Oxbow Development Group has filed plans with the City of San Antonio to demolish a vacant 1939 garage building and a second structure near Avenue A and East Grayson Street, clearing the way for 10 new one- and two-story commercial buildings as part of the next phase of Pearl's expansion. The proposal would also remove a surface parking lot, with construction on the retail strip expected to begin early next year and wrap up by late 2028.
The request, filed as HDRC Case 2026-217 under request number 2026-37267, seeks conceptual approval from the city's Historic and Design Review Commission for both the demolition and the new construction within the RIO-2 River Improvement Overlay district, according to the City of San Antonio Office of Historic Preservation. The commission is expected to formally review the project at its October 7 meeting, as reported by the San Antonio Report. Planned construction will occupy the east side of Avenue A, the former can recycling building site, and the surface lot, per the same account.
A Garage With a Long, Underused History
The garage building at 250 E. Grayson St. was built in 1939 and has sat mostly vacant for the past decade, the San Antonio Report notes. It previously housed Aveda until 2013 and later City Education Partners and C.H.E.F., though those tenants combined generated less than $50 over four years, the outlet reports. Oxbow has said the structure suffers from limited marketability due to its street orientation, limited transparency, an elevated floor level, and a lack of accessible entries, while sidewalks around the building remain narrow and obstructed by power poles and signage.
Before settling on the retail plan, Oxbow considered an entertainment venue and a brewery-restaurant concept for the garage building, but those ideas were canceled over high estimated construction costs, per the same account. In the meantime, the site has hosted temporary community programming: an 18-hole miniature golf course featuring replicas of San Antonio landmarks like the Alamo, according to the San Antonio Current, and, during the 2025 holiday season, the outdoor Pearl Ice Rink, which required specialized 7,700-pound chilling units to operate in South Texas heat, as reported by MySA.
Clearing a High Legal Bar Before Demolition
Getting the garage torn down is not a simple matter of city sign-off. San Antonio's historic-landmark ordinance requires clear and convincing evidence of unreasonable economic hardship before a historic structure can be demolished, and under Section 35-614 of the city's Unified Development Code, property owners must prove a property cannot yield a reasonable financial return or be adaptively reused. City boards have enforced that standard strictly against other urban-core developers, according to the San Antonio Express-News.
Even if the hardship case succeeds, Oxbow cannot simply bulldoze the garage. San Antonio became the largest U.S. city to mandate a deconstruction ordinance in September 2022, requiring structures designated historic or built before 1945 — a threshold that automatically expanded in January 2025 to cover pre-1960 historic buildings — to be systematically disassembled for material salvage rather than mechanically demolished. Oxbow has said it plans to salvage brick, a stone date stamp, clay coping, windows, skylights, and iron downspouts from the building as part of that process.
Filling Pearl's Afternoon Lull
The retail push is meant to solve a specific problem: Pearl's current mix runs roughly 70% food and beverage, and Oxbow development director Omar Gonzalez has said new retail will help fill the gap when the campus goes quiet in mid-afternoon. The 10 new buildings would house a mix of local, regional, national, and global retail brands, though specific tenants have not yet been named. Oxbow has partnered with 3-O Real Estate Partners to develop the retail offerings, and the new structures, designed by Alamo Architects and Don B. McDonald Architects, are meant to draw inspiration from San Antonio's historic commercial buildings and Pearl's own brick detailing.
Kristina Good, cited in the San Antonio Report's account, said the investment will create a more welcoming, pedestrian-first environment at Pearl. As part of the project, Oxbow plans to improve Pearl Parkway and make it more guest-friendly; the parkway has been closed to vehicle traffic since 2020. Existing parking lots will remain open under the highway, and the garage building's additional parking spaces at 1803 Broadway St. are part of the broader footprint.
Part of a Bigger Pearl Buildout
The Grayson Street filing is the latest piece of Oxbow's multi-year push to double Pearl's physical footprint across the San Antonio River and Broadway, a strategy Hoodline detailed in 2024 alongside projects like the 263-unit Coopers Row residential build and a 140,000-square-foot office tower on East Josephine Street. Oxbow, launched in 2021 as a subsidiary of Silver Ventures — the investment firm Christopher “Kit” Goldsbury founded after acquiring the derelict 1894 Pearl Brewery site in 2001 — also expects to complete its Perlen House hotel at 1210 E. Elmira St. in early spring or summer 2027.
Nearby, Broadway East San Antonio, a 3.4-acre planned shopping development that received conceptual HDRC approval in 2025, appears to have stalled, according to the San Antonio Report. Oxbow has also taken its Pearl-style mixed-use playbook elsewhere in the city, proposing the $40 million-plus Southtown Aldea development near Hemisfair with roughly 250 apartments and 40,000 square feet of retail, as the Express-News reported in October 2024.
A Corridor Already in Motion
The Grayson Street expansion arrives amid a broader wave of change along the corridor bordering Pearl. Houston-based Bludorn Hospitality Group signed a lease at 239 E. Grayson St. in May to open its first concept outside Houston in the historic Liberty Saloon building, Hoodline reported. The city has also been investing in infrastructure to match, opening protected bike lanes on Camden Street last month that connect downtown to Pearl as the first Tier 1 project from its 2025 Bike Network Plan.
