Hemisfair's Two Halves: A Hotel's Glass Pavilion and the 1890s Houses Waiting on a Bond

The biggest change at Hemisfair this year arrived in one day. Zachry Hospitality opened The Monarch on March 3, 2026. With it came a $2 million stained-glass pavilion in Civic Park, three restaurants and a lobby bar, all opening together. A few hundred yards away in Yanaguana Garden, the 1890s houses run on a slower model. Small local tenants pay rent that helps keep the park going, and some of those houses have sat empty for years.

Both halves matter if you use the park. Civic Park now has a late-night anchor on a scale that no single tenant in the old houses could take on. Yanaguana is still where the everyday stops are, and what fills its remaining houses depends on a bond package the city hasn't finalized.

What the hotel built in one go

The Monarch is a 17-story, 200-room hotel at Alamo and Market streets. It cost $185 million and its rooms start at $599 a night, so it isn't aimed at locals. The ground floor and the park edge are a different story. Rick Slutter, managing director of hotels for Zachry Hospitality, told the San Antonio Report last December that the pavilion was meant to connect the hotel to Hemisfair Park:

"We really looked at it like the Bean in Chicago."

The pavilion is called La Mariposa. It has three wings, sits beneath the Tower of the Americas, and was designed by Overland Partners working with local artists. Visit San Antonio counts 410 colored glass panels and says LED lighting lights the pavilion after dark. KENS 5 reported that the glass reflects the park during the day, and that the organizers planned for the lighting to change with the seasons and for special celebrations. The hotel sits where H.B. Zachry helped shape the 1968 World's Fair, so the family company is building on familiar ground.

The restaurants are the part locals are most likely to use. Slutter said the food would be priced to compete with the places around it. The Express-News described three main dining spots plus a fourth concept, The Lobby Bar, with its own food and drink menu. Current hours and menus for the three restaurants show three very different price levels:

The hotel's opening announcement, published by Hotel Online, says the café's take-out window serves park visitors and downtown locals. Aleteo's weekend bar hours make it the latest-open spot on the park's edge, four hours past the 10 p.m. close of Lick's scoop shop across the park. Hours on the hotel site can change, so check before you go.

Why the old houses move slowly

The houses around Yanaguana Garden are what's left of Germantown. They are among 22 buildings saved from the roughly 300 homes cleared for HemisFair '68. The nonprofit that runs Hemisfair has restored six of them for food and drink tenants. Those tenants first make the buildings work for food service, then pay rent that helps support a park with about 8 million visits since 2015.

That setup puts the risk on small businesses. In June, the San Antonio Report looked back at the Kusch House, a Folk Victorian house where a Sichuan-style restaurant was announced in 2023. After a half-million dollars of remodeling and a finished design, the cost of a full restaurant rehab was more than the tenant could take on. Hemisfair CEO Melissa Robinson explained the gap in the same article:

"In the regular real estate market, an owner-landlord would have a tenant finish-out allowance that they would offer. We don't have that."

Robinson estimated that bringing a historic building to a partial "white box" with basic infrastructure costs $500,000 to $5 million, depending on its condition, and the tenant still pays for its own finish-out. The whole La Mariposa pavilion cost $2 million, which is less than the high end of that estimate for just one house. It opened as part of a $185 million hotel from a company that also owns the Hilton Palacio del Rio across the street.

The Yanaguana side, as it runs today

Despite the slow pace, the restored houses still cover the everyday stops. Hemisfair's Eat page lists Dough Pizzeria Napoletana at 518 S. Alamo St., in the former OK Bar. Commonwealth Bakery and Coffeehouse is in the Koehler House at 611 Hemisfair Blvd. Lick Honest Ice Creams is in the Sam Smith House at 639 Hemisfair Blvd., and Bombay Bicycle Club is in the Espinosa House at 607 Hemisfair Blvd. The same page lists Box Street All Day, Paleteria San Antonio, Park @ 510 and Re:Rooted 210 Urban Winery in Yanaguana Garden.

The two hotel-side spots line up with these. Commonwealth is open 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. on weekdays and 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. on weekends, so on weekday mornings the Nectarie window opens an hour earlier at 6 a.m. Lick is open until 10 p.m. every night, about when Oak & Amber closes Thursday through Saturday. Dough has a Fall 2026 menu posted now.

What's on the calendar after this week

Most of Hemisfair's programming for the rest of the fall is free and spread across both halves of the park. These dates are from the Hemisfair events calendar:

1. Sunday, November 1, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday Brunch Market, hosted by Box Street All Day and The Texas Market, with local vendors, a DJ and brunch.
2. Tuesday, November 3, 10 to 11 a.m. Story Time with SAAACAM. Story Time also runs November 10 and November 24 in Yanaguana Garden, on the Reading Rug behind the Hemisfair offices at 630 E. Nueva St. Covered parking is in the Hemisfair Garage at 623 Hemisfair Blvd.
3. Saturday, November 7, 4:30 p.m. to 11:59 p.m. DiwaliSA.
4. Saturday, November 14, noon to 6 p.m. SA Veterans Day at Hemisfair, a free event in Civic Park.
5. Saturday, November 21. Panda Fest takes over Civic Park from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. with tickets. Magik Theatre's free Party in the Park is in the Theatre Courtyard from 4 to 5 p.m., and its ticketed Grinch stage show runs through December 24.
6. Sunday, December 6, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The Sunday Brunch Market returns.

The Veterans Day event and Panda Fest take place in Civic Park, next to La Mariposa. On those two Saturdays, both halves of the park will be in use at the same time.

What fills in next, and who pays for it

Several projects show which model is likely to shape the next few years:

• Tynan-Sweeney House. In March, Hemisfair announced Mural Ride Bike Tours as the tenant, with plans for an art gallery, local retail and e-bike and e-scooter charging. The announcement said buildout would start in the second quarter and the space would open to the public later in the year.
• The 2027 bond ask. Hemisfair is asking the city for $37.8 million. That includes more than $10.8 million to restore nine more protected structures, among them the Mayer-Halff and Richter houses and the Brutalist Woman's Pavilion, plus about $27 million to finish Tower Park and East Nueva Street. City staff have said the 2027 bond is expected to be about half the size of the 2022 bond.
• The arena. In June, Project Marvel was expected to bring a new Spurs arena to the park by 2028, on the former Institute of Texan Cultures property. On August 17, City Council voted 5 to 6 against putting the city's $489 million arena contribution on the November ballot, and KSAT reported that negotiations on a final agreement were expected later in 2026.

Robinson told the San Antonio Report that Tower Park is public space, unlike the arena site and the development planned next to it, and that public dollars should finish the public park. For now, the hotel side opened all at once, while the historic houses wait on bond money and on tenants who can carry the rehab costs. The Monarch's 6 a.m. café window and the Hemisfair Blvd. houses already sit on the same walk.

At Harkin Realty, we keep track of how changes like these shape daily life around downtown, from a new café window on Market Street to a bond vote that decides which old house gets its next tenant. If you own near Hemisfair and want to know how this year's changes affect your home's value, start with your Instant Home Valuation and we'll go from there.