The red-brick Book Building, a familiar anchor at East Houston and Soledad streets along the River Walk, is still shut tight and wrapped in privacy screening. The tarps carry the city logo and the upbeat slogan “vibrant and thriving,” but behind them the property has sat tenantless since 2015.
Soledad House LLC, an affiliate of Austin-based AMS Commercial Real Estate, owns the combined Book/Soledad parcel and signed a compliance agreement with the city in 2024. The city has since filed a case saying the owners failed to register the property on schedule and could face fines of up to $500, according to the San Antonio Report.
The cluster of buildings was once marketed by CBRE, but brokers say that listing is no longer active. CBRE first vice president Andrew Price said he is unaware of any current plans from the owners. Together, the properties total roughly 76,500 square feet, and local reporting places the parcel’s assessed value in the mid-$10-millions, according to The Express-News.
Historic approvals, stalled work
Back in 2018, the city’s Historic and Design Review Commission signed off on plans to convert the Book, Clegg and neighboring buildings into an 83-room hotel with ground-floor retail. The certificate of appropriateness for HDRC Case No. 2018-586, which covers 140 E. Houston and 130–134 Soledad, lays out the envisioned rehabilitation in the city’s HDRC case file. The project, however, never made it to actual construction.
The block also sits on historically significant ground. The Texas State Historical Association documents the history of Veramendi Palace, which once occupied part of this stretch of downtown, according to TSHA.
Neighbors, downtown groups want a solution
Centro San Antonio President and CEO Trish DeBerry, who previously had an office in the Book Building, called the parcel “magnificent” as a redevelopment prospect but did not sugarcoat the current reality.
“That whole block is dark and a bit desolate right now,” she said. DeBerry told the San Antonio Report she wants to see the site activated in a way that better connects UTSA’s downtown expansion, new residential projects and the planned baseball development nearby.
What the city can do next
If the owners do not bring the property into compliance, the city can lean on its Vacant Building Program. That program’s rules spell out registration requirements and the enforcement tools available for long-empty buildings. Downtown properties under watch are listed in the city’s Vacant Building Program Inventory, which is how officials track which sites are registered and whether they are following the rules, according to the Vacant Building Program Inventory.
Developers and preservation advocates point out that the Book Building’s River Walk frontage and century-old character make it a tempting redevelopment prize. At the same time, they acknowledge that restoring historic masonry, windows and river-level storefronts is expensive, and approvals can get complicated fast.
Just a few blocks away, Weston Urban’s 2016 purchase and restoration of the Savoy building is often cited as the kind of turnaround people would like to see happen on the Book/Soledad block. The Savoy is now home to Royal Blue Grocery, Bunz Handcrafted Burgers and Scaleworks, a transformation detailed by The Express-News. For now, though, the Book Building remains a high-profile question mark on one of San Antonio’s most visible corners.
