Tobin Lofts: A New Campus Front Door for San Antonio College

Higher Education, Multifamily Housing, Planning

In the early 2000s, San Antonio College (SAC) saw the need to move beyond being a commuter only college and to build student and staff apartments. At the same time, their new master plan looked at creating a defined, traditional urban campus with clearly defined boundaries that respected its location adjacent to two historic neighborhoods. Tobin Lofts, a phase one intervention, is a mixed used, vertically integrated development defining the southeast corner of campus. Student services, apartment amenities, and commercial retail space front Main Street with residential stoops facing Crocket Park and along Evergreen Street.

A New Public Realm in a Legacy Neighborhood

The SAC Master Plan project offered a compelling opportunity: to create the attractive texture of a college town along a former commercial strip. The façade along Main Street now activates the “front door” to the SAC campus, where trees and landscaped areas define the walkable public domain. Tobin Lofts acts as an anchor for this urban campus made up of disparate buildings on neighborhood streets.

Successfully Sensitive to Context

Contemporary in expression, the red brick and stucco apartment buildings are configured to wrap a campus parking garage creating an active, pedestrian friendly walkway. Accessible to student residents, commuter students, and to its commercial tenants, the Tobin Lofts parking facility has the capacity to remove 1,000 vehicles from neighborhood streets and surface parking lots. The apartment façade along Crockett Park is composed to address context by responding to neighbors, such as an adjacent two-story apartment building, and the 10-story c. 1920 Aurora Apartment Building.

Note: Since completion in 2013, Tobin Lofts has been renamed Lofts on Main.