20 billion/Tourism $15 billion/ Technology $10 billion. S.A./ Austin: Tech $25 billion/Manufacturing $11 billion/ Tourism $9 billion.
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  #99  
Old Posted Aug 16, 2018, 3:17 PM
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Originally Posted by Paul in S.A TX View Post
San Antonio's economy is much more than just tourism.
It’s a major cyber security hub, but as someone mentioned a lot of this cluster is away from the city center. I really don’t recognize north/northwestern San Antonio anymore on my drive from Austin to Kerrville. Not to mention the prettiest scenery is out there too, I had forgotten how pretty northern San Antonio was.
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  #100  
Old Posted Aug 16, 2018, 9:00 PM
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Originally Posted by Paul in S.A TX View Post
San Antonio's economy is much more than just tourism.
Having lived in San Antonio for just over 10 years now, I am amazed at how much the city's economy has diversified. It just seems that the city has given downtown to the tourist sector.

I know it isn't scientific, but all the people I know here say the same thing. That is "downtown is for the tourists". To me there is just nothing that would pull me to go downtown. I can find good shopping and restaurants closer to where I live. I love the Riverwalk, but I use the Museum Reach from the Pearl as it is more peaceful.

IMO, the design review process for certain areas of the CBD also restricts development.

I love living in San Antonio, and love spending time in Austin. I don't believe the 2 cities are in any type of competition as they fill different roles and economic specialties.
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