The University of Texas at San Antonio has begun construction of a $131 million building along the renovated San Pedro Creek as it expands its footprint in downtown San Antonio.
San Pedro II — also known as the Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Careers building — will house business, computer engineering, hardware and software development, and science programs, as well as research. The 180,000-square-foot building is funded with bond proceeds backed by the University of Texas System’s Permanent University Fund and State of Texas Tuition Revenue Bond.
“Today marks another milestone in the achievement of a vision we could not even fantasize about 15 years ago, and that is having a major Tier 1, Carnegie-recognized university in the heart of downtown San Antonio,” Mayor Ron Nirenberg said.
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San Pedro II is being built on the site of the former Bexar County jail, which the university bought from the county last year. It is across the creek from San Pedro I, a $90 million, 167,000-square-foot building that opened in January and houses the School of Data Science and the National Security Collaboration Center.
Several years ago, local technology entrepreneur and downtown developer Graham Weston and others approached UTSA President Taylor Eighmy about selling UTSA’s campus to another university.
“We felt that the downtown campus had been an orphan for a long time, and that we felt that it’s such an important institution that we wanted to have a university come in and really embrace having a downtown campus,” Weston said in a previous interview.
Eighmy instead proposed expanding UTSA’s presence downtown, and Weston contributed $15 million to the School of Data Science.
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Weston’s real estate development firm, Weston Urban, is renovating historic buildings and erecting a high-rise with more than 300 apartments and retail and office space on a city block across from the school. Construction is expected to be completed in late 2025.
The creek snaking through west downtown is also undergoing $300 million of renovations to beautify, deepen and widen the waterway. The first phase of the work was finished last year, and three more phases are underway.
