A city board on Friday approved millions of dollars in spending to acquire the land for a new downtown basketball arena and pay for improvements at Brackenridge Park, the San Antonio Zoo and the San Antonio Botanical Gardens.
With a 7-4 vote, the board of the Midtown Increment Reinvestment Zone (TIRZ) will contribute $60 million for the City of San Antonio to buy 13 acres of land formerly occupied by the UTSA Institute of Texan Cultures.
The city expects that, with principal and interest, the total funding package for the key component of Project Marvel will come to about $115 million.
The Zoo and Botanical Gardens, plus Brackenridge Park — cultural institutions which occupy city land — also will receive $10 million each over five years plus financing costs, bringing the total to almost $17 million each.
The funding will be provided only if the Zoo, Botanical Gardens and Brackenridge Park Conservancy privately raise a matching amount or more for their planned expansion and improvement projects.
But the measures passed Friday only after some TIRZ board members demanded changes to a guiding document that would ensure the future projects it considers for funding are in line with the city’s housing and displacement policies.
‘Very, very important’ day
It was the second Midtown TIRZ board meeting in two weeks — after having not met since 2024 — and it was standing-room-only, with more than a dozen citizens appearing to support projects on the agenda, and two speaking in opposition.
Funding the city’s purchase of the former museum property for the new Spurs arena out of the TIRZ also had its share of support, including from the San Antonio chapter of the Texas Restaurant Association, the San Antonio Board of Realtors and Centro San Antonio.
“We have a lot of really exciting things that are going on, and I will tell you that this project and the vote that you make today will be a very, very important one,” said Centro San Antonio President and CEO Trish DeBerry. “There is no greater decision or responsibility that you all have.”
Johnny Hearn made a case for funding improvements at the Sunken Gardens at Brackenridge Park, where the Zulu Association hosts the annual Taste of New Orleans event.
“During the last five years, we have paid San Antonio Parks and Recreation in the city approximately $20,000 a year, roughly $100,000 over those five years to hold our event,” he said.
“Our attendees also generate parking revenue for the city,” Hearn added. “We have done our part, yet we continue to operate in a facility with deteriorating restrooms and facilities, missing amphitheater seating, aging infrastructure and accessibility challenges.”
District 1 resident Kathy Vale said the public has not been adequately informed about any of those projects considering public money is being used to fund them.
“Now the city wants to use the Midtown TIRZ to purchase 13 acres of downtown land for a Spurs arena, under the exception of ‘public assembly’ — that is, public assembly if you can afford to purchase a ticket,” she said.
Four members of the board voted against the measure to fund the land acquisition. They included Mahncke Park resident George Grimes, River Road resident Seema Kairam, and the two newest members of the board, former District 7 council chief of staff Joe Bravo and District 2 Councilman Jalen McKee-Rodriguez.
On Thursday, at Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones’ request, the council voted to add McKee-Rodriguez to the board of Midtown, one of the wealthiest zones in the city.
The councilman, who also sits on the board of the Innercity TIRZ, said he asked the mayor to put him on the Midtown board since some of the projects coming before the group are now in his district.
During his first meeting, McKee-Rodriguez called for more public engagement in determining what projects are funded and how they’re designed.
Councilwoman Sukh Kaur (D1) also serves on the board along with the city’s Chief Financial Officer Troy Elliott, Chief Downtown Officer Shanon Shea Miller and Homer Garcia, director of Parks and Recreation.
The board is also composed of leaders of both the Zoo and Botanical Gardens, who joined in 2025, a member of the Brackenridge Stakeholder Advisory Committee, and several neighborhood representatives.
During a roll call on the vote to fund the Zoo and Botanical Gardens, both CEOs recused themselves.
The Zoo, Gardens and Park are located just outside the zone’s boundaries but occupy city-owned land and are among the kinds of projects deemed eligible for funding based on decisions the board made in 2022 to fund cultural assets.
All three have previously received funding from the Midtown TIRZ, including for the Zoo’s new gorilla exhibit, Congo Falls.
Housing strategy
TIRZ funds are generated when new development or property value increases occur within a designated zone, producing tax revenue above the established baseline value.
The Midtown TIRZ boundaries encompass an area once blighted but where public and private development has boomed in the last decade.
It is projected to collect roughly $200 million over the next 15 years — more than is needed for the projects it’s been committed to, but only if the TIRZ is extended past its 2041 expiration date to 2060.
Approval to extend must come from the City Council, not the board.
McKee-Rodriguez asked city staff to start planning for how uncommitted funds could be used, keeping in line with a TIRZ policy that past council members created in 2022, mandating the zones’ projects promote housing affordability.
This year, $7.5 million is available for other projects, and next year $2.1 million, dipping down to $170,000 in 2028 and $50,000 in 2029, then increasing each year through 2033, according to projections.
Last month Miller said she is expecting another request to come before the board in the coming months — for a new mixed-use development near the San Antonio Art Museum led by the McCombs family.
Kaur said the funds now available in the TIRZ finance plan could be used for affordable housing and suggested a separate work session to discuss it.
“I’d like to create a strategy from that $7.5 million that’s specifically targeting anti-displacement strategies around the district,” she said.
TIRZ vs. bond dollars
One way TIRZ projects are brought to the city is via a seven-page application submitted to city staff, who review it and bring projects to the board.
The board is made up of people appointed by individual council members, sometimes including representatives from the organization requesting funding and city staff.
Projects are then advanced by the board to the full council for approval.
By comparison, bond projects are vetted by citizen committees during a months-long process, which this year is expected to be tougher than prior ones.
The latest projections indicate San Antonio could have about $450 million to spend in its 2027 bond program, compared to about $625 million projected last year and $1.2 billion in the city’s last bond election in 2022.
The organizations receiving TIRZ dollars now should not expect to receive any funding through the 2027 bond, McKee-Rodriguez said.
“One of the reasons we reconstituted this board was specifically to physically support the capital projects related to these institutions because we, as a city, felt because these are city properties that we ultimately own, we do have some obligation to do so,” he said.
“The challenge was also to mitigate the use of bond dollars, especially as they are so limited, and so, my expectation for all of the entities receiving dollars is that you do not ask for bond dollars this cycle,” McKee-Rodriguez added.
Grimes said he opposes TIRZ funding for the ITC property because it’s located far outside the Midtown TIRZ boundaries, and “because of how little public input there’s been on this.”
McKee-Rodriguez said he was voting against TIRZ funding for the arena land purchase because it deviates from the intention of the TIRZ. The agreement with the Spurs, and the land that the team is developing around it, does not have a requirement for affordable housing, he pointed out.
He also said that when the measure goes to council for approval, if the arena funding is included with the other three funding items, he would vote against the entire package.
“I think if the TIRZ is going to continue, we should use the money created by the TIRZ to address displacement and gentrification,” said Kairam, who is a real estate development manager at the San Antonio Housing Trust. “To say that we can’t do affordable housing until 2032 because we spent all the money on the arena seems like a misguided use of funds.”
Kaur said regardless of whether someone supports Project Marvel, the land would have been purchased by the city anyway for some sort of development because it is a key parcel within Hemisfair.
Based on board input during the sometimes tense meeting, the Midtown TIRZ board also discussed updating its project and finance plans to reflect the members’ concerns.
The new project plan will include alignment with the city’s Strategic Housing Implementation Plan (SHIP), said Ian Benavidez, deputy director, Neighborhood and Housing Services Department.
It will also include references to the SA Tomorrow Plan, the city’s plan for managing its growth, and also preventing displacement of residents within a zone and soliciting public input on projects. The finance plan is updated and presented to the board annually, he said.
