By Edmond Ortiz
The Terrell Heights Neighborhood Association’s next meeting will focus on a rezoning request and redevelopment plans targeting the renowned Sunset Ridge apartment property.
Morningside Group, a Chicago-based company that owns and runs the Sunset Ridge of Alamo Heights complex, filed a rezoning request with the city of San Antonio in late September.
Built in 1950 to originally appeal to post-WWII military families, Sunset Ridge has since become a popular multifamily community in the Terrell Heights neighborhood, which lies inside San Antonio city limits, but sits close to Alamo Heights and Terrell Hills.
Sunset Ridge offers 300-plus apartments across 41 two-story, low-density structures on a 29-acre tract anchored at 116 Vanderheck St.
Morningside, which acquired the Sunset Ridge apartments in 2022, hopes to have the city rezone the property from I-1 industrial and MF-33 multifamily to IDZ-3, a high-intensity infill category, with uses permitted in commercial, mid-rise office and high-rise office districts.
According to documents filed with the city, Morningside aims to expand the apartment complex to 1,425 units.
The rezoning request immediately garnered attention from the Terrell Heights Neighborhood Association, which is using its social media channels to inform residents about the group’s Oct. 13 meeting and the rezoning case.
THNA members said they plan to ask Morningside to keep the existing zoning categories, adding that the company could expand the apartment development to 1,200 or 1,300 units.
For the neighborhood association, there are concerns about the requested IDZ-3 zoning category, which would allow a developer to nix limits on the number of housing units, building height, minimum parking space requirements, a traffic impact study, and rules regarding tree mitigation and setbacks.
The current zoning limits the property to 33 housing units per lot and a 40-foot building height.
THNA members are also arguing that IDZ-3 zoning is more appropriate for encouraging redevelopment of vacant, abandoned or under-utilized tracts on inner-city parcels, and not properties such as Sunset Ridge.
Even some residents in nearby Terrell Hills and Alamo Heights have expressed concern about Morningside’s plans, saying expansion of the apartment complex will have a traffic impact that will be felt on surrounding area roads.
I hope you people can stop this. Unfortunately as a resident of Terrell Hills I have no say in this, although I visit Sunset Ridge shopping center frequently,” resident Frances Luedeking Garner said on the THNA’s Facebook page.
“I can’t imagine the traffic this will generate, not only with future residents, but during construction as well. Wish we and Alamo Heights residents had a say in this.”
The THNA meeting will start at 6:30 p.m. Oct. 13 at the Sunset Ridge Church fellowship hall, 95 Brees Blvd. It is open to area residents, including those from Alamo Heights and Terrell Hills.
According to association officials, a developer’s representative will be at the meeting. The city does not yet have a hearing date for the company’s rezoning request.
