Tucked away in a corner of downtown, long overlooked for years, a sort of renaissance appears to be underway. Residents are rising rapidly, mysterious new retail and commercial spaces are emerging and long-forgotten homes are midway through a refresh. And with a strange bar moving in, it begs the question: is the sleepy northeastern corner of downtown on its way to becoming a destination in its own right?
For the past several years, the stretches of the city along Quincy Street, east of McCullough Avenue, along North St. Mary's toward the highway, and along Camden Street have felt overlooked. Businesses would emerge and disappear rapidly amid aging infrastructure and dicey roads.
But suddenly, many of those old craftsman-style homes lining Quincy are beginning to undergo a transformation. Construction trucks are parked in the driveways, and signs of life are reinvigorating the historic single-family residences. Many of the old, once-luxurious homes, divided into apartments and loosely maintained by landlords over the past decade or so, are showing signs of renovation and seeking new tenants.
It's not just the living space that's getting a facelift – though even large-scale residential projects like the Museum Reach Lofts are bringing life back to the area – but commercial retailers are clearly seeing this boom in potential customers. There are long-term projects with massive amounts of earth being overturned along Camden. But there are newer stirrings that may reshape how locals view this area much sooner.
One block over from El Nogal Mexican Restaurant, along Quincy, where homes are mid-renovation, a mysterious company is poised to take over a struggling site. Once the home of a law office and later of a Houston-based nightclub chain, the building has yet to secure a successful long-term tenant in recent years.
But it's in the middle of a transformation into a new bar concept, sparked by Eldorado Amusement Company, a company with an interesting history in San Antonio. In fact, it was at the center of a drawn-out lawsuit with the City of San Antonio back in the early 2000s.
While operating Club Prestige – a nightclub that's since become a church at 8235 Vicar Drive – the company took the city to task after a zoning change would've left it unable to serve liquor. The company appears to have won in the end, after appeals and reversed judgments on either side, as the nightlife spot kept operating until sometime around 2010.
Interestingly, the property seems to have housed several different churches after the nightclub.
The new bar in the El Dorado-owned building is tied to a notable San Antonio bar owner who couldn't immediately share details about the project but told MySA that more information would be coming once plans were finalized.
Eldorado Amusement Company has a list of ventures, including some lesser-known spots on otherwise busy roads that people seem to love.
Tucked away off North Zarzamora Street, the Lyons Lounge (1907 Lyones St.) looks like a place that's easy to miss. But patrons describe it as a familiar hangout where everybody knows your name, the music is right and the beer is cold.
"Love this bar," Jackie Deharo wrote in a Google review last year. "It will always have a special place in my heart."
Plus, Eldorado Amusement is behind another big name: 2015 Place on San Pedro Avenue. It's a longtime LGBTQ+ staple in the Alta Vista neighborhood with a cult-like following. This is a highly promising development after some failed efforts at the corner of Quincy and St. Mary's, and it could mark the true expansion of the success seen in the massively booming River North district, on the northern stretch of Broadway out of downtown.
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This article originally published at Mysterious bar could electrify San Antonio's sleepy downtown edge.