SAN ANTONIO – As San Antonio continues to grow you might have noticed a new building on Broadway just north of downtown that looks like it’s made of glass and wood.
It’s called The Soto and it is one of the most technologically and ecologically high-end buildings in San Antonio.
“It’s Good for the environment, not only in San Antonio but the whole world,” John S. Beauchamp of Hixon Properties said.
The timber makes the building looks sleek, modern and cool, but it is so much more than that.
“When you’re building out of mass timber you’re building out of young farm grown trees, taking carbon dioxide out of the air which is then being stored in the building -- our building actually has a negative carbon footprint,”Beauchamp said.
And one of the concepts you might notice is the lack of vents in the ceiling, and that’s because the air flows through the floors.
“All the air is coming from below the floor, each person in our building will have one of these called a defuser, each person gets their own silo of cold filtered air,” Beauchamp said.
Air conditioning and ventilation has never been more important than during the pandemic — that’s why The Soto has the high grade top tier filtration system.
“It’s called Merv 13, it’s extremely thick and has a lot of folds with a very thick blanket, it’s essentially the difference between breathing through a thin mask and an N95 mask,” Beauchamp said.
The Timber building is revolutionary for both the city of San Antonio and for the state and will be a boon for the whole Broadway corridor.
“This is our flag in the ground, saying this is what the city can expect from this area in the future,” Beauchamp said.
And the future is bright.
“Expect to see residential, you can expect to see restaurants, bars, entertainment, more offices, a complete urban neighborhood,” Beauchamp said.