The vacant Friedrich industrial complex has become a symbol of failed promises to redevelop the East Side. The most recent development plan for the site has fallen through.
Sam Owens/San Antonio Express-News
The vacant Friedrich industrial complex as seen last month. There is no greater symbol of the failed promises of economic development for the East Side than the Friedrich Building.
Sam Owens/San Antonio Express-News
The Friedrich Lofts project is the latest redevelopment plan for the Friedrich site that has failed to materialize.
Courtesy of Provident Realty Adv
On a cold and rainy afternoon in February 2010, San Antonio’s mayor, county judge, city manager and other local officials gathered for a press conference at the Friedrich Building to announce new ordinances that would encourage investment on the East Side.
Specific timetables for securing abandoned buildings, rounding up stray animals and putting more police officers in the area were essential for making a culturally and historically vibrant community a safer and more inviting community for investment.
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The press conference came after a trio of East Side reinvestment summits, which then-Mayor Julián Castro and then-District 2 City Council Member (and future mayor) Ivy Taylor had hosted in recent weeks.
Part of the discussion focused on why previous plans for economic development on the East Side never came to fruition and what could be done to avoid past mistakes.
Sixteen years later, we can look back and see that the intent was greater and the ambitions grander than the results. East Side revitalization — different than gentrification — remains an elusive grail. Perhaps nothing represents this more than the repeated failure to redevelopment the dilapidated, vacant and mostly torn down Friedrich Building into the housing and retail destination the East Side community wants.
With yet another promised redevelopment stalled — a 358-unit, mixed-income apartment complex called the Friedrich Lofts — there is a familiar disappointment for the East Side. This is the same disappointment following plans in 1999 to reimagine the Friedrich as an engine for development. And the same disappointment followed other plans after 2010 to redevelop the Friedrich, which is again up for sale.
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That Taylor and Castro held that 2010 press conference at the Friedrich was appropriate because there is no greater symbol of the failed promises of economic development for the East Side than the Friedrich Building. Not the Alamodome, which never attracted an NFL team. Not the Frost Bank Center, which the Spurs will cease calling home come 2032 when the team moves to a new arena downtown (despite Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones’ objections). The Friedrich stands alone as the symbol of failed development on the East Side.
No physical site is more emblematic of those unkept pledges. Every cliché for dashed expectations, from pulling the rug out from someone to Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown and betraying his trust just as he was going to kick it, can be attached to the Friedrich Building and its remnants.
Beginning in 1923, when 1617 E. Commerce became the manufacturing facility for the Friedrich Refrigeration Company (later changed to Friedrich Air Conditioning Co.), the property’s 450,000 square feet has sprawled over an entire block, its boundaries being East Commerce, North Pine, Gibbs and North Olive streets. Additional buildings were added during the 1950s.
By 1950, Friedrich was one of the largest manufacturers of commercial refrigeration property in the world. It then expanded into producing room air conditioner units.
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Bordering the Dignowity and Denver Heights neighborhoods, with its neon-red Friedrich sign, it was an iconic piece of San Antonio’s East Side because of the massive space it occupied and the significant jobs it provided.
But all good things come to an end, and in 1971, Friedrich began moving its manufacturing operations elsewhere before shutting down all operations in 1990.
For decades, the Friedrich has been idle in aging disrepair, a six-story, sand-colored monument of ugliness and neglect standing on 6 acres of potential.
The most decorative feature about the Friedrich Building has been the multicolored graffiti scrawled over it. It was a looming eyesore over the neighborhood where it once thrived, but it was also a blank screen upon which developers and community members could project serial visions of economic development.
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Proposal after proposal, promise after promise have come and gone. Trial balloons of hyped-up projects were quickly popped by the needles of reality.
In 1999, the Friedrich Building was to be refurbished and converted into apartments, retail and office space. That fell through.
In 2010, city officials considered buying and renovating it and moving the San Antonio Independent School District’s headquarters there. This would have brought life and restored relevancy to the site, but that fell through.
Over the years, rumors, updates and speculation about the next big plan for the Friedrich have come and gone as it sat in brooding desolation, as lifeless as the cemetery across the street.
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The Friedrich Lofts, announced in 2018, was the next big plan, the next grand promise. A $92 million project by Dallas-based Provident Realty Advisors and the San Antonio Housing Trust, the Lofts would have 358 apartments, including studio, one-bedroom and two-bedroom units. Half of the units would be affordable, based on residents earning 80% and 60% of the area median income.
Signs that this would happen materialized in 2023 when fencing surrounded the property popped up along with signs declaring it a demolition site.
Further confirmation came when some of the buildings were razed. But the familiar feel of stagnation, even abandonment, returned in mid-2024 with the disappearance of heavy machinery and stoppage of work from the Friedrich grounds.
As Express-News business reporter Madison Iszler recently reported, the project stalled and most of the property has been put up for sale. Stopping this latest vision, beyond the regular obstacles of financing, were doubts among investors and lenders that the returns renters would pay for the apartments would be enough to justify the costs of the environmental cleanup.
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In 2023, the development’s director told Iszler the project would be completed in three years, or 2026. Instead, 2026 marks another dashing of hopes for the Friedrich again becoming a linchpin of East Side.
What remains of the Friedrich looks like a bombing site, partially demolished and absent of life. For a brief period, it appeared to be on its way to becoming what East Side residents had long dreamed it could be.
It remains what it is has been for generations. A dream deferred.