Priced out of Southtown, SAY Sí goes west
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Stephanie Stokes / SA Heron / @estefotografa
“What happened in Southtown and the Blue Star area is that it’s become gentrified,” said Jon Hinojosa, SAY Sí’s executive director, on the nonprofit’s move to the West Side.
In late 2019, SAY Sí, the youth arts education nonprofit that’s been operating in San Antonio since 1994, announced that it would leave its longtime home, a renovated 26,000-square-foot commercial building at 1518 S. Alamo St., across Probandt from its original site in the Blue Star Arts Complex.
“We really thought that was going to be our home forever,” says Jon Hinojosa, SAY Sí’s long-time executive director. As demand for its programs grew over the years, Hinojosa says, so did SAY Sí’s need for space. But by the time the organization was looking to move, property values in the neighborhood it had grew up in climbed too high. “What happened in Southtown and the Blue Star area is that it’s become gentrified,” Hinojosa said. “So all of the spaces that we were looking at, we just couldn’t afford any more.”