A recent matchup between the team on the side of a new baseball stadium and the one against displacing downtown residents appeared to end in September with both winners and losers.
That’s with more innings yet to go as local officials and the team’s owners say details of an agreement signed last month are still being worked out, with a school district board weighing whether to sell a key parcel of land, and still no public response to the pending deal from Major League Baseball.
Both the city and county voted in favor of the informal contract that involves paying for the stadium through a complicated web of funding that includes a large share of the cost coming from the San Antonio Missions, but no new taxes.
Up against an Oct. 15 deadline imposed by the MLB to commit or risk losing the team, most — though not all — officials applauded the deal while admitting the boost to economic development comes at the expense of desperately needed housing.
“I understand the skepticism, I understand the concerns, I understand the examples of where deals went back,” said Mayor Ron Nirenberg in August.
“That’s why I think this is an extraordinary opportunity for the city, because this is unlike any other sports deal, certainly in this city, but perhaps in any other community, for a long time,” he added.
City Manager Erik Walsh called the deal to build a baseball stadium by 2028 “a good, solid proposal,” one that came about after looking at how other municipalities funded and built new sports venues.
“We spent a lot of time looking at how these are structured in other parts of the country, and we saw a lot of things we didn’t want to do,” he said. “There is risk associated with these types of projects and how you manage that risk is critical for all sides.”
Assistant City Manager Lori Houston pointed out that the guarantees provided in the agreement make it worth pursuing, specifically with developer Weston Urban, which owns the land surrounding the ballpark site that is slated for redevelopment.
Rather than a build-and-they-will-come approach, the agreement requires Weston Urban to start construction on the first two of four planned phases of private development simultaneous with building the ballpark, she said.
Tax increments and assessments from that development, likely a mixed-use project valued at $1 billion, will be used to help fund the ballpark.
But District 2 Councilman Jalen McKee-Rodriguez said there were two ways to look at putting money into a ballpark versus other city needs.
“I have constituents who will say, hell yeah, this is great, it’s time we start looking like other major cities in the U.S., and our downtown is ready for it,” he said. “I also have constituents who are going to say, ‘Hell no, we haven’t addressed our public safety issues, our housing crisis, including homelessness’ … and both are compelling for different reasons.”
‘Cutting edge’
Chris Dunlavey, a longtime consultant in the sports venue financing and planning space, who is familiar with but has no connection to the project, said the agreement appears to be innovative.
“I would certainly call it cutting-edge, particularly for minor league baseball,” he said, pointing to the “heavy financial commitment” from the team combined with the new tax increment generated from development in the surrounding area.
Dunlavey is CEO of the Washington, D.C.-based Brailsford and Dunlavey, a firm that conducts predevelopment feasibility studies for stadium projects in U.S. cities, from Atlanta to Seattle. Those studies look at what kind of stadium project works in an area, and what size it should be, the estimated tax revenue it will generate and the economic impact it could have.
“I haven’t seen anybody go quite this far,” Dunlavey said of the San Antonio agreement. “Usually, there’s still some form of something that falls on the average taxpayer, whether it’s the city or county reallocating some general fund monies or issuing some debt backed by the county, or instituting some new broad-based tax.”
Almost all of the formulas for financing the last 20 minor league ballparks built across the country have used some kind of public money, he said.
This year alone, more than $13 billion in public subsidies have been proposed for teams in 12 U.S. cities, according to a Tax Foundation report.
Building new stadiums in the urban core of a city, where most teams got their start in the early 20th century, he said, is a widespread strategy as officials look to catalyze economic development.
“Almost every minor league deal we’re involved in these days, and big league deals, too, are thinking about that broader district around the project … and trying to create some form of mechanism to tap into the value of that surrounding development,” he said.
But Dunlavey understands why taxpayers are skeptical of any proposal involving a new ballpark or arena.
“There have been a lot of projects that got sold on the idea that the development was coming, and it never did,” he said. But that is less true about baseball stadiums, given the season is longer than other professional sports — creating a steadier flow of foot traffic in the area.
Displacement
Dunlavey named Nationals Park in Washington, D.C., and Truist Park in Atlanta as examples of how a ballpark successfully stimulated development in those cities. Cobb County in Georgia put a development guarantee in its agreement similar to the Missions deal, he added.
Displacing someone or something for a ballpark, even through eminent domain, is not uncommon in Dunlavey’s experience given the amount of land that’s needed to build. But he has not seen a case like San Antonio where an entire multi-family property like Soap Factory, owned by a Weston Urban limited partnership called And I Cannot Lye, is demolished.
Weston Urban has agreed to provide financial support for residents who will have to relocate in phases, and pay their moving costs.
For now, a major part of the proposal is still on hold as the San Antonio Independent School District (SAISD) considers an offer from team owners to purchase its Camaron Street parking lot.
“We are still at the very beginning stages of considering what this could be for the community,” said SAISD Deputy Superintendent Patti Salzmann at the start of a public comment session on Oct. 7.
On Monday, the board met again on the subject, this time in executive session to discuss the contract with the district’s attorneys. But no decision was made and it’s unclear when they will vote on the matter.
Bruce Hill, principal manager of the team owners Designated Bidders, declined to discuss the timeline or the status of the negotiations.
Nirenberg stood behind the agreement when the Council voted 9-2 to support it despite vocal opposition from Soap Factory residents and advocates.
“I do not consider this deal to be a paper full of good intentions,” he said. “The way it’s structured is that these are guarantees, these are not promises.”
