First Look: Goodwill San Antonio's downtown office tower takes shape | San Antonio Business Journal

The organization has started a capital campaign to partly fund the rehab.

For years, the Rosa Verde Towers on Houston Street either sat empty or had people coming and going for doctor’s appointments.

The building’s only access points were at its cylindrical corners, making it feel closed off. When Goodwill San Antonio bought the 141,000-square-foot building in 2024, President and CEO Carlos Contreras knew they had to change things. The team has demolished two stories of walls facing Houston Street to make the space more inviting.

“We’re cutting into the atrium so when people walk into the building they’ll see activity taking place on the second floor,” he said on a recent tour. “The second floor is where our training begins, so the goal is they come in and get curious up there.”

A cafe will anchor the lobby. The first six floors will be for training, with potential space for other nonprofits in the region. The rest will go to Goodwill employees and leadership.

Contreras said the entire renovation will cost about $60 million, with the organization putting up about $36 million. The remainder will be funded through a capital campaign. Goodwill San Antonio made $91.2 million in revenue in 2024, according to its most recent tax filings.

While the western downtown’s historic draw is Market Square, and activation is starting to take shape with the University of Texas at San Antonio’s investment and Weston Urban’s development of the San Antonio Missions ballpark and related private development, Contreras said Goodwill San Antonio is pushing to add to those projects by attracting daytime traffic.

“Here there’s a lot of people that go to the mercado, but in this particular area there’s not a whole lot of activity,” he said. “So we’re trying to activate that. In particular with all of the investment that Weston Urban is making here, the apartments and the baseball stadium and all of that, UT San Antonio is making huge investments just to the south of us, we saw this as a great opportunity to be part of that redevelopment of downtown while we’re trying to serve people.”

RVK Architecture is the lead design firm attached.

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