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Port San Antonio has released an economic impact report showing the 1,900 acres that once comprised Kelly Airfield is exploding with growth.
The economic impact report created by Zenith Economics mapped out how the Port’s nearly 18,000 employees, high-tech industries in aerospace and cyber security, as well as its capital investments in new facilities, have all generated $800 million in tax revenue for the region and another $9 billion in follow on economic activity last year.
The community once wondered what would become of the area deep in San Antonio’s Southwest Side when the Air Force base was shut down.
“You can see that over the time that we have grown the economic impact with almost no public sector incentives,” said Jim Perschbach, CEO of Port San Antonio. “We have more than doubled our top line revenue and more than doubled our operating income.”
With that sustainable success, Perschbach said the Port can continue to invest in bigger projects like the ones that drew additional cyber security to the area, built the Boeing Center at Tech Port arena, and the still to come Innovation Tower.
While the campus once sat isolated from its community and from San Antonio residents, Councilwoman Adriana Rocha Garcia said the Port has created something that continues to improve the surrounding neighborhood and draws people to the Southwest Side.
“There are all these people there,” she said of a recent meeting at the campus. She saw so many people that she could not find a place to sit at a lunch spot.
Rocha Garcia said she was surprised by the numbers in the impact report. “I was floored,” she said.
The facilities have racked up some local accolades like best concert venue and national ones like Innovation District of the Year.
Rocha Garcia said she hoped the plans around the Innovation Tower would come to fruition, ones that include additional facilities for child care, grocery and pharmacy — things the area lacks.
For the CEO, it is still the kind of jobs they are bringing to the region that is most important.
“The thing I'm most proud of,” Perschbach said, “is the average compensation on this campus, and when you see it creeping up to $111,000.”
