The old AT&T tower on Broadway is trading in telecom for textbooks. San Antonio's University of the Incarnate Word is in the home stretch of a multi-year overhaul that is turning the mid-century office high-rise into Founders Hall, a sprawling campus hub packed with classrooms, labs, event space and student services, plus hundreds of badly needed parking spots.
What Founders Hall Will Contain
The nine-story, roughly 380,000-square-foot tower and its 500-space garage are being converted into academic and community space, according to the University of the Incarnate Word. Plans call for classrooms, labs, studios, student support offices and a community events center inside what UIW is pitching as both a new campus gateway and a public-facing hub for international programming.
The Liza and Jack Lewis Center of the Americas is set to anchor the complex, sharing the building with the School of Media and Design and the School of Mathematics, Science and Engineering. In other words, a onetime corporate tower is being reimagined as one of the university’s academic nerve centers.
Funding and Schedule
UIW is covering the renovation with a mix of private philanthropy and public debt. The Elma Dill Russell Spencer Foundation pledged $5 million in 2024 to help underwrite the work, while the university also lined up roughly $48 million in tax-exempt bonds through a city-backed arrangement to support the buildout and related campus improvements, with the first phase initially expected to run through January 2026, according to ConnectCRE.
Design and Preservation
The overhaul is being carried out as an adaptive reuse project, preserving the Atlee B. Ayres-designed mid-century exterior while gutting and rebuilding the interiors for modern labs, studios and teaching spaces. The building’s history and architectural pedigree have been chronicled by the San Antonio Report, which has followed the tower’s journey from corporate landmark to campus asset.
On the design and construction side, UIW has brought in Lake|Flato as architect and Joeris General Contractors as builder for Founders Hall, according to the University of the Incarnate Word. The result is expected to blend the original concrete frame with lighter, more transparent interiors that feel more like a campus than a call center.
Campus Impact
By snapping up and retrofitting the former AT&T property, UIW is increasing its Broadway footprint by about 20 percent and grabbing enough new parking to ease long-standing crunches for students and staff. The added space also gives administrators breathing room to shuffle offices, classrooms or even residential uses while older campus buildings undergo renovations, as reported by the San Antonio Express-News.
When the purchase closed in 2019, UIW indicated it would lease some of the space back to AT&T during a transition period, according to the San Antonio Business Journal, a reminder that big campus expansions sometimes come with a corporate roommate, at least for a while.
Inside Look
Local television cameras recently got the first public peek at the revamped interiors, with an April 30 walk-through showing finished and in-progress corridors, labs and public areas that marry the building’s concrete structure with glass and wood finishes. The video from KSAT gives neighbors and future students a sense of just how large the project is as UIW prepares phased openings later in 2026.
