Project Marvel cleared its biggest political hurdles at the end of 2025, but now city leaders are scrambling to line up the land, designs and remaining funding for a half-dozen components that are each challenging in their own right.
Major features presented for the first time roughly a year ago came into clearer focus Wednesday as city officials laid out where they’ve made progress — and run into new challenges — on the new downtown San Antonio sports and entertainment district.
“The district’s got a number of very large projects in there,” the city’s chief of financial and administrative services Ben Gorzell told the City Council in a comprehensive project update on Wednesday. “We’ve talked about the fact that we’ve got to really phase those over time in order to be able to implement that.”
At the heart of the 60-plus acre sports and entertainment district is a new $1.3 billion basketball venue and an expanded convention center that are still high on city leaders’ priority lists and likely to be the first components tackled — pending acquisition of the land for the arena footprint that’s currently in the works with UTSA.
Ultimately, the city will own all of the land within the district, but is still in the process of acquiring some of the parcels.
Before breaking ground on the new NBA arena — which has a projected 60-month timeline to design and build — the Spurs basketball team ownership must also complete new mixed-use development, likely apartments, restaurants, shops, office space and hotels, on property the city is moving to purchase this week.
That includes a federally owned office building in the Hemisfair area and federally owned parking lots on either side of César Chávez Boulevard.
Other elements visible in a flashy rendering that’s become synonymous with the project have always faced a longer timeline — some were more than a decade out in the first presentation — but are already looking like they could be changing from the original vision.
The new convention center hotel, for example, is on pause while the city-owned water utility studies the feasibility of moving a water chilling plant — a move that’s drawn backlash from some members of the public who say it’s a waste of resources to destroy a functioning utility asset.
Meanwhile, plans for an improved Alamodome are also in the distant future due to a lack of resources, according to city leaders. And a land bridge spanning Interstate 37 has been temporarily scrapped due to a change in presidential administration that appears unlikely to produce the federal funding component.
“When you look at any one of those anchor projects that are in there, if we were just trying to do one of those, that would be difficult,” Gorzell said roughly a year ago at the project’s outset. “We’re going to try to do several at the same time.”
As the City Council begins work on finalizing its nonbinding term sheet agreement with the Spurs, as well as hiring a project consultant, studying the district’s burden on city resources, commissioning a parking feasibility assessment and figuring out how to pay for the district’s infrastructure needs in a forthcoming city bond, here’s where city officials say the major components of Project Marvel currently stand.
City prepares to buy land
The City of San Antonio already owns most of the property in the Hemisfair area around the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center, the Tower of the Americas and Civic Park.
There are two pieces of land, though, that officials need to purchase to move forward with plans for a sports and entertainment district. Property around the old Institute of Texan Cultures is owned by UTSA and the federal government owns an office building and land on either side of César Chávez Boulevard.
At its Thursday morning meeting, City Council will consider a proposal to buy that federal land.
Space cleared for new Spurs arena
The estimated $1.3 billion new Spurs arena is expected to go on a site that up until recently was home to the UTSA Institute of Texan Cultures. Voters approved the arena’s $800 million public funding component in November, and while the museum building has been demolished, the sale of the property is still in the works.
Government entities have certain advantages when purchasing properties from one another, so San Antonio will be the one acquiring the land from the state university — a transaction estimated to cost roughly $60 million. The final price will be determined by a forthcoming appraisal process that both the city and UTSA must undergo.
“That’s going to be a big part of our work effort for 2026, … to engage with UTSA and work on the acquisition of that property,” Gorzell said. “We have that memorandum of understanding in place, it gives us the exclusive first right to buy that property. So that is something that we need to engage with them on and begin to negotiate.”
The most likely funding source to purchase the land is the Midtown Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone. But Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones and several council members have pushed back on that idea, and Gorzell said Wednesday that the city may explore other options, such as potentially swapping land or other assets with UTSA.
The Spurs will choose a developer to design the arena and surrounding development. The arena is expected to be completed by summer of 2032, Gorzell said Wednesday.
The displaced Institute of Texan Cultures, meanwhile, is reopening this month in the lobby of the Frost Bank Tower.
Convention center upgrades are funded but unclear
Upgrading the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center remains a key priority for city officials, who have proposed a nearly 200,000-square-foot expansion.
Funding for this major project comes from state sales tax dollars from the San Antonio’s Project Finance Zone. But Gorzell said the city still needs to figure out how the convention center fits into the renovated Hemisfair area and new sports and entertainment district.
“Today, the [convention center’s] front door is on the Market Street side [opposite of the arena footprint]. If we think about everything we’re talking about and all the investment we’re making inside of the park and all these venues moving forward, how does that egress work from the back side of the building?” he said.
The city also wants to look at the convention market and better understand how an expansion to the convention center would make it more competitive, he said. Austin and Dallas, for example, are currently expanding their convention centers.
For now, city staff are studying the expansion and planning to present more information to City Council in September.
Bars, restaurants, office space coming into focus
Like other major cities redesigning their professional sports complexes, the new Spurs arena is expected to anchor an array of mixed-use development, such as apartments, restaurants, shops, office space and hotels.
This is expected to be some of the earliest work to start, because San Antonio’s agreement with the Spurs calls for at least $500 million in development to have been completed before the city issues bonds to help pay for the arena’s construction.
This week City Council is taking the first steps toward facilitating that by moving to purchase some land around the arena footprint that’s currently owned by the federal government, including an office building adjacent to the Institute of Texan Cultures site and parking lots across César E. Chávez Blvd.
The office building has tenants that will continue to lease the space for several years, Gorzell said, and its redevelopment is likely further out due in part to some historical features that make it more complicated.
Per an item on Thursday’s council agenda, the Spurs will give the city $30 million for the land acquisition. Though the Spurs will be developing city-owned property, Gorzell said the new development will still be on the tax rolls, adding funds to the Hemisfair TIRZ that will be used to pay for the arena.
If the arena district project doesn’t come together, Gorzell said the city has the option to either reimburse the Spurs for the $30 million, or transfer the land to the team’s ownership.
The Spurs have yet to announce who they will partner with to build the new mixed-use district, but Gorzell said the city planned to have some input in that development when it leases the land to the Spurs.
“We looked at a range of different options in terms of what that might look like from a market perspective,” Gorzell said. “Once the Spurs have their developer in place and we’re negotiating with them, that will be part of the development agreement layout — what’s going to get built and when, how many units, how much space.”
‘Big renovation’ to Alamodome pushed back
Renovating the aging Alamodome was once a high priority, and the city received a special tax designation from the state to help pay for it, along with the convention center upgrades, during the 2023 Legislative Session.
But that pot of money has since been redivided to provide some funds for the new Spurs arena project, and the mayor wants it to cover some of the arena district infrastructure as well.
Against that backdrop, city officials are pushing back the timeline and perhaps scaling back improvements to the Alamodome.
“The big renovation we have in our timeline, we pushed that out to about 10 years from now. So the 2035-ish range, for planning purposes,” Gorzell said. “When you start talking about the major renovations of the Alamodome, the numbers get bigger fast.”
Gorzell said improvements to the Alamodome, which first opened in 1993, could stretch into the $1 billion range. An economic impact analysis the city commissioned in 2025 suggested the venue needed infrastructure upgrades, additional digital signage, enhanced food and beverage options and upgrades to entry plazas.
In the meantime, Gorzell said, the city would focus on funding the Alamodome’s regular operational costs and needs, with a presentation to the council coming in September.
“Are there opportunities to do smaller-scale investments in the dome that either have a financial return and/or enhance attendee experience? Maybe,” he said. “We want to make sure that we’re doing things that, if a major renovation happens in 2035, you don’t have a stranded investment where we’ve not really recouped that.”
Money to study a land bridge, but none to build it
During a San Antonio Report CityFest event last year, City Manager Erik Walsh said the land bridge over I-37 was being scrapped for now due to the lack of federal support under the Trump Administration.
This week Gorzell further explained, “We’d have to rely a lot on federal funding to get something like that done. It’s less likely that we would get that … at this point in time.”
However, he said, the roughly $3 million grant that the city was awarded to study the project by the U.S. Department of Transportation under the Biden Administration will be used to look at all types of connectivity and pedestrian access across I-37.
The city had paused on the study after the change in administration, for fear it wouldn’t be reimbursed, and now faces a tight timeline to spend the money.
“We have been able to determine that we are going to receive this grant, and we have until the end of this calendar year, Dec. 31, to spend it,” Gorzell said.
Travel between downtown and the East Side has been a focus for some local community groups.
San Antonio for Growth on the East Side (SAGE), for example, has its own $2 million grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation to look at connectivity across highways on the East Side.
James Nortey, SAGE’s CEO, said multiple options — from land bridges to underpasses — should still be on the table. SAGE is open to combining its efforts with the city’s, he added, as long as any study has sufficient community input and buy-in.
“It’s not for me to say, ‘This is what I think should happen.’ It is for me to make sure the process is transparent,” Nortey said. “I look forward to having the opportunity to work with the city and have the dollars stretch further.”
Convention center hotel falls out of favor
In a press briefing on Monday, city officials said a new hotel near the convention center was no longer a city priority for 2026. The hotel was originally considered necessary to house enough guests for the expanded convention center, but it was expected to go on a site that’s currently home to a SAWS chilling plant.
Gorzell said any work on a hotel would come in a later phase of construction after more consideration regarding the cooling plant, which became an issue of political debate after some residents were upset about tearing it down.
SAWS is spending $2.3 million to study expanding its capacity for the Hemisfair area, including potentially moving the chilling plant, and the results are expected later this month.
“Early indications are that’s probably not going to be feasible [to move it],” Gorzell said Wednesday. ” … I know that this was coming up a lot last fall … But at the end of the day, if it doesn’t make sense, we’re not going to recommend we do it.”
Hotels play a key role in the financing of the sports and entertainment district, because the state’s Project Finance Zone allows the city to collect growth in revenue from the state’s share of some hotel-related taxes.
But the Spurs could still add hospitality space as part of its mixed-use development, Gorzell said, and many other new hotels are in the works with the PFZ boundaries.
Given the other planned hotels and pushback surrounding the chilling plant, Council members Sukh Kaur (D1), Jalen McKee-Rodriguez (D2) and Phyllis Viagran (D3) all urged the city to remove the convention center hotel from its near-term project list on Wednesday.
“We already hear from some of our hoteliers that we have enough beds, and we need to make sure we’re filling those beds before building a new one,” Kaur said.
Music venue part of a later phase
Part of the plan for Project Marvel involved turning the existing Wood Courthouse into a 4,000- to 5,000-seat music venue. The John H. Wood Jr. Courthouse, originally built for the 1968 World’s Fair, became empty when the U.S. Court’s Western District of Texas moved into a new facility on Nueva Street in 2022.
The city has proposed turning the space into a music venue for mid-sized concerts. An economic impact analysis suggested the venue would create 223 new jobs and $13.8 million in direct spending.
That project will take place in later phases of development, though, according to Gorzell.
He noted that the Wood Courthouse could be a real asset in future convention center operations, offering a large venue for groups, but said the city will work on the venue later in the sports and entertainment district’s development.
Parking garage and studies
Wednesday’s council discussion included much concern about parking and transportation surrounding the arena district. The original plans call for a parking garage paid for by a roughly $250 million city infrastructure bond.
Now the city’s bond capacity is looking much smaller than expected, however, and Gorzell said Wednesday that the city plans to seek a parking feasibility assessment to see if other arrangements can be made.
“If, in fact, we’re going to move forward with a parking garage, then this consultant will help us figure out how much of that garage can [pay for itself],” Gorzell said. “Then if there is a gap, then that is something that we would talk about in terms of potential bond program or something else.”
Many council members expressed concern about Project Marvel consuming too much of the bond capacity that’s expected to cover projects all throughout the city. The date and size of that bond election has yet to be determined, city leaders said Wednesday.
Many council members also disliked the idea of the city spending money on more downtown parking over other kinds of transportation, and expressed skepticism about hiring a consultant to say there isn’t enough parking as it is.
Gorzell said the study is supposed to look at the situation holistically, including coordination of VIA bus routes, technology that can help people find parking spaces downtown before they leave home, and other potential solutions.
Like a number of other studies, the parking study is expected to come before the council in September, causing Councilwoman Misty Spears (D9) to remark about the challenges the city is setting itself up for this fall.
They’ll be in the home stretch of a budget season where they need to close a deficit, at the same time they’re receiving consultants’ feedback on parking, the Alamodome, convention center and infrastructure needs, and potentially gearing up for a city bond election.
“That just seems insurmountable, to look at all of that information and do it well,” she said. “I hope everyone feels as overwhelmed as I’m feeling about this.”
