\u201cWe wanted the opposite. We wanted a tremendous amount of community input before we unveiled what the master plan was,\u201d Alanis said. \u201cIt was really to show we wanted to do this differently and we wanted the community to be a part of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Housing Trust kicked off Project DC with multiple engagement events last week. The information sessions felt more like interactive museums, where participants could walk through multiple floors at a Housing Trust building near the VIA Centro Plaza, learn about Cattleman Square\u2019s history and record their ideas. Attendees recorded voice memos, covered maps with push pins and Post-it notes and wrote letters with their visions or memories for the neighborhood.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/IMG_7037.jpg\")
Ideas for names for the District of Cattleman project are stuck to a poster during a Project DC engagement session on March 19, 2026. Credit: Jasper Kenzo Sundeen \/ San Antonio Report<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the first phase of a yearlong plan to gather feedback, Alanis said. The Housing Trust spent the last months of 2025 researching and analyzing Cattleman Square. Staff, including 12 canvassers, are seeking community input right now and will start using that input to craft a vision for the area in April.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Between July and November, the Housing Trust will start drafting a plan. Alanis said that will be a back-and-forth process where multiple drafts are shared with community members for reshaping. The organization plans to take its time before publishing a master plan by January 2027.<\/p>\n
The Housing Trust is also communicating with institutions that have a footprint in the area. Alanis said the organization has memorandums of understanding with University Health, Haven for Hope and Prospera, which all own property or have campuses there, and verbal agreements with University of Texas at San Antonio and VIA Metropolitan Transit.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey have very critical and core services that they are providing for the community,\u201d Alanis said.<\/p>\n
![\"An](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Project_DC_Aerial.jpg\")
A map from the Project DC website from March 24 shows the boundary for the district in purple, as well as key roads and highways in the area. Credit: Courtesy \/ Project DC<\/p>\n
A key component of the project has been homeless outreach, Alanis added, and the Housing Trust is working with Corazon Ministries and 8th and Home<\/a> to work with homeless community members and develop a response plan.<\/p>\n It\u2019s the latest effort to revitalize Cattleman Square, one of the city\u2019s 32 historic districts.\u00a0<\/p>\n Designated historic in 1985, the dozen or so blocks that make up the district are situated west of Interstate 35 and the urban core. Its historic assets include the I&GN Railroad Passenger Station and the Heimann Building, which was built in 1909.<\/p>\n Also near the district is the Bexar County Detention Center and Haven for Hope, a nonprofit hub of services and support for people experiencing homelessness.<\/p>\n The neighborhood bears the weight of long-vacant historic buildings that Westside advocates want preserved as well as systemic underinvestment.<\/p>\n The tide seemed to turn briefly in 1997 when UT San Antonio opened its downtown campus, completing the Buena Vista Street and Frio Street buildings in place of the failed Fiesta Plaza Mall and promising to boost enrollment.<\/p>\n Since then, the university has thus far put more of its expansion efforts into the center city despite previous master plans that envisioned academic and residential towers on parcels surrounding the main downtown campus near Cattleman Square.<\/p>\n Other redevelopment efforts in Cattleman Square have started and failed<\/a>.<\/p>\n In 2023, VIA Metropolitan Transit abandoned plans<\/a> for a mixed-use and residential development<\/a> at the massive Scobey site, a former industrial site at 301 N. Medina St. near VIA Centro Plaza which opened in the district in 2015.\u00a0<\/p>\n Officials cited economic conditions, but the idea also received significant pushback from residents who said the plan would create housing that\u2019s unaffordable to many current Westside residents.<\/p>\n In March 2024, a city panel voted against a request by local developer David Adelman to demolish the historic but crime-ridden and fire-damaged Rich Book building in the district after dozens of residents opposed it<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Westside advocates opposed Adelman\u2019s plan to build new affordable housing on the site, saying too much of the area\u2019s historic fabric was not being preserved. Estimates to remodel the building were put at over $1 million.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat is sad about Cattleman Historic District is that it\u2019s been disappearing since 1988,\u201d Graciela Sanchez, director of the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center, said at the time. \u201cWhat\u2019s the point of having a historic district if there\u2019s always someone that has [the ability] to take another building down.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/brenda-bazan-rich-books-building.jpg\")
The historic Rich Book Building, located in Cattleman Square at 900 W. Houston St., was built in 1923. Credit: Brenda Baz\u00e1n \/ San Antonio Report<\/p>\n