The San Antonio skyline is inevitably going to change over time as the city continues to grow. In just the last couple of years, there’s been one noticeable change to the skyline at night: more color thanks to LED lights.
The splash of color has given downtown a new personality to many downtown buildings from Bank of America Plaza to the Tobin Center and, most recently, the Weston Centre, now marked with the signature of BBVA Compass with a bright blue backdrop.
Bank of America Plaza flipped the lights on in March of 2016. The LED design is called “Kinetic Skyline,” and the artist behind it all if Bill Fitzgibbons.
“I think it brings some energy to the skyline at night because, without these kind of light sculptures, it just kind of becomes this dark silhouette,” Fitzgibbons said.
His work can be seen all around downtown like at the Robert B. Green Clinic, the Centro Chroma Tower located at the VIA Centro Plaza and the Commerce Street and Houston Street underpasses, an area people once avoided because it was dark and dangerous… at least until the lights went on.
“You’re seeing opportunities we’ve really never had before because these LED fixtures have a color palette of millions of colors and you can program all these LEDs to do any number of different movements, and we’ve never had that before,” he said.
The newest addition to the skyline’s growing collection of lights, the Weston Centre and it’s BBVA Compass sign, is obviously more advertising than public art. Even so, the blue glow is catching the eyes of San Antonians.
“I think seeing the blue illuminate the sky at night is just a beacon just to draw people to downtown and remember downtown is here,” said Mona Ghawi, president of Weston Properties.
Ghawi gave KENS 5 rare access to the very top of the 32-story building that overlooks all of the Alamo City. Ryan Parker of BBVA Compass says that it was a no-brainer to put their sign up as they wanted to be a part of the city’s evolving skyline.
“We had been in this community a little over 20 years now, and we had not had true branding and staking flags in the city so we made a concise effort to be a part of the historic skyline of San Antonio, and it was a very easy decision,” he said.