Details of a plan to transform the southeast corner of downtown San Antonio into a $4 billion sports and entertainment center are coming to light as city leaders gear up for their first public discussion of what’s been dubbed “Project Marvel.”
City Council will get its first public briefing on the proposed district, to be located “in Hemisfair and the surrounding area,” according to the agenda for a special session to be held at 10:30 a.m. Thursday.
The staff memo attached to the one-item agenda offers few new details, which states the start of hush-hush discussions began in the spring of 2023. Since then, the city, Bexar County and the San Antonio Spurs “have had conversations regarding the opportunity to develop a sports and entertainment district in downtown San Antonio,” which the memo asserts “would be transformational” for the city.
The district could include an expanded convention center, a further improved Alamodome, a new event venue, a convention center hotel, “and potentially a new arena for the San Antonio Spurs.”
On Thursday, Council will learn about the conceptual plan, feasibility studies, potential funding sources and next steps. If the project — or some components of it — are deemed feasible, the city will engage the community with “planning and design workshops and public meetings.”
“[T]his briefing is the first of many public briefings,” the memo states. City staff will return to council on Dec. 4 with a briefing on the Convention Center expansion feasibility.
Local reports have revealed in recent months that city staff have been in touch with several real estate and consulting companies to study the feasibility of developing a sports and entertainment district in San Antonio. Those companies and other officials were asked to sign nondisclosure agreements.
While the city already owns much of the land in Hemisfair, it’s eyeing at least two major parcels, property that City Manager Erik Walsh described recently as 40 to 50 acres ready to be developed. Walsh said the city has the right of first refusal on the federally-owned land, meaning it gets first crack at making an offer to the General Services Administration.
In April, the University of Texas System Board of Regents gave its approval for the University of Texas at San Antonio to enter into negotiation with the City of San Antonio about acquiring the Institute of Texan Cultures (ITC) property.
The ITC makes up roughly 13.5 acres in the public-private Hemisfair development, enough space for the city to build a sports arena if the museum weren’t there, according to sporting facility experts.
Plus, other contiguous parcels in the eastern quadrant of Hemisfair, either unused or undeveloped today, improve the odds that the area could be transformed into a full sports and entertainment destination with an arena at its core.
Earlier this year, a city spokeswoman described several potential projects for the site that were named in background memo. That includes expanding the Henry B. González Convention Center, which Walsh has said must be done to compete with other cities for meeting and visitor business.
The project mentioned in the memo that’s already on the drawing board calls for renovating the Alamodome and building a land bridge over Interstate 37 to reconnect Hemisfair and the rest of downtown San Antonio to the East Side where the Alamodome sits.
City staff appear to be aligning on what has been a tightly held project for some time. At a developer’s trade conference on Thursday, Transportation Department Director Cat Hernandez mentioned it when asked how the city will look in 10 years.
“I think that our downtown is going to experience some huge potential opportunities from the entertainment district [and] hopefully the baseball stadium,” she said.
Reporter Tracy Idell Hamilton contributed to this report.
