San Antonio businessman B.J. “Red” McCombs (left), Dr. Bill Henrich, President of UT Health Science Center, and Marty Wender, Owner of the Charles Martin Wender Real Estate and Investments (right), share a laugh during the Texas Headwinds breakfast in the Plaza Club at the Frost Bank Thursday morning.
In the 1980s, he envisioned a thriving community west of IH-10 and then proceeded to make it happen, creating the Westover Hills development, helping San Antonio to secure SeaWorld and facilitating the construction of Texas 151. Eight months ago, Wender narrowly escaped death when he lost consciousness in his home’s steam shower, suffering burns that covered more than 20 percent of his body. McCombs sees Wender as one of a small number of community leaders who propelled San Antonio into the modern era; someone who helped transform a river city built around tourism and the military into a sprawling metropolis with an economy sufficiently diversified to withstand the 2008-09 recession.
Wender had been part of that effort, but after developing the Crown Ridge subdivision, north of Fiesta Texas, in 1981, he decided that the north side’s rocky terrain and proximity to the Edwards Aquifer Recharge Zone were problematic. McCombs knew that White would be visiting San Antonio the next day for a luncheon, and he persuaded the governor to visit the area surrounding the projected SeaWorld site — which was a desolate cow pasture at the time. Three decades later, the reverberations from that brief gubernatorial visit are hard to miss in Westover Hills: six data-center facilities, residential growth, Alamo Colleges’ Northwest Vista campus and the Hyatt Hill Country Resort and Spa.