SAN ANTONIO — Owning the Grant and Kress buildings was only on the radar for the San Antonio African American Community Archive and Museum (SAAACAM) once the buildings became available for sale.
"Dr. Carey Latimore envisioned a civil rights institute in this building," Deborah Omowale Jarmon said.
According to the SAAACAM CEO, the project needed more support than it was getting from conversations that started in 2021.
She recalls the last text with Latimeore, the late Trinity University professor who died in June 2022.
"My last text with Dr. Latimore is May 20th, 2022, when I mentioned to him, 'Hey, the space is for sale,'" she said. "And he said, 'Yes, I heard. You know, you guys should check it out.'"
Over a year and a half later, SAAACAM now owns the Grant and Kress buildings. The City of San Antonio is putting up more than $6 million in economic development funding, part of it a loan to bring the civil rights institute project to fruition.
"Before we were just visiting. Now we actually own it," J. Maurice Gibbs said.
Gibbs, the chairman of the SAAACAM board, said the space will be used for telling stories about the Black experience in San Antonio.
"A lot of times, our stories are muted," Gibbs said. "Here, our stories will no longer be muted."
Bexar County commissioners have set aside $5 million for the new SAAACAM home, but are still working on the details of the deal.
According to Omowale Jarmon, the museum will still need an additional $35 million to bring its new property to life by 2026, the planned year for opening.
"This wasn't a Deborah vision. It wasn't even as much a SAAACAM staff vision. It was a collective community vision," she said. "And that's what makes this space so special."
Renderings for the space reveal a multilevel museum unique to the San Antonio landscape, and just feet from the Alamo in the 300 block of East Houston Street.
The former five-and-dime and defunct department store will be transformed into a space far different from SAAACAM's current location at La Villita. It will have a research library, a lower-level auditorium, classrooms, a reflection garden, huge spaces on exterior walls for videos, rooftop terraces and a 12-room boutique hotel.
"It will be a space where you can engage in your story. You can engage in the experience. It will be a safe space," she said. "It'll be a space that celebrates excellence. It will be a space of joy, of peace."
SAAACAM's new space is in a place where Black people could work but were forbidden to eat and shop. San Antonio quietly desegregated the department stores, especially lunch counters, in March 1960.
A lunch counter will be part of the experience, too.
"What we will be displaying will be digital and tech in nature," she said. "We're going to make sure that it is accessible so seniors won't feel intimidated, children won't feel like this is over my head and adults won't feel like this is boring."
While the museum will primarily tell the Black experience, it's not limiting other's stories to unpack, according to Omowale Jarmon.
Their revenue stream, once open, will not include money from the cost of entering the museum. The plan is to make admission free.
"We want to be a museum for all, not just African Americans here in San Antonio."