On the night of October 13, I was one of more than 350 people, by the organizers’ count, who filled a room to hear the developer’s plan for Sunset Ridge. People lined the walls and stood in the doorway. Neighbors from Alamo Heights and Terrell Hills came too, because whatever gets built at Sunset Ridge will send traffic down their streets as well as ours.
We came for one reason. We had been told the developer would show us the plan. About thirty minutes before the meeting started, organizers learned the developer’s representatives would not be coming.
I’m writing as a neighbor who was in that room, not on behalf of any organization. I want to share what has happened since, because most of San Antonio heard a different version of this story. In that version, the neighborhood pushed back, the developer backed off, and everybody went home. That is not where we are.
I’m not against development
I want to say this first, because it matters. Sunset Ridge has been part of this neighborhood for generations. It was built around 1950 for military families coming home after World War II. Today it is 41 two-story buildings on 29 acres, with a lot of green space between them. The buildings are old. Nobody I know thinks it will stay the way it is forever.
So this is not a fight to stop a project. It is simply a request to see the plans for one. This is where my kids go to school. It’s where I’ve raised them. If someone is going to rebuild a large piece of this neighborhood, I want something worth building, something built for the long haul that we’re proud of in twenty years.
And this isn’t only about those of us in the houses around it. Hundreds of people call Sunset Ridge home right now. Their future is part of this conversation too.
What we know
Morningside Group, a Chicago company, bought Sunset Ridge in 2022. In late September, Morningside Sunset Ridge, LLC filed a request with the city, case Z-2026-10700210, to rezone the property to IDZ-3 with up to 1,425 homes, plus commercial, mid-rise office and high-rise office uses. Today there are about 324 apartments. Our entire neighborhood is about 850 homes. Those numbers come from the city’s own record. They are what’s being asked for, not what will be built. But they’re the only numbers anyone has given us.
What we don’t know
We don’t know what it looks like, because there are no public renderings. We don’t know how tall it is. Depending on who you ask, it’s nine stories or seven. We don’t know whether it is apartments, condos or townhomes, or what the office and commercial space would be. We don’t know whether the people who live at Sunset Ridge now will have to move, or when. We don’t know whether anyone will study the traffic, the drainage or the trees. And most of us thought the request was off the table.
The application nobody can explain
IDZ stands for Infill Development Zone. In plain words, it is a tool the city uses to encourage reinvestment in places that need it, and it relaxes the usual rules. Under IDZ-3, a project can be freed from normal limits on height, setbacks and parking. How much changes depends on the conditions the city attaches. Terrell Heights is not a neighborhood starved for investment. It is a neighborhood of homes, families and narrow streets.
At the meeting, we were told the application would be withdrawn. The news reported it that way, and people relaxed. Some neighbors started asking whether we still needed the Keep the Code signs. Many of those signs are still waiting to go up.
But the zoning sign is still up on the property. And the city’s most recent tentative agenda, posted October 15, two days after that meeting, still lists the case for the November 3 Zoning Commission hearing.
November 3 is days away. The Zoning Commission makes a recommendation and City Council casts the final vote, but that recommendation carries weight. I don’t see how a commission can weigh in on a plan the neighborhood around it has never seen. Not a rendering, not a site plan, not a height.
That isn’t realistic, and it isn’t fair.
Why the studies matter here
Anyone who has driven North New Braunfels by the McNay in a heavy rain knows what I mean. In a real downpour, that street turns into a river and has to be blocked off. Right now, the open lawns at Sunset Ridge soak up a lot of the water coming off that hill. Replace them with rooftops and parking, and the water goes somewhere. How much depends on the design, which is exactly what a study would tell us.
Traffic works the same way. If you’re heading from the Quarry toward Austin Highway, the shortcut runs through residential streets. Four times as many households, plus office and retail space, means far more cars, deliveries and rideshares on streets where my kids and my neighbors’ kids walk and play.
Traffic and drainage studies exist to answer these questions, and their findings should be public. That is why so many of us have landed on three words: Keep the code. Under the zoning the property has now, the developer still has rules to follow. We would rather start there than give up those rules before we have seen a single drawing.
Negotiate what?
Since the meeting, Councilman Marc Whyte has said the developer has signaled there is room to negotiate with the neighborhood. I take him at his word that the door is open. But someone stood up at the meeting and asked a question I still can’t answer: how do you negotiate over something you’ve never seen?
I understand a few people have seen some version of the plan. The 850 homes around Sunset Ridge have not. It’s hard to negotiate when only one side has seen the cards.
What the community is asking
These aren’t demands. They are the two questions I heard over and over that night, and they still don’t have answers.
To Morningside Group: will you share the plan with the neighborhood? Renderings, a site plan, anything you would have shown us on October 13. A page on your website or a PDF would do. And tell us which parts are settled and which are still open for discussion.
To the city and District 10: if this case is still headed to the Zoning Commission on November 3, ask for it to be postponed until the neighborhood has seen the plan. Those two things come before any negotiation, any compromise and any vote.
There’s an old saying that in the absence of a story, people will make up their own. That is what is happening in Terrell Heights right now. Rumors are filling the space where a plan should be, and almost none of them are good.
Morningside can end that this week.
Show us the plan.
Citations
Neighborhood group questions redevelopment plans for Sunset Ridge apartments, Focus on San Antonio, Oct. 6, 2026
Terrell Heights Plan Would Renovate 324 Units and Add Hundreds, Hoodline, Oct. 17, 2026
Tentative Zoning Cases, Zoning Commission Hearing Date 11/03/2026, City of San Antonio Development Services Department, Oct. 15, 2026
THE VOICE:
An Anonymous Terrell Heights Resident
