The reincarnation of a former ‘80s-era shopping mall turned trendy tech office space that a city and the county spent millions to save from obscurity is nearly complete.

With structural improvements almost finished, the Windcrest International Business Park in Northeast Bexar County is nearing the end of a $40 million makeover that started in 2024.

Leasing agents with the commercial real estate firm JLL have announced the building bought in 2023 by Industrial Commercial Properties (ICP) of Ohio is ready for its first tenants. 

ICP specializes in mall-to-industrial kinds of conversions, turning former retail meccas popular in the 1970s and ‘80s then later abandoned, into space for warehousing and manufacturing uses. 

Not much remains on the inside of the old Windsor Park Mall and former Rackspace headquarters as the warehouse and manufacturing spaces take shape at the Windcrest International Business Park. Credit: Amber Esparza / San Antonio Report

Windsor Park Mall closed in 2005 and the property was acquired in 2008 by cloud computing company Rackspace, which referred to their new headquarters as the castle, renaming the streets and adding office space, contemporary fixtures and a green space in the parking lot. 

Rackspace occupied about half of the mall’s spaces and corridors until 2022 when it downsized to a far Northside office building, having reduced its space needs due to layoffs and remote work.

On a recent tour of the facility, JLL Senior Vice President Ben Jordan said the interior demolition will make it easier to market the space and show its potential.

“Now that it’s wide open, we’ve seen a lot more activity from prospective tenants,” Jordan said.

Gone are the escalators and fountains, the storefronts and mannequins, the conference rooms and cubicles, and a polished spiral tube slide that elevated a tech company’s cool factor.

The main lobby and reception desk are all that remain of the former Rackspace headquarters at “The Castle” inside the old Windsor Park Mall that is now the Windcrest International Business Park. Credit: Amber Esparza / San Antonio Report

The massive building on 67 acres at the corner of Interstate 35 and Walzem Road that once housed retail stores, and later hundreds of Rackers, is now a hollow shell. 

Crews have removed most of the second floor throughout the now cavernous, L-shaped structure, reducing the overall square footage from its original 1.2 million to 640,000. Only the building’s many 30-50-foot supports spanning from the ceiling to a dusty, concrete foundation remain. 

In the former Montgomery Wards department store on the west side of the mall, workers are installing horizontal steel beams as they remove vertical pillars to create wide open spaces for stacking products and running assembly lines. 

“The plan is to remove half of the [300] columns,” Jordan said. When complete, “it’ll look and feel like typical Class A warehouse column spacing.”

The City of Windcrest and other entities, eager to keep the property from becoming an economic albatross, found ways to support the ICP project.

Construction continues in preparation for the Windcrest International Business Park which was formerly home to Rackspace and the old Windsor Park Mall. Credit: Amber Esparza / San Antonio Report

Windcrest, Bexar County and the Northeast Independent School District agreed to tax incentives valued between $5.6 million and almost $7 million over a seven-year period.

But the Windcrest city council also approved an incentive agreement with ICP that keeps the property off the tax rolls for seven years. The city will collect sales tax that comes from the property and, in lieu of taxes, ICP will pay $100,000 a year to NEISD for seven years.

Employees of Rackspace walk through the main lobby of the Rackspace headquarters in 2017. Credit: Bonnie Arbittier / San Antonio Report

Those deals were made possible in part because Rackspace, which terminated its commitments to Windcrest 15 years ahead of schedule, agreed to repay $9 million in tax breaks that it was promised. Of that amount, $2.5 million goes to Bexar County and $700,000 to Windcrest.

ICP agreed to terms that call for ICP to invest at least $40 million in the property and bring 300 full-time employees on the site by 2030 and keep Windcrest in the property’s name.

The business park comes on the market just as the region’s industrial real estate market feels the pressure of over-building the past few years, resulting in some of the nation’s highest vacancy rates at 10%.

Mario Hernandez, executive director of the Windcrest Economic Development Corp. (WEDC), said the agreement to reduce by about half a tenants’ operating costs for their first few years in the business park was a good move considering current market conditions. That makes the property more attractive, he said.

A portion of wall stands on its own somewhere inside of the former Windsor Park Mall, which later housed the Rackspace tech company, that is now home to the Windcrest International Business Park on March 17, 2026. Credit: Amber Esparza / San Antonio Report

In fact, the agents are in talks with two good leads, one a tech company and the other a production company from California, Hernandez said, adding they are targeting companies that could generate sales tax for Windcrest the way Rackspace did.

Jordan distinguishes the Windcrest park from other sites, many of which have been built out in recent years in that I-35 and Interstate 10 part of the city, by pointing to its proximity to the city and services.

“I would classify this project as more of an infill development, meaning we’re not out on the periphery of town,” he said. “We kind of have that luxury of being with an existing, established market that’s a benefit for this project and the redevelopment.”

Those on the outskirts of town, added JLL Associate Roman Rodriguez, “are going to be more for a traditional distribution [center], whereas this has really extraordinary power for the area.”

The new business park could be leased to a single tenant or multiple tenants. ICP will remodel the space to their needs.

The former Rackspace headquarters at the old Windsor Park Mall seen in 2021 that is now the Windcrest International Business Park. Credit: Nick Wagner / San Antonio Report

“We want to get a fresh canvas for any possible tenant, and then let them kind of get creative with us, to get their vision, get what they want into their space,” said Noel Luna, senior project manager for ICP.

For now, all that remains of Rackspace is a broad reception desk and glass-enclosed customer service area. 

Pretty much all that lingers from the shopping mall days are the property’s 3,000 parking spaces — a desirable feature for labor-intensive manufacturing operations — and the memories, of course.

Jordan can still recall his grandparents, who lived in Windcrest, visiting Windsor Park Mall for their morning walks.