The Brooks Development Authority has demonstrated economic development success with projects including a 62-acre (250,000 m2) retail development, approximately 256,000 square feet (23,800 m2) of research and distribution facilities for DPT Laboratories, the South Texas Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases (an infectious disease research institute coordinated with the University of Texas at San Antonio), an international pharmaceutical company, and a $25.5 million City/County emergency operations center which opened in the fall of 2007.
Classes had already started in August 2006 at a temporary location on South Presa Street (in the far west part of Brooks), and then students were relocated to the current location of Brooks Academy (on the north side of Lyster Road) in March 2007.
In August 2011, Texas A&M University opened a satellite campus at 2601 Louis Bauer Drive (in the west part of Brooks), and uses this building for the College of Business and the Department of Counseling and Leadership.
In 2012, the $90 million Mission Trail Baptist Hospital opened at 3327 Research Plaza.
On August 8, 2016, the University of the Incarnate Word opened a School of Osteopathic Medicine on 16 acres in the northwest part of Brooks (at 100 Kennedy Circle), in buildings which were once the Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine.