Monday Musings #11: Andrés Andujar - San Antonio Placemaker

Not many of us will complete our careers with the certain knowledge our work has made San Antonio a better place to live, work and play and will endure. My work and privilege as a longtime journalist in this city has allowed me to meet many of the people changing the city for the better and, over time, I’ve come to call a few of them good friends.

Andrés Andujar, the founding CEO of the Hemisfair Redevelopment Corp. (HPARC), who is now being celebrated on the eve of his April 1 retirement, is one change agent I proudly call a good friend. My wife Monika Maeckle reminds me from time to time that she and Andrés have been friends much longer, dating back to their punk rock circle at the University of Texas-Austin in the late 1970s. Andujar, born and raised in Colombia, came to Texas to attend the university.

Andujar was one of several panelists who participated in “The Future of Downtown,” Episode 78 of our bigcitysmalltown podcast, recorded in November before a live audience at Texas Public Radio.

I am writing about him, Andujar, now because, as many longtime readers of mine know, I do not believe in waiting until people have departed this earth to celebrate their life and work. And Andrés has many productive years ahead of him. Like most people in this city, he’s younger than me.

Andujar’s retirement comes after 14 ground-breaking years leading the redevelopment of moribund Hemisfair Park, which lay relatively dormant for decades after HemisFair ‘68, the city’s world’s fair. More tourists frequented the Tower of Americas, in my experience, than locals accessing other parts of the park. The Institute of Texan Cultures, a dated museum and library belonging to UTSA that was housed in the fair’s former Texas Pavilion, seemed to attract few visitors other than school buses of children on field trips. If it were not for the local campus of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) and the Instituto Cultural de México, I seldom found reason to venture into the otherwise deactivated park.

And then came 2011 and the city’s creation of the newly formed nonprofit HPARC with Andujar as its CEO. More than a few people suggested his task was an impossible one, but Andujar wasn’t listening. He got busy building a team, raising funds, drawing the community into master planning and activating different spaces, one project at a time.

That approach, I realized, would take 25 years for the park to be completely redeveloped. Funding was an issue, with the park requiring tens of millions of dollars in infrastructure improvements. The next-door Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center, also developed as part of HemisFair ‘68, underwent a $325 million expansion in 2016 after voters approved the $550 million 2012 bond. 

The 2017 bond cycle provided $21 million for Civic Park, and $6 million to reopen closed streets within the park. A much-anticipated Tower Park project will have to await funding in the 2027 bond to be completed. The South Alamo Street redevelopment project received $36.6 million in the same bond and was intended to open in time for The Final Four. The project is now over-budget with no certain finish date. It is being temporarily patched up for the influx of basketball fans in early April. The long-delayed Monarch Hotel being developed by Zachry Hospitality will not open until late 2026, while the Market Street land, once slated for an NRP multi-family development, remains bare and in search of a new developer and project. 

Other projects have been completed, including The ‘68, a busy residential and retail tower developed by David Adelman’s AREA Corp., and Phase Two of Civic Park, which recently opened in advance of the Final Four being staged here April 5-7. Monika and I frequently walk the dogs from our Southtown home to Civic Park.

Monika likes to stop and hug the growing sycamore tree in the park’s allée that we sponsored in memory of her beloved mother, Hilde Maeckle. Shoutout here to the nonprofit Hemisfair Conservancy. Sponsorship of the tree plantings was just one of the creative fundraising projects they have carried out over the years.

Andujar’s greatest achievement at Hemisfair has been Yanaguana Garden, a 4-acre playground for children that draws hundreds of thousands of families each year. If it is one of San Antonio’s smallest public parks, it is undoubtedly its most active one. Families from all corners of the city can be seen alighting from buses and private vehicles all day and into the evening, the parents often trailing children racing to the park structures that invite physical activity.

The small parks’ reputation reaches beyond Texas. USA Today selected Yanaguana Gardens as the only public park in Texas to include in its current reader survey of the country’s best parks. It’s a click-bait gimmick by the declining national newspaper, but it represents a level of recognition that enhances the city’s reputation as a visitor destination. 

Even if you don’t have kids, or the ones you have are grown, a stroll through Yanaguana Gardens will bring back childhood memories.

The Andrés that I have known for 25 years is an architect of distinction. Earlier in his career, before he left San Antonio for several years to work on the Denver International Airport, Andjuar was in private practice here, but already establishing himself as a community builder. He is credited with naming River North and playing a leading role in establishing the near-downtown 400-acre site as an urban zone with its own Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone. That TIRZ has helped fuel two decades of steady development and community building. 

So, what’s next for Andujar? Well, rumors are flying. “Retirement” from his current position does not signal career retirement. I expect my friend to hit the Pause button, recharge his batteries, and eventually emerge in yet another meaningful role in this city. 

Ep. 110 I am excited to plug the next episode of bigcitysmalltown with Kim Jeffries, the CEO of Haven for Hope, who is leaving her work here and the city to start up a similar comprehensive homeless shelter and treatment center in las Vegas. Jeffries has been a prominent nonprofit leader in the city for 25 years. She will be missed, but she leaves her successor a high functioning operation on and off the H4H campus, with multiple nonprofits working closely together to address the city’s population of homeless people. She offers a great overview in our conversation.

We’ve booked three of the eight mayoral candidates we invited to the podcast in April: City Council (D4) Adriana Rocha-Garcia, tech executive Beto Altamirano, and former Texas Secretary of State Rolando Pablos. We’ll see how many more we attract.

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