This first half of the year has been so busy yet fun. We have had several events outside of our usual luncheons over the last quarter, including a very successful Fight Night, Fiesta Kick Off Party, Membership Mixers, as well as our annual Skeet Shoot and Cornhole Tournament, which the LDP Class organized and ran. Thank you to all the sponsors and committees for your support and hard work putting these events together. To our members, thank you for your continued support. It has been so special getting to see everyone at our events. All of these happenings were a huge success!

There are so many additional events we are working hard to coordinate to finish out the year, so be on the lookout for those announcements. As we come out of summer, we have so much planned for you including the Legacy & Leadership Luncheon featuring the Lewis Westerman Award, RECSA’s annual golf tournament, and our signature Philip M. Barshop Founders Award Luncheon. We are excited to announce that we will be co-hosting the RECSA/ULI San Antonio Real Estate Forum coming on November 14th for our members. So much to look forward to! 



In May we proudly completed another Leadership Development Program (LDP) Class. It was an outstanding class! Congratulations to the 2024 LDP graduates! I would like to thank our LDP Co-Chairs, Fernando Diego and Crystal Acker, who did a phenomenal job leading the program this year. LDP applications are now being accepted for the next 2024-2025 class, which will be led by Co-Chairs Brad Carson and Ashley Nelson. Applications are due on July 18, 2024, by 5:00 PM. 

Our Development Process Task Force (DPTF) chairs have had a busy several months meeting with various local and state regulatory agencies as well as elected officials to keep RECSA at the forefront of all things commercial real estate in San Antonio. As chairs, each of them go above and beyond to attend these meetings and keep us informed – thank you! We have many advocacy issues we are tracking and are making recommendations on behalf of RECSA. Feel free to reach out to 2024 Vice President of Governement Affairs Aaron Parenica, CEO Stephanie Reyes, or myself if you would like more information.

Another initiative we are looking to launch soon is a Mentorship Program to be implemented through the RECSA's Leadership Development Program. Mentorship is so very important for all young professionals. This initiative is very important to me. Mentorship will not only help our industry, but the future leaders of RECSA and beyond. Be on the lookout for more details to come soon. I am looking forward to working with many of you on this inaugural program. 

I want to give a heart-felt thank you to our members! You all make this President job so much fun and I have truly enjoyed catching up with you at events, meetings, and mixers. I am enjoying my year as President of RECSA tremendously! Our members are the best! I appreciate your continued support and encouragement! Cheers to a great summer, another great year, and leading this remarkable organization!

Jeremy Williams, Stephanie Reyes, and Carrie Caesar at the 2024 LDP Skeet Shoot & Cornhole Tournament

Stephanie Reyes, Council Man John Courage, Carrie Caesar, and Rob Killen at the LDP Alumni Happy Hour sponsored by Joeris General Contractors.

Stephanie Reyes, Mikayla Rodriguez, and Casey Weed at the LDP Skeet Shoot.

Halfway through the year already, and we continue to have a ton of activity to report out to our members. According to the numbers that the City of San Antonio tracks and reports, commercial permitting activity is 10-15% down compared to the numbers from last year, and residential activity continues to trend significantly higher year over year. But overall, its been another strong year of activity in our local market based on these numbers, and all signs indicate that will continue. 

Starting with the City of San Antonio, significant effort has gone into collaboration with the Transportation Department on a few different current and proposed policies: a proposed Transit-oriented Development (TOD) zoning overlay, an update to the Complete Streets policy document, and the update to the Major Thoroughfare Plan and the Bike Network Plan that will be on-going through this year, and likely into next year. Many thanks to all of you that have been engaged in that collective effort!

Then there is the proposed zoning overlay around the Toyota property that’s been a hot topic for the last few months. We continue to be engaged in how this is coming together. Please reach out to RECSA staff if you have any specific concerns, questions or suggestions about this issue. With all of that, there are other issues that come up that aren’t so openly known, such as a council consideration request (CCR) developed by one of the Councilwomen that suggests as-built survey data should be required for all new projects. We’ve worked with staff to direct that toward public works projects for consideration, and we will continue to monitor how that idea develops. At the City’s request, we’ve also met with City staff on application of a few specific survey requirements in the Tree Preservation ordinance in an effort to minimize any extra time and cost that could be added to the tree permitting process. And most recently, we’ve started meeting with senior City staff about a potential update of the Rough Proportionality policy. More to come on all of that.

On the SAWS front, the new impact fee rates are established and posted on the SAWS website. We also worked with SAWS staff on the update to the irrigation restrictions, most notable is the affect on drip irrigation systems that we heard from several members about. Again, THANK YOU to those in the community that we heard from on this issue. This is a very impactful consideration, especially for existing commercial properties. Its very helpful to hear the concerns from RECSA members, as that helps inform our approach to any follow-up actions that may be considered. RECSA needs and relies on that feedback from our membership, especially about anything that has potential for a broader impact on our commercial real estate industry.

From our most recent discussions with CPS Energy, the good news is that material supply issues continue to come down and normalize, with really the only item of notable concern at this point is three-phase transformers. We continue to expect that minimal supply chain concerns will persist beyond the end of this year, but we’ll continue to keep an open line of communication with CPS Energy leadership on this as well. There are some big things being discussed at CPS Energy that will allow for some much-needed systems and process upgrades. The challenge will be that those changes, especially for an organization like CPS Energy, will take a lot of money and a lot of time to develop and implement. They are much closer to the beginning than the end, so there’s a long way to go before we see the benefits of those improvements externally. But along the way, we’ll continue to stay engaged and advise on what would be the most beneficial for the community from the customer’s perspective. For our industry, that’s mostly related to the service application, design and delivery process, and that will continue to be what we talk to CPS Energy leadership the most about for the foreseeable future. 

Our relationship with Bexar County has moved into a new generation with Mr. Art Reinhardt stepping in as the new Director of Public Works. We had a good working relationship with Mr. Reinhardt when he was working with the City, and he has come into the County asking a lot of questions and doing a lot of listening so far. That’s always a great start for a new leader. Art has been engaged so far, and we look forward to partnering with him going forward on strengthening our community’s relationship with the County in an effort to minimize and improve processes and procedures so that things run as efficiently and as smoothly as possible. There is so much growth that is expected to happen in areas that are under Bexar County jurisdiction, and RECSA will continue to point out any regulatory or permitting burden that may be beyond the authority of any of our local regulatory agencies to help facilitate that growth in the most efficient and economical way we can.

Oh, and as for TxDOT. We’ve really appreciated our initial discussions with our new TxDOT District Engineer, Mr. Charles Benavidez. We are in the process of planning out a series of mutually-beneficial “workshops” to get into technical details of how TxDOT staff receives information from our members on various projects. We’ll also discuss best practices that could be developed that might help with more efficient communication and coordination with TxDOT staff. More to come following this first round of workshops, but we’re optimistic about improved relations that would benefit both our local commercial real estate community AND TxDOT. 

Thank you all for your continued support of the Real Estate Council of San Antonio. It's important, and very impactful. There’s been a lot of work put in so far this year, and there will always be work to do in support of our local real estate industry. THANK YOU!

RECSA members and their interns were in attendance at the City of San Antonio DPTF meeting. Michael Shannon with COSA shared how RECSA and the city work together to ensure development gets done in San Antonio.

Stephanie Reyes, Council Woman Dr. Adriana Rocha Garcia, and Aaron Parenica at the LDP Alumni Happy Hour hosted by Jefferson Bank Sponsored by McCombs Enterprises.

The Programs Committee has been hard at work planning and preparing for our fall luncheons along with gearing up for 2025!

Our annual Fiesta Kick Off Mixer on April 17th was another great event at St. Paul Square. Thank you to Southstar for sponsoring the event. We had a great turnout!

Mark your calendars for our third luncheon of the year, “Legacy and Leadership Series- Lewis Westerman Award” on Wednesday, September 11th from 11:30am until 1pm at the Security Service Event Center. Bob Worth, Chairman and CEO of Worth& Associates will be speaking, and Jenna Saucedo-Herrera, President and CEO of greater:SATX will be moderating. We are thrilled and thankful to our Presenting Sponsor, Worth & Associates, and our Supporting Sponsors, Worth & Associates and Presidio Title.

Our fourth and final luncheon of the year, “Philip M. Barshop Founders Award” will be held on November 5th from 11:30am until 1pm at the Mays Family Center at the Witte Museum. Ed Whitacre Jr., former Chairman and CEO of General Motors will be speaking. Thank you to our Sponsors - Independent Financial and Sol Schwartz & Associates.

Our annual holiday party will be held on December 5th at the Pearl. Thank you to our Sponsor, DNT Construction.

Looking ahead, our first luncheon of the new year will be held at the San Antonio Country Club. Thank you to Andrew Price for connecting us with the club. Mark your calendars for January 22, 2025.

We are also in the beginning phases of planning a February 2025 Mayoral Debate. Stay tuned for details.

As well, we will be hosting the annual Women in Commercial Real Estate luncheon on March 5th at the Security Service Event Center. More to come.

The newly formed Hospitality Committee has been hard at work planning ways to raise awareness and welcome guests to our programs.

Thank you to everyone for supporting our programs and we look forward to seeing you at the next luncheon!

It was a packed house at our Women in Real Estate Luncheon held in March at Security Service Event Center.

Hospitality Committee Chair Nathan Dawson greets new members Toll Brothers.

As we head into the summer season, 2024 continues to be busy and productive for our RECSA members! 

The Membership Committee has been hard at work and as an organization RECSA has welcomed 13 new members during this second quarter.

New Members – 2^nd Quarter 2024

Individual

Jeff Meade

Mason Miller

Leah Schoenfeld

Jamie Hora

Corporate

Foresite Group, LLC

Matrix Design Group

NCE General Contractors

Onyx Political Affairs

Xsellence Development Group

Patron

Amishay Land

BGE, Inc.

Fulcrum Development

Student

Eduardo Cruz Valdez - UTSA

We hosted the Membership 101 Luncheon in May and were thrilled to have several new companies attend to learn about the many benefits of joining RECSA. 

In June we hosted our quarterly Membership Mixer and Open House at Inwood Village. This open house allowed our members to get a glimpse of the available office spaces and network throughout the buildings.  We would like to thank Worth & Associates, Independent Financial, KCI Technologies, VersaTerra Development, Meritage Homes, and KingFish for their support of the mixer. These mixers have proven to be a great networking tool for our members, and we continue to see growth in attendance. We are looking forward to our next mixer in the fall. 

We continue to seek ways to maximize our members’ benefits through advocacy, education and networking, and we thank you all for your support!

If you have any questions about your membership or need to make any updates to your records, please contact Lauren Gonzalez.

Laurie Griffith, Bob Worth, and Stephanie Reyes at the Membership Mixer and Open House held at Inwood Village.

RECSA Members gather for our quarterly Membership Mixer.

Registration Details Coming Soon!