New Texas A&M Campus

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Earier this year, the city of San Antonio selected a 400-acre site on the South Side as the place to located a new campus for Texas A&M University. But, the new SA mayor wants to study the possibility of putting the new campus at Brooks City-Base which is on the Defense Department's proposed base closure list. The city has already pledged to give the land on the South Side to the Texas A&M University System by December 2006. Under this plan, it is estimated to cost ~$32M for the purchase the roughly 100 homes and businesses, site clearing, utility upgades, and building of roads. This is what was said about the possible change of location to the Brooks City-Base:

At the same time, Brooks had several recent redevelopment successes. DPT Laboratories plans to invest $22 million in a facility there, Baptist Health System said it would move its Southeast Side hospital to the base, and a developer is looking to build a 550,000-square-foot shopping center.

Tom Rumora, executive director of the Brooks Development Authority, said Friday that hundreds of acres could be set aside for a campus within Brooks, but it wouldn't be easy. It would mean shifting roads and other infrastructure, and could force changes in some military missions since the Air Force occupies more than half of the base's 1,300 acres.

"We didn't anticipate anything that big for our redevelopment plan," Rumora said.

On the other hand, if Brooks ultimately loses its Air Force missions, he said the authority would likely consider offering up large blocks of acreage.

San Antonio Express-News: Mayor directs staff to study Brooks as potential A&M site

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Thr preliminary findings of the study issued by the Mayor show that it would cost $12.7 million more to built a new Texas A&M campus at Brooks City-Base than the South Side site even with free land at the base.

The report, issued by Assistant City Manager Jelynne Burley, put the overall cost of locating the planned campus at Brooks at $48.4 million. That includes $39 million for road construction, $7 million for environmental and real estate costs, $1.5 million for water lines and $850,000 for wastewater infrastructure.

By comparison, locating at the southwest quadrant of South Loop 410 and U.S. 281

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The SA mayor says he now supports the 400-acre site on the South Side for the new Texas A&M campus, but a solid commitment from the university before the city spends $15M to buy the property.

"I want to firm this up before we actually start buying things," Hardberger said.

He's proposing a public meeting where university officials would lay out their plans directly to the council for a four-year campus on the city's proposed site