SA metro estimate just shy of 2 million (Houston, Dallas: homes, employment)

[oldmanshirt]

Originally Posted by imaterry78259

Where are the 50 story skyscrapers in SA

Austin stole 'em all.

[traveler guy]

The skyless skyline SA has is due to many things.

1. Lack of high education- SA is known for being a blue collar city and with 50% high school drop out rates it's not going away any time soon. This is a major contribution to Austin's boom in construction.

2. The "Shadow city"- Meaning with Dallas and Houston just hours away why come here they both have a international level relations and lack restrictions zones which brings us to #3.

3. Restriction zones- there are many along downtown. for one no building can surpass the 750 ft. Tower. second is the historic areas here are every where and skyscrapers can't block a good view. third is the fact that all tall buildings must be that brown color you see downtown which is why there aren't any Dallas type glass buildings here. I also think it would be kinda weird to see a all glass building in the downtown area.

4. Location- Many times a city has tall skyscrapers is cause of location. ex- Dallas was built near a oil rich area giving it some of those buildings. other examples are New Orleans, Mobile , Miami etc...

[smuboy86]

Originally Posted by traveler guy

The skyless skyline SA has is due to many things.

1. Lack of high education- SA is known for being a blue collar city and with 50% high school drop out rates it's not going away any time soon. This is a major contribution to Austin's boom in construction.

2. The "Shadow city"- Meaning with Dallas and Houston just hours away why come here they both have a international level relations and lack restrictions zones which brings us to #3.

3. Restriction zones- there are many along downtown. for one no building can surpass the 750 ft. Tower. second is the historic areas here are every where and skyscrapers can't block a good view. third is the fact that all tall buildings must be that brown color you see downtown which is why there aren't any Dallas type glass buildings here. I also think it would be kinda weird to see a all glass building in the downtown area.

4. Location- Many times a city has tall skyscrapers is cause of location. ex- Dallas was built near a oil rich area giving it some of those buildings. other examples are New Orleans, Mobile , Miami etc...

Lets go for the out right lies...

1. The student dropout rate according to the TEA in Bexar county is 3.6 %
versus 3.9% in Dallas county, 3.1% in Harris and 3% in Harris county Sourcehttp://www.tea.state.tx.us/research/pdfs/dropcomp_county_supp_2005-06.pdf Not to mention it's just silly that dropout rates have anything to do with urban development.
2. Globalization has rendered major centers irrelevant, notice AT&T maintaining it's HQ in San Antonio, also the large in crease in direct fly from San Antonio to other cities in the last two years.
3. There is one view restriction downtown and that is the Alamo View, A building can be taller than the tower and there is nowhere that says a building has to be brown, lol what do you call the Grand Hyatt?
4. Much like 3 this view is outmoded in 2008. Using Dallas for example, the tallest buildings there were bank buildings, built to satisfy the ego of ceos. Almost all of the buildings in DT Dallas were to have a twin. When the banks collapsed because of the oil industry downtown dallas was virtually a ghost town. Lovely shinny towers with a 36.4% vacancy rate.

[michelangelo_sa]

Originally Posted by traveler guy

The skyless skyline SA has is due to many things.

1. Lack of high education- SA is known for being a blue collar city and with 50% high school drop out rates it's not going away any time soon. This is a major contribution to Austin's boom in construction.

Let me preference this by saying that San Antonio doesn't have a 50% dropout rate and actually Houston and Dallas both have worse dropout rates. Houston, Dallas, and Fort Worth all have graduation rates below 50 percent meaning their dropout rates are above 50 percent.

Firstly, SA isn't a blue collar city and I don't think it's known for that. It's known for a lot of other things but never have I heard it called blue collar aside from a few comments by people with very little knowlegde of San Antonio.

Second, education has almost nothing to do with how big or tall a skyline. Education helps in attracking jobs and companies, yes but education doesn't factor into whether a office highrise, residential highrise, hospitality highrise or any mix of those three highrise is built.

The major factors in deciding whether a highrise or skyscraper is built varies for many different reasons.

Including:

Cost. Cost of land, cost of construction.

Market. Whether a market can support it. Meaning, whether a market could support more hotel rooms or more residential units for so and so price. Also, what is the office vacancy rate?

Zoning. Whether an area is zoned for that type of development. In Houston's case, there is NO zoning whatsoever.

Economics. Both locally and nationally.

3. Restriction zones- there are many along downtown. for one no building can surpass the 750 ft. Tower.

Not true. There is no rule or restriction that no building downtown can surpass 750 feet.

second is the historic areas here are every where and skyscrapers can't block a good view.

The only height restrictions are near the Alamo. That's it.

third is the fact that all tall buildings must be that brown color you see downtown which is why there aren't any Dallas type glass buildings here. I also think it would be kinda weird to see a all glass building in the downtown area.

Again, not true at all. Downtown buildings do not have to be brown. Where are you getting this stuff from?

4. Location- Many times a city has tall skyscrapers is cause of location. ex- Dallas was built near a oil rich area giving it some of those buildings. other examples are New Orleans, Mobile , Miami etc...

That economics, not location. If the companies that helped spur the 80's building booms of Dallas and Houston were instead located in Jackson Hole Wyoming, guess what, Jackson Hole would have that skyline.

[schertz1]

In addition, USAA has over 1,000,000 sf of office space at there HQs. That is enough to make three or more 50 story buildings. Tesoro, valero, Nustar, HEB, Rackspace, all have large campus style HQs. The new Tesoro HQs has enough sf for amost 40 floors. The new Rackspace HQ (Windsor Park) has well over 1,000,000 sf , huge.

The ideal skyscrapers, some how, equal prosperity is false. If the above HQs were dt, San Antonio could have the best skyline in Texas.

San Antonio was also building bank highrises dt, some were canceled during the 80's financial crises.

[oldmanshirt]

Originally Posted by schertz1

In addition, USAA has over 1,000,000 sf of office space at there HQs. That is enough to make three or more 50 story buildings. Tesoro, valero, Nustar, HEB, Rackspace, all have large campus style HQs. The new Tesoro HQs has enough sf for amost 40 floors. The new Rackspace HQ (Windsor Park) has well over 1,000,000 sf , huge.

The ideal skyscrapers, some how, equal prosperity is false. If the above HQs were dt, San Antonio could have the best skyline in Texas.

San Antonio was also building bank highrises dt, some were canceled during the 80's financial crises.

Actually, USAA HQ has over 6,000,000 sq ft of space, which is on par with the Sears Tower.

For those singling out SA, some other cities with "disappointing" skylines would include Sacramento, San Jose, San Diego, Salt Lake City, Tampa, Orlando, Los Angeles (for a metro of 12 million, it's pretty underwhelming), and Phoenix. Granted, there's various reasons for these cities having short or underdeveloped DTs, but there's also reasons for SA's skyline being the way that it is. Some of the reasons have already been touched on, and others are kind of silly (a "historical preservation" council that's in charge of reviewing DT development for "appropriateness"), but you really can't deny that SA's DT contains something that many other cities would kill for: hundreds of visitors on any given day putting money into the local economy and soaking up the character and history of a place that is in many is frozen in time. This may not appeal to you (if I wasn't from SA, I probably wouldn't think much of it either), but to simply make false claims is counterproductive and insulting to common sense (i.e., the idea that all buildings DT have to be brown when buildings like the G Hyatt, Frost Building, and that black glass tower next to the Bank of America Tower - which itself has pink glass, now that I think of it - all feature colors other than brown).

BTW, Schertz, I'm curious as to whether you have any more info about those canceled high-rises.

[schertz1]

I can't think of the names, but one is where AT&T is headquartered today.
Two, of the three planned towers were built. The tallest, a 30+ story, got caught in the crises.

A embassy suites hotel is now planned for the site.

I didn't know USAA was that large; the campus is huge.
Sears tower is 4+ million sf, according to wikipedia.

[traveler guy]

Your right about the brown building thing that was just plain stupid, I don't even know were I heard that. I did remember reading the dropout rates in the Express news a while back though I was surprised, But I read what I read. I also got the height restriction from a building forum but I don't remember the name of the website.
Also education does play a role in the skyline cause more companies will come to a educated city more commonly then a less educated city. there are also more features a city must have like population so the city can provide a work force for the company.
San Antonio is known as a blue collar city to corporations cause of the education we have. which is one reason Toyota built it's factory here.

[NEsananto]

Also education does play a role in the skyline cause more companies will come to a educated city more commonly then a less educated city.

Not so, look at Redmond, Washington, where Microsoft and Nintendo of America are located. It's one of the most educated cities in the entire US and they have no skyline.
This site should give some more info, look at page 2 for a breakdown of the local economy.
http://sachamber.org/pubs/SAFacts.pdf (broken link)

[oldmanshirt]

Well Redmond is a little different, given that it's a satellite city that probably has different zoning and height restrictions than larger cities. The fact remains that there's no one concrete reason why SA's skyline is the way it is because there's many factors that go back decades.

But back on the original subject, I would like to see SA develop more like other metros (Seattle, for instance), in which companies are spread out to various cities around the metro area. This creates satellite communities that aren't merely suburbs from which people commute, but actual population and business centers in their own right. This in turn fosters more concentrated development and balanced growth. SA proper has always dominated the metro to the point where when people hear or speak of SA, its almost always limited to SA itself. Fortunately, New Braunfels, Schertz, Seguin, Cibolo, Boerne, and Windcrest are finally getting their acts together and looking to become more than just small towns/faceless suburbs. Hopefully it can keep up and SA can become a more vibrant and varied metro area!