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Too bad.
No surprise there. I always said there were too many moving parts with city, county, school district, and private money involved.
It's a shame the city can't force SAISD to sell that 25 acre Fox Tech ghost town right in the middle of downtown. The school board closed the high school but then "invented" a use for the old school by making it a magnet school for a couple hundred kids.
If they ran that district with any common sense at all they would sell that valuable downtown property for hundreds of millions of dollars and then make additional hundreds of milllions on the property tax revenue on the new high rises that go in there...but NOOOOO
They will just keep squandering money and come back in a couple of years with another multibazillion dollar bond issue they have to have "for the kids".
Too bad.
high rises? would probably be hard to fill, usually new stuff is up market, not "affordable housing", and that area is definitely not up market, only a few 100 feet from I35.
but yeah, too bad SAISD doesn't allow it to be developed for UIW med school right next to Baptist Med Center or something else.
Uhhhh....Boutons....been downtown lately?
Was it an SAISD issue though? Considering the other possible locations, UIW's funds might be more of a thing.
No, it was a combination of things. SAISD wanted to "rent" the property instead of selling it which makes any other financing infinitely more difficult. The city was supposed to commit to a couple million to "street improvements" and did. UIW wanted the county to build them an 8 million dollar parking garage "for free" and the county wouldn't do it. With all these headwinds they had a hard time getting alumni/donors to pony up the money to get it done.
My issue with SAISD is that this 25 acre ghost town right in the middle of our city is causing downtown to grow unnaturally in a horse shoe shape instead of concentrically with everything new tying in seamlessly.
I've driven by Fox going north from west downtown to get on i35 north, so yes. around Fox tech, very sucky. too far from the river, too close to the armpit of i35
Eh, why sell if you can get rent indefinitely?
It wouldn't be terribly concentric anyway IMO.
SAISD keeping this property for virtually zero reason is stupid in and of itself tbh.
Are you aware that there are several new condo complexes on the west side of downtown that are equally close to sucky I-10 / I-35? Are you aware that some people don't consider good freeway access a flaw?
I work at the weston center now and pretty much everything north and west of us is pretty bad outside of the Wyndham. It would be nice if they would start developing that section. (fox tech included)
SAISD has been a very corrupt district for a while.
Just check out how many members of past school boards have been on the take.
They get a relative to provide some cafeteria product, take kickbacks.
And the members get elected with a couple of hundred votes.
Its very sad, that district sucks.
selling a asset only to blow that money on another failed project?
this is just too common man, no point at all
I'm not sure what SAISD has to do with financing falling through for the UIW medical campus because they couldn't find the donors...SAISD wants to maximize its return on property it owns..BFD
I am not well acquainted enough with what they should or should not do with this property.
What I do know is the board can't be trusted to make good decisions for the kids and the district as a whole. They have walked a very fine line, enough so that the State has them on the watch list to run it themselves before returning it to more desirable trustees possibly outside the district. It's a mess. As is South San and Edgewood. SAISD is just much larger.
I really don't see a need for a new downtown HS campus, so SAISD will probably wind up renting the property....I think the worry is if they sell the property to a business the city will give it a tax abatement to locate there, then they won't collect taxes for 10 years..
Perhaps a bigger macro question is why does this town have so many bad school districts? South San ISD, Harlendale ISD, Southside ISD, Edgewoood ISD and to a lesser extent Southwest ISD and East Central ISD? They are all under performing and provide well paying jobs to over paid Superintendents and admins. Since they are all located in San Antonio, I'd like to say they should all be consolidated into one school district, but then we would have one huge horrible SAISD.
In the end, the kids suffer due to incompetency and corruption.
The only common denominator in the school districts you named are the demographics of the residents.
renting it for what?
It's a freaking school complete with football field, baseball field, etc. Nothing anyone would rent even if it was completely unoccupied.
agreed, the tax base should be enough to fund the schools, but the poverty and culture of the families in those districts I think are the determinant.
And charter schools as alternatives for the students wouldn't be any better, AND be more expensive.
however, pre-K, plus free breakfast and lunch for qualifying families could help with the poverty/culture disadvantages.
They have been getting all that for years.
free pre-K? then why hoolyawn's new pre-K program?
That's a damned good question. There was a thread about this awhile back.
http://www.spurstalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=201988
Bingo
And the poor people who want a way out are not receiving enough of a chance. A lot of broken homes and families who have never benefitted from an education. On PTA nights schools like Alamo Heights, Brandeis, Reagan will be full.
Go to Sam Houston on PTA night. Crickets...
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