Richard Webner and Joshua Fechter July 24, 2018 Updated: July 24, 2018 10:59 a.m.
As San Antonians and their elected leaders debate the future of Alamo Plaza, a Dallas developer is drawing up plans for a 14-story Hard Rock Hotel that will loom over the revered battleground.
The developer, JMJ Development, wants to build the hotel on top of the 131-year-old Joske’s building at Shops at Rivercenter mall, spokeswoman Kimberly Rhodes said in an email. That’s the same site where a 2013 proposal for a 23-story hotel tower failed amid concerns that it would damage the ambiance around the Alamo.
The Hard Rock Hotel’s 14 stories will be atop the four-story Joske’s building, so the structure will be a total of about 18 stories tall, according to design renderings provided by JMJ.
The 300-room hotel, which would be the only Hard Rock Hotel in Texas, will feature a rooftop bar, a ballroom, a spa and a pool deck, Rhodes said in an email. The project is still in concept stage and the details are not set in stone, she said.
Representatives of Hard Rock Hotels and New York-based Ashkenazy Acquisition Corp., which owns Shops at Rivercenter, did not immediately respond to calls and emails requesting comment.
The San Antonio Conservation Society, which fought against the 2013 proposal, would “certainly” oppose something of the Hard Rock Hotel’s size, said its executive director Vincent Michael. He’s concerned the tower would cast a shadow on the Alamo and diminish the Joske’s building.
“When an original structure is only four stories high, and you’re adding something more than four times that, it’s usually going to be overwhelming,” he said.
Bexar County Commissioner Tommy Calvert, whose precinct would include the tower, said he would support the project in the interest of modernizing downtown. He believes that San Antonio’s small skyline relative to cities like Austin is hampering tourism.
District 1 City Councilman Roberto Treviño said that he wasn’t sure whether he would support the hotel tower without more information. He and other city officials weren’t aware of the proposal, he said.
“We’ll expect to know more about it as it goes through the normal process,” he said.
JMJ Development also plans to build a 24-story apartment tower on the River Walk. The tower was originally expected to break ground in late 2016, but construction will now begin in January, Rhodes said. Construction was delayed when JMJ decided to put the project’s parking across the street, rather than at the bottom of the building, which required it to redesign the project and buy another property.
The Joske’s building is a city historic site, and is within the downtown and Alamo Plaza historic districts, so the proposed tower would have to be approved by the city’s Historic and Design Review Commission.
In 2013, Dallas-based BC Realty Partners proposed building the 23-story hotel, with at least 500 rooms, in partnership with Ashkenazy. It’s unclear what role Ashkenazy would take in the Hard Rock Hotel.
The 2013 tower proposal was staunchly opposed by conservation advocates who worried that it would cast a shadow over Alamo Plaza. The head of the U.S. National Park Service told San Antonio leaders that a new tower so close to the Alamo could threaten the city’s application for World Heritage status for its missions.
BC Realty shrank part of the proposed tower to just 10 stories, but HDRC still recommended denying approval.
City Manager Sheryl Sculley then resuscitated the project, allowing it to go through HDRC again if the developers reduced its scale. Ashkenazy scrapped the project anyway in August 2013.
The Joske’s was vacant for nearly eight years following the closure of the Dillard’s department store, until Ashkenazy renovated and reopened it in 2016 with an H&M, a Dave & Busters, a Starbucks and other stores.
The construction of a 300-room hotel in the San Antonio area would be a “big deal,” said Paul Vaughn, senior vice president of San Antonio-based hotel data firm Source Strategies Inc.
The San Antonio hotel market has lost ground in recent years to Houston, Austin and Dallas — which added, respectively, 6,200, 5,200 and 4,800 rooms to their hotel offerings during the first quarter this year, according to Source Strategies data. San Antonio added just 1,200 in that timeframe, a disparity Vaughn attributes in part to larger tourism promotion budgets in other cities.
If local leaders’ plans for redeveloping Alamo Plaza make the spot a more valuable tourist destination, the San Antonio hotel market will need more rooms to deal with increased demand, Vaughn said.
“Somebody’s making a bet on that and that’s a lot of money to wager,” Vaughn said of the Hard Rock Hotel project.
Justin Holley, chairman of the San Antonio Hotel and Lodging Association, said Monday he hadn’t heard of the proposed Hard Rock Hotel project but that national hotel players are increasingly looking to San Antonio’s hotel market for acquisitions and expansion. Holley noted that Blackstone, one of the world’s largest private equity firms, is in talks to buy the JW Marriott San Antonio Hill Country Resort & Spa.
San Antonio could absorb about three larger hotels like the 300-room Hard Rock Hotel in order to compete with Austin, Houston and Dallas, he said.
The proposed hotel’s proximity to the Alamo and Henry B. González Convention Center would likely make it viable, Holley said.
“If the Hard Rock folks have their stuff together and can come and propose something that’s complementary to what we need downtown, how can we say no?” Holley said.