Architect Chosen for $300M San Antonio Lifestyle Center

With construction expected to begin this spring, New York City-based Wereldhave USA has retained Baltimore-based Peter Fillat Architects (PFA) to design 11 buildings in the $300 million éilan lifestyle community on the outskirts of San Antonio. Ground was recently broken and construction should begin in the spring on the 120-acre site, with targeted opening planned for the spring of 2009. The project is located along the IH-10 corridor at La Cantera Parkway on the north side of San Antonio and near two other upscale development projects. The project, master planned by Gensler Architects, will consist of luxury apartments, class A office buildings, retail shops, a luxury hotel and spa, and a variety of upscale amenities. The development will include 1,400 luxury apartments, two Class A office buildings totaling approximately 200,000 square feet and two levels of structured parking. The project is being built on spec. PFA is designing five multi-family residential buildings with a total of 540 luxury rental units, a gourmet grocery store, two mixed-used residential/retail buildings with 20,000 square feet of retail space, a boutique hotel and spa with 200 rooms, a restaurant, ballroom, and meeting, banquet and fitness facilities, a marketing center that will later be converted into a restaurant and a power plant facility. The firm will handle the schematic design through the production of construction documents for these 11 buildings (pictured). All buildings will include sustainable components and materials to save water and energy and reduce waste, according to PFA information. Wereldhave will seek LEED certification on some of the buildings. A Wereldhave spokesperson said the firm has been following the development of the San Antonio market for some time and has witnessed the type of growth that supports this level of investment in the last two or three years. On June 28, Wereldhave completed the purchase of high-rise office building, Broadway 655, in downtown San Diego for $210 million. The Broadway 655 office building, completed at the end of 2005, is the first new class A plus office building in Downtown San Diego since 1991. The building is located near the San Diego Federal and County Courts of Justice. Wereldhave USA, based in New York City, is the subsidiary of Netherlands-based real estate investment company Wereldhave N.V., an independent property company with real estate holdings in Europe and the United States.