On Monday, USAA reopened its six-level downtown parking garage, having added nearly 200 spaces to the structure for a total of 548 spots.
“Of those 548, all but 56 are available to the public during non-business hours,” Samira Bitar, executive director of marketing for USAA Real Estate Company, wrote in an email.
The garage is open to the public after 7 p.m. Monday-Thursday, after 6 p.m. Friday, and all day Saturday, Sunday and during holidays. People will be charged a flat rate of $5.
For the past 12 months, at least, USAA has been expanding its presence downtown in a strategy that has cost nearly $70 million. Last July, the company more than doubled its employees at One Riverwalk Plaza, 700 N. St. Mary’s St., the mid-rise which the garage connects to, to nearly 500.
In early 2019, the company was scheduled to add nearly 400 workers to the adjacent 28-story building at 300 Convent, the former Bank of America Plaza building, a USAA spokesman said in an interview at the time. Some of the employees are tech workers.
The company purchased One Riverwalk Plaza in 2013 and the former Bank of America Plaza in 2017.
In an interview last year, USAA spokesman Matthew Hartwig said the company eventually wants to place 2,000 workers inside its downtown buildings, but did not offer a timeline when asked.
The garage expansion resulted in the erasure of Hagner Arc, a tiny street that once connected Convent and Navarro streets.
In December 2017, the City Council approved an incentives package for USAA, in which the company receives a $4 million Chapter 380 economic development loan, and a rebate on city property taxes capped at $2 million, or across 10 years—whichever comes first.
The garage is a stone’s throw from the Tobin Center for the Performing Arts, which opened its own 521-space parking garage in late 2017 on Fourth Street on property owned by the First Baptist Church of San Antonio.
Setting It Straight: The name Hagner Arc was misspelled in the original version of this article.
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USAA’s ‘downtown campus’ taking shape
Contact Ben Olivo at 210-421-3932 | ben@saheron.com | @rbolivo on Twitter
It’s great if this $5 rate is for EVERY evening. Other garages put out signs for a more expensive “Event Rate.” At $5 rather than the $10-15 event rates that are common, local citizens might go to more downtown events.