Sergio Medina
Editor in Chief
The Texas A&M Board of Regents approved building a recreational center and a second dormitory at Texas A&M University-San Antonio on Nov. 10.
The board greenlit both items during its regular meeting in College Station. The items were presented by Regent Michael Plank, from the Committee on Buildings and Physical Plant.
In a Nov. 11 interview, President Cynthia Teniente-Matson said A&M-San Antonio can now move forward with the projects.
“You could begin to see housing phase 2 as well as the rec center start to move forward with breaking ground in the spring of 2023,” Matson said.
A road connecting parking Lot 3 south to Mauermann Road is also supported by a $1.2 billion city bond to begin construction in spring.
“The other projects that we received support for was an easement for the city of San Antonio that would allow the work, the planning, to proceed on the new road that’s going in,” Matson said. “So it’s going to punch through (south), but it also allows to pull utilities, put in sidewalks, and lighting and infrastructure.”
Additionally, Matson said the administration is working with the city and Workforce Solutions Alamo to negotiate contracts with Educare on a new early childhood development facility.
“That will go on the other side of Lot 2, in-between Lot 2 and Lot 3,” she said.
The university also is programming and designing a new academic facility called the Education and Public Health building, which will replace the portable buildings south of parking Lot 2, Matson said.
“We should see the business building (south of the Classroom Hall) opening in December, hopefully instruction in January,” she said. “It’s hard to move in the middle of an academic year.
“It’s not entirely clear to me that we’ll make that, but that’s what we’re striving for,” Matson added.
The library and business faculty, currently located on the second and fourth floor, respectively, of the Central Academic Building, will be among the first to move to the Library and Business building upon completion.
Once that change occurs, some of the staff at the portable buildings will be moved to the vacated space on the fourth floor of CAB “and other places,” Matson said. “There’s a whole shift.”
The Mesquite will follow up with an update on the departments’ relocating.
For Matson, it’s exciting to see these changes coming to the university.
“What I’ve been saying to the community before … (is) that the lid has blown off at Texas A&M-San Antonio with all of the work and construction — just the housing that’s going on,” she said, referring to the VIDA development happening between Zarzamora Street and University Way. “I, myself, am amazed at how fast that housing is going.”
