An ambitious project to redevelop on and around a Southeast Side golf course — geared...
Julius Boros, winner of the PGA National Championship tournament in July 1968, reaches to tip his hat at the Pecan Valley Golf Club on the Southeast Side.Driving around overgrown fields littered with trash, passing oaks and pecan trees, Michael McDowell points to where he pictures single-family homes, an entertainment venue and a field house for sports.
Redeveloping underperforming golf courses is not new in San Antonio. Here are two other plans to reimagine closed courses: While lining up financing for development projects has generally become more difficult amid higher interest rates, ballooning inflation and fears of a recession, the Valor Club project faces additional challenges. The Southeast Side is far less affluent than the North Side, and the target market for this project may not seem lucrative compared to other investment options.
“You can be visionary, but …it’s about margins and shareholders and all that kind of stuff. I can speak the language. I get it. But you build some value, and I think you’re gonna knock this thing out of the park,” he said. “I really do.” Receiving a bond reservation is a requirement to apply for tax credits, a competitive process, said Pete Alanis, director of the housing trust. By the time that Valor Club obtained it, the project had been “bit by the inflation bug.”But Alanis said “ the trust remains interested in working with the Valor Club team to find a solution for veteran-forward housing” in line with the city’s affordability goals.
“I’d like to know why they did it,” he said, adding that he does not know what PVG 2008’s plans for the property are. Another general hurdle is that some foundations and agencies are wary of working with for-profit companies, McDowell said. But he is not enthused about suggestions to establish a nonprofit for the Valor Club project.“It’s really an ecosystem that we’re building,” McDowell added. “That’s why it’s taken so much longer.”When McDowell left the Marine Corps. in 2016 after 16 years of service, he would have been attracted to a place like Valor Club.
While earning his doctorate in education at the University of Southern California, McDowell wrote his dissertation on the project. Dan Pedrotti Jr., president of Foresight, said Pecan Valley had been a losing venture that he could not rescue. He initially planned to redevelop it under a nonprofit he created.
The proposal soon ran into opposition from residents, who were concerned it would create too much density and traffic, overburden schools and cause flooding on Salado Creek, which snakes through the site. Restrictive covenants on the land stated the golf course had to be built before any multifamily residences.
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