Boerne mayor bracing for impact of approaching San Antonio sprawl

BOERNE, Texas – Editor’s note: This story was published through a partnership between KSAT and the San Antonio Business Journal.

That continued explosive development northwest of San Antonio comes at a cost. And Boerne, a quaint town grappling with its own growing pains, could pay a steep price.

“Candidly, most of the growth that’s going on is outside of the city limits of Boerne. There are no rules for what that looks like,” Boerne Mayor Tim Handren said. “I don’t know what it’s going to look like. That’s the bad thing.

It’s becoming nearly impossible to tell where San Antonio stops and Boerne begins as what’s left of undeveloped land along that stretch of the Interstate 10 corridor is being gobbled up.

One of the more recent examples of that northward migration is a nearly 120-acre ranch between San Antonio and Boerne now earmarked for a major mixed-use development. The planned Lemon Creek Ranch project will include more than 2,000 feet of frontage along the heavily traversed highway.

Handren expects that the area south of Boerne will become too congested, placing increasing pressure on the community’s resources and infrastructure.

“Traffic and water are my two biggest concerns right now. That’s going to be the part that’s hard to figure out,” he said. “We’re already 20 years too late on both those fronts.”

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