Millennial City USA 20- and 30-somethings are flocking to San Antonio. The nation’s fastest-growing city has a new moniker no one saw coming: millennial magnet.

Millennial City USA 20- and 30-somethings are flocking to San Antonio. The nation’s fastest-growing city has a new moniker no one saw coming: millennial magnet.

San Antonio has long been known as the sleepy “big city with a small-town feel,” a tourist draw with a downtown river, a famous fort and really good Mexican food.

But lately, the seventh largest and fastest-growing city in the nation has become associated with a moniker that seemingly no one — outside the tech world that largely birthed it — saw coming: millennial magnet.

About this author Melissa Fletcher Stoeltje, a journalist for more than 30 years, has been a feature writer, columnist, social services reporter and Sunday magazine writer. She is currently a general assignment reporter covering breaking news, cultural trends, and interesting people and goings-on across South Texas. Read her on our free site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com. | mstoeltje@express-news.net | Twitter: @mstoeltje

Go downtown or to the Pearl. Or to Southtown and King William. Or the gentrifying corners of the East Side.

In those and other places, you'll see them: Knots of young people partial to tattoos, e-scooters, small-batch coffee and artisanal beer. Some of them arrived from other places. Others grew up here and never left. Collectively, they're reshaping San Antonio in ways large and small.

On ExpressNews.com: Major tech redevelopment coming to San Antonio's East Side

The city had the second fastest-growing population of millennials among the nation’s top 100 metro areas from 2010 to 2015, bested only by Colorado Springs, according to a study by the Brookings Institution.

In that time, the millennial cohort grew 14.4 percent, compared to 11.8 percent for Austin. By 2017, these 20- and 30-somethings made up 24 percent of San Antonio's population. That’s more than 360,000 millennials.

San Antonio pales next to millennial powerhouses like New York, Chicago or Los Angeles, or even Houston, Dallas or Austin. But the trend is significant, considering how this age group might affect public policy, economic growth and the city’s tone and texture in the decades to come.

“The landscape is transforming dramatically because of the perspective of this younger generation coming into leadership roles,” said Mayor Ron Nirenberg. “Policy is going to follow in their direction.”

By that, he meant efforts to diversify transportation options, build more housing in or near downtown and create more green spaces.

On ExpressNews.com: Scooter company has two executives running for City Council

As more millennials arrive or never leave, they’re changing the city’s vibe, as seen in a proliferation of new bars, restaurants and food trucks, a flourishing of beer, coffee and cocktail festivals and a growing live music scene, such as the Mala Luna Music Festival, held each Halloween since 2016.

Even the high-toned Tobin Center is banking on the trend, booking millennial-friendly acts like A Day to Remember, a heavy-metal-pop-punk fusion band.

The term millennial refers to those born between 1981 and 1996, a group now between the ages of 23 and 38. The first generation to reach adulthood in the new millennium — hence the name — the cluster is almost 80-million strong nationwide, making it larger than even the post-war Baby-Boom glut.

Now Playing:

Children of the Internet Age, they’re seen as plugged-in, tech-savvy and social media-saturated. As a group they skew progressive. They’re collectively freaked out about climate change and mass shootings and supportive of the #MeToo movement. They’re better educated than earlier generations. They’re diverse — 44 percent of millennials nationwide are persons of color.

Stereotypes abound. Millennials are criticized as lazy and entitled — everyone gets a medal! — or lauded as open-minded and idealistic, usually depending on the age of the person passing judgment.

On ExpressNews.com: Entrepreneur talks success in S.A. tech — the hard fight for women to achieve it

An oldster at age 41 — “I’m a proud member of Generation X” — Nirenberg said millennials are having an impact on the local business scene, causing it to become more diversified and centered on “industries of the future,” such as biotech and cybersecurity.

He dismisses the negative stereotypes.

LISTEN: Reporter Melissa Fletcher Stoeltje elaborates on the significant trend of millennials settling in San Antonio and how they may affect public policy, economic growth and the city's tone and texture in the decades to come on EN Depth.

“My experience is millennials are more mission-driven,” he said. “It’s less about pay and more about having an impact on the community and the pursuit of something greater. They’re some of the most dedicated employees I’ve ever worked with.”

Ask around town what’s drawing or keeping millennials here and you hear a common refrain: A lower cost of living than millennial mega-cities and less-expensive housing. A friendly and less-competitive place to jump-start your start-up. Job opportunities. A sense of getting in at the start of something new, as opposed to being another cog in an established hipster wheel.

Then there’s that hard to define but you-know-it-when-you-feel-it quality: Has San Antonio finally become cool?

Cooler than even — gasp — Austin?

What local millennials have to say

There’s no better place to go millennial-watching than the Pearl Farmers Market on a Saturday morning.

Among the crowds strolling down a main street lined with booths selling local goods — goat milk soap, heirloom tomatoes, Peaceful Pork (“Letting Pigs Be Pigs”) — was Lindsey Corren, 23, who’d just bought a small plant and some organic carrots.

A medical humanities student at the University of Texas at San Antonio who works part-time at a church daycare, she said she’d planned to move away from San Antonio after high school. But the city of her birth had changed for the better, compelling her to stay.

“It’s just so convenient now to live here,” she said, stopping amid the flow of shoppers, dogs on leashes, babies in strollers. “There’s lots more to do, coffee shops, restaurants.…” Corren lives in a rented house with four roommates near UTSA, but she’d like to live closer to the center city.

“San Antonio is cheaper than other places,” she said as a rock band cranked it up nearby. “Right now, it just feels like my hometown is bringing a lot of younger people back.”

John and Heidi McDonald, married and both from San Antonio, lived in the millennial Mecca of Austin for four years. John, 29, worked at Google; Heidi, 28, attended the University of Texas at Austin. When she got into medical school at UT Health San Antonio, they decided it was time to come home.

“Austin was getting kind of cramped for both of us,” said John, who works in the tech industry here. “It’s expensive and the average ‘Austin’ personality is just not my favorite.”

Some have criticized Austin as having become almost Californian in its ostentation, a high-end world of valet parking and gated mansions.

“San Antonio has become super-cool and is booming,” said Heidi, now a medical resident in dermatology. “It’s fun, having grown up here, to see how the city has changed.”

They pause to let their 13-month-old daughter, Lyla, practice a few tentative steps and pet a friendly dog’s nose. The couple said living in Mahncke Park, where they own a home, puts them close to family-oriented attractions like the Doseum, the Witte Museum and the happening scene at the Pearl.

Jeremy and Zabrina Anderson, both 23, are another set of married millennials. They moved here from Albuquerque when Jeremy was stationed at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland with the Navy. They love it.

“I feel like anybody can move here and start something,” he said, sipping coffee at an outdoor table at the Pearl. “The culture is very open and diverse. It seems very accepting.”

Like many in their generation, they wanted to live in the urban center and found an apartment a few blocks away for $870 a month — less costly than the fancy condos and apartments that dot the Pearl proper.

“We just really don’t like the suburbs,” Jeremy said. “It’s like living in an endless strip mall.”

The couple married at 21, making them statistical outliers among millennials, who tend to delay marriage, child-bearing and other traditional milestones of adulthood. Zabrina said marrying young is “part of the military culture.”

Now Playing:

But in other ways, they’re purebred idealistic millennials. Take, for example, their concern about global warming, something prompting them to consider adoption, instead of having biological children. (“It’s just not sustainable,” said Jeremy, shaking his head.)

“If there are kids out there who need parents, why shouldn’t it be us?” said Zabrina. “Give somebody a chance who needs it.”

Living through the Great Recession of 2008 is thought to have made millennials gun-shy about marriage, taking on mortgages and other adult commitments. It also doesn’t help that many are hamstrung by working in the “gig economy,” with its unreliable contract and piece work and lack of benefits. And don’t forget one of the biggest roadblocks to millennials’ marrying and settling down.

“Joking but not joking — it’s college debt,” said Dallas Williams, 29, sipping hot chocolate at another outdoor table.

Williams, who moved here with her military family 10 years ago and decided to stay, cited another reason why millennials tend to start families later than their parents did. Many of them, especially females, view their 20s as a time to grow professionally and have fun.

“I think the goal is just to enjoy life right now and the rest will come,” said Williams, a development associate at Texas Public Radio.

Jomando Cruz, 32, a freelance photographer from the Rio Grande Valley, has lived in both Houston and Austin, where he attended college 10 years ago before coming here, following a personal relationship (which eventually ended.)

“Austin is so different than when I was there,” said Cruz, who also helps run a beer magazine. “Now it’s so overcrowded and expensive. As much as I love it, I couldn’t imagine living there anymore.”

He stood in line for a cappuccino with girlfriend Lynette Cano at Mila Coffee, part of a “micro-retail space” on Broadway, a stone’s throw from the Pearl. With its food trucks and silver Airstreams and quirky retailers — a barber shop, hand-stitched leather goods, vintage clothing — it’s the kind of place that’s catnip to millennials.

Opened three years ago by the owner of Richter Goods, a clothing company housed in the former Broadway News building, the space has picnic tables and millennial charm to spare.

Wearing a “Big Lebowski” sweater and a modified handlebar mustache, Cruz is puro millennial. He said the millennial scene in San Antonio still happens in “pockets," but is “building and growing.”

Asked about the defining characteristic of his generation, Cruz gave a one-word answer: freedom.

“For the longest time, it seemed like there was only one way to do things,” he said. “But then suddenly, minds opened.”

Mr. Millennial

Open a dictionary to find the textbook definition of a millennial and you’ll likely see a picture of Beto Altamirano.

Hip, energetic and determined to change the world for the better, he strides down the hall of Geekdom on a recent afternoon, talking all the way, stopping at the small office of Cityflag, a tech start-up.

Altamirano is CEO and co-founder of Cityflag, which aims to improve ordinary people’s lives, especially those in low-income neighborhoods, through better access to municipal government by using a mobile app.

"It's all about using technology to empower citizens," he said inside his glass-walled office at Geekdom, a co-working space for entrepreneurs, developers, techies and other young "creatives" on an upper floor of the downtown Rand Building.

Altamirano, 29, grew up in the Rio Grande Valley, where he had a middle-class upbringing but saw poverty firsthand. After graduating from UT Austin and working in state and national government, he began laying the groundwork for Cityflag, which provides residents with an easy way to report problems, such as potholes or graffiti.

Tech-based, hopeful and progressive, the company seems to encapsulate millennial aspirations.

“We’re creating a new environment here,” he said. “(Millennials) want to move here, not just to work at USAA or Rackspace or some other big company, but because they want to start their own companies, and that can happen here. This is occurring in part because our city leadership is changing, becoming younger and more forward-looking. That’s really important.”

Dax Moreno, 38, the chief talent recruiter for the nonprofit Tech Bloc, which advocates for the local tech community, said the trick in managing the millennial influx will be to preserve what makes San Antonio unique while giving young creatives room to reinvent it.

Nobody wants to downgrade the importance of the Alamo or the River Walk or the missions, said Moreno, who worked at tech companies here and in Los Angeles before returning to his hometown.

As more millennials move to San Antonio, some neighborhoods close to downtown and the Pearl, with its popular weekend Farmers Market, are undergoing a resurgence. As more millennials move to San Antonio, some neighborhoods close to downtown and the Pearl, with its popular weekend Farmers Market, are undergoing a resurgence. Photo: Kin Man Hui /San Antonio Express-News Photo: Kin Man Hui /San Antonio Express-News Image 1 of / 6 Caption Close How one 'big city with a small-town feel' became a top destination for millenials 1 / 6 Back to Gallery

“The question is: How do we honor the past but continue moving forward?” he said. “I love tacos and taco houses, but it’s also great to see the amazing culinary scene that’s developing here, to see there’s life outside of chain restaurants. No, we’re not Austin, but we’re not this sleepy little town stuck in the past anymore.”

Melissa Fletcher Stoeltje is a staff writer in the San Antonio and Bexar County area. Read her on our free site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com. | mstoeltje@express-news.net | Twitter: @mstoeltje