{"resource":"dc-zoning","title":"San Antonio: where a data centre could still be built under the proposed UDC amendment","description":"Land inside the San Antonio city limits scored against the Development Services staff proposal to restrict data centres: commercial and industrial districts only, not downtown, not in the Edwards Aquifer recharge zone, and set back from homes, schools, hospitals, nursing homes and day care. NOT ADOPTED \u2014 see criteria.status.","endpoints":{"envelope":"https:\/\/brandshyp.org\/api\/v1\/dc-zoning\/envelope","districts":"https:\/\/brandshyp.org\/api\/v1\/dc-zoning\/districts","criteria":"https:\/\/brandshyp.org\/api\/v1\/dc-zoning\/criteria","sweep":"https:\/\/brandshyp.org\/api\/v1\/dc-zoning\/sweep","quality":"https:\/\/brandshyp.org\/api\/v1\/dc-zoning\/quality","csv":"https:\/\/brandshyp.org\/api\/v1\/dc-zoning\/envelope.csv","openapi":"https:\/\/brandshyp.org\/api\/v1\/dc-zoning\/openapi.json"},"headline":{"allowed_today_acres":81746.2,"eligible_acres":47275.6,"pct_of_today":57.8,"at_setback_ft":500},"criteria":{"as_of":"2026-08-26","status":"DSD staff proposal, still in stakeholder feedback. NOT adopted. Zoning Commission September 2026; Council vote expected mid-October 2026.","setback_ft":500,"sweep_ft":[300,500,750,1000],"permitted":["C-1","C-2","C-2NA","C-2P","C-2PNA","C-3","C-3NA","C-3R","NC","I-1","I-2","L","MI-1","MI-2"],"office":["O-1","O-1.5","O-2"],"downtown":["D"],"variants":{"narrow":{"label":"C-3 and I-1 only, as briefed to Council on 2026-03-04","source":"City and utility staff briefing, 2026-03-04","codes":["C-3","I-1"]}},"parks_scored":true,"residential":["R-1","R-2","R-3","R-4","R-5","R-6","R-20","RE","MH","RM-4","RM-5","RM-6","MF-18","MF-25","MF-33","MF-40","MF-50","MF-65"],"assumptions":{"measurement":"Measured from the protected parcel or zone boundary, not centre to centre and not structure to structure. The proposal does not yet say which it means, and this is the stricter reading.","residential":"Residential ZONING, not dwelling units. Vacant residentially-zoned land therefore counts as protected.","schools":"Proxied by the City school-zone polygons, which surround campuses. Generous toward exclusion: the zone is larger than the school.","baseline":"Today's rule is taken as commercial + industrial + office + downtown, because a data centre is currently permitted as \"office data processing and management\" in most nonresidential districts."}},"caveats":["\u26d4 THESE RULES ARE NOT LAW. They are the Development Services staff proposal as reported on 2026-08-26, still in stakeholder feedback. The Zoning Commission finalises in September and Council votes in October. Every figure on this page is \"if this draft passes unchanged\", and the draft will change.","\u26d4\u26d4 THE PUBLIC RECORD CONTAINS TWO DIFFERENT DRAFTS, and which one is adopted matters more than the setback distance. The August 2026 proposal is reported as \"commercial and industrial districts\", the broad list scored here. But the March 2026 staff briefing to Council limited data centres to C-3 and I-1 ONLY, and used a 1,000 foot buffer that also covered parks. Under the narrow list the starting land is less than half, so the zoning list becomes the dominant rule and the setback the secondary one, which is the reverse of the broad reading. Both are published above. Do not quote one without the other.","The 500-foot setback is the most contested number in the proposal, with supporters asking for less and critics for more, which is why every figure here is also published at 300, 750 and 1000 feet. The March briefing used 1,000 feet. Read the sweep, not just the headline.","Parks were named as an incompatible use in the March briefing and are NOT in the August reporting, so they are scored on their own line and never folded into the headline.","\u26d4 The proposal does not yet say whether 500 feet is measured from the property line or from the structure. This page measures from the protected parcel or zone boundary, the stricter reading. A structure-based rule would leave MORE land eligible than shown here.","\"Residential\" here means residential ZONING, not dwelling units, because zoning is the complete dataset. Vacant residentially-zoned land counts as protected, which again is the stricter reading.","Schools are proxied by the City school-zone polygons, which surround a campus and are larger than it. That over-excludes slightly, and it is the only school layer the City publishes in this org.","\u26d4\u26d4 THE CITY ZONING LAYER OVERLAPS ITSELF, so the obvious way to do this calculation is wrong. Adding up the layer\u2019s own Shape__Area for the commercial and industrial districts returns about 114,989 acres, but those polygons cover the same ground more than once, so counting each piece of land once gives about 81,000 instead. Two independent checks: asking the City\u2019s own service which parcels genuinely OVERLAP a sampled parcel, which excludes parcels that merely share a boundary, returned overlaps on 11 of 12 sampled; and the overlap factor measured here is 1.42 whether the geometry is fetched simplified or raw, so it is in the data rather than in our method. Anyone who sums the area column, which is the first thing a spreadsheet does, overstates the land available by roughly 40%.","\u26d4 Everything is measured on a 100-foot raster, so a boundary is resolved to within 100 feet. That is adequate against a setback being negotiated between 300 and 1000 feet. IT IS NOT A SURVEY, and no decision about an individual parcel should be taken from it.","Eligible land is not available land. Nothing here knows who owns a parcel, whether it is for sale, whether it is already built on, or whether CPS Energy and SAWS can serve it. Zoning permission is a floor under the question, not an answer to it.","The \"removed by\" figures for residential, schools and medical OVERLAP and must never be summed. A parcel near both a school and a house is counted in both.","Office districts (O-1, O-1.5, O-2) are NOT counted as eligible under the proposal, but they ARE counted in the \"allowed today\" baseline, because a data centre is currently permitted as \"office data processing and management\" in most nonresidential districts. That single choice moves the headline percentage, so it is stated rather than buried.","Only land inside the city limits is scored. The ETJ and unincorporated Bexar County are outside the City's zoning reach, and a data centre built there is unaffected by any of this."],"source":{"publisher":"City of San Antonio open GIS (services.arcgis.com\/g1fRTDLeMgspWrYp)","layers":{"zoning":"COSA_Zoning\/FeatureServer\/12","aquifer":"EAA_AquiferZones\/FeatureServer\/0","schools":"School_Zones\/FeatureServer\/0","cbd":"Central_Business_District_CBD\/FeatureServer\/0","districts":"RedistrictedCouncilDistricts2022\/FeatureServer\/0","parks":"Park_Boundaries\/FeatureServer\/0","alf":"LTCF_Assisted_Living\/FeatureServer\/0","nursing":"LTCF_Nursing_Facilities\/FeatureServer\/0","daycare":"LTCF_Adult_Day_Care\/FeatureServer\/0","hospitals":"vDirectPatient_Hospitals\/FeatureServer\/0"},"licence":"Derived from City of San Antonio public GIS layers. Public record.","tool":"https:\/\/brandshyp.org\/san-antonio-data-center-zoning\/"},"generated":"2026-08-29T01:03:07+00:00"}