The price tag and plans for a new baseball stadium in downtown San Antonio — anchoring a private development project that will partially fund the facility — were revealed at a City Council meeting Wednesday.
The cost of the San Antonio Missions home stadium and the land in the northwest quadrant of downtown is estimated to be $160 million. The 7,500-capacity ballpark would be built on mostly vacant parcels of land at North Flores, Camaron and Kingsbury streets, south of San Antonio ISD headquarters and adjacent to the San Pedro Creek Culture Park.
The new ballpark is expected to open in 2028, replacing the Nelson W. Wolff Municipal Stadium built on the Southwest Side of San Antonio in 1994 and considered inadequate by today’s Major League Baseball standards.
Mayor Ron Nirenberg said the city and county have put together a deal to pay for the ballpark through a public-private partnership.
“We’re looking at a framework that’s innovative, that protects San Antonio taxpayers, that produces public amenities in areas of our community that, frankly, need investment,” Nirenberg said.
City officials emphasized that the stadium will not be paid for directly by taxpayers but by the team’s owners and through tax revenues generated from private development in the area and the Houston Street Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone (TIRZ).
About 86% of the cost will be supported by the team’s contribution, ticket fees and team revenue, guaranteed city and county property tax increment dollars and a guaranteed municipal management assessment from the first two of four planned new developments in the area, said Ben Gorzell, the city’s chief financial officer.
The remaining 14% will come from the TIRZ and two other phases of private development in the area.
The city and Bexar County have created the San Pedro Creek Development Authority which is made up of representatives from both bodies and the team owners, which will own the ballpark. The authority will issue a private bond to help pay for the ballpark with a pledge of $126 million from the TIRZ.
The bond will be repaid through team revenue, including a $1 million annual lease payment for use of the facility and a $2 per-ticket fee, the additional tax revenues generated by new development, assessments from the municipal management district (MMD) and existing TIRZ dollars.
The MMD is composed of the new planned development, which includes land occupied by the Soap Factory apartments. A resident displacement plan is part of the agreement.
According to terms of the agreement proposed to the council, the team’s upfront contribution to the ballpark is $34 million and the team will be responsible for any construction cost overruns.
Missions’ local ownership
Designated Bidders, a 30-member investor group, acquired the Missions club from the California-based Elmore Group in November 2022. The partnership includes Weston Urban co-founder Graham Weston, its CEO Randy Smith and former Clear Channel Communications executive Bob Cohen.
Principal manager of Designated Bidders Bruce Hill said the team’s vision is to “build the best-in-class ballpark that pays for itself.”
The Double-A affiliate of the San Diego Padres, the Missions are operated by Ryan Sanders Baseball, which also owns the Round Rock Express and Corpus Christi Hooks teams.
“We’re honored to be in San Antonio, and we want to be a part of keeping affiliated professional baseball in San Antonio for a very long time,” said Ryan Sanders Baseball CEO Reid Ryan, a former college and professional baseball player and the son of Baseball Hall of Fame pitcher Nolan Ryan.
Weston Urban, the private development firm behind Frost Tower and 300 Main, is planning to build hotels and apartments in the area with a projected taxable value of approximately $1 billion, according to Gorzell.
The developer has several major residential developments in progress near the creek including a 258-unit, mixed-used development adjacent to San Pedro Creek on West Commerce Street.
In recent years, Weston Urban has been assembling property and land in the northwest part of downtown, like the Soap Factory apartments, prompting rumors that a ballpark would be built in the area.
What is a TIRZ?
After the briefing, City Manager Erik Walsh attempted to explain how the TIRZ works.
There are five in San Antonio with the Houston Street TIRZ, established in 1999, serving the downtown area. The ballpark agreement calls for expanding some of that zone into the Westside TIRZ.
As an economic development tool, a TIRZ sets a taxable base level, then captures the increase in property tax revenue above that, created by new development, and reinvests those funds in public improvements that benefit the zone, like roads, drainage, utilities, street lights and parks.
In addition to the new stadium, the agreement also calls for new public amenities like green space, programming for youth and “stakeholder days” when local groups will be able to use the ballpark. The team owners also have formed the 1888 Baseball Foundation which will contribute $200,000 a year to local initiatives supporting children and homeless veterans.
City Council is scheduled to vote on the plan Aug. 29.
If approved, the public will be invited in the coming months to participate in planning for the stadium and surrounding area.
City Council support
Council members said Wednesday that the ballpark plan met their expectations for how such a project should be funded, though some asked for a public comment meeting before holding a vote.
“Folks, in a lot of cases, are struggling to make it so they want to be assured that, as exciting as this is, this is not something that they are going to have to pay for,” said Councilman Marc Whyte (D10). “And as has been made really clear today, I think we’re doing it the right way.”
District 9 Councilman John Courage said he was happy with the agreement because he always believed the team ownership should build the stadium.
“Growth pays for growth, and it seems to me that is exactly what this plan is,” Courage said. “It is a golden project that is going to be developing a lot of growth in that area, including the ballpark. And that growth is going to pay for the ballpark and everything else, and it’s not going to be an increase in taxes to any of our taxpayers.”
But he asked for information about projected stadium revenue. “I think my constituents are going to say, well, how much are the owners making?” Courage said.
Smith pushed back on that suggestion.
“I don’t pretend to speak for all owners, but I will tell you, for the overwhelming majority of owners that I spend time with on this, this is not driven by a monetary return,” Smith told the Report after the briefing. “Exhibit A of that is we’re putting $34 million into a facility that we do not own, and that’s a rarity.”
District 8 Councilman Manny Pelaez said he thinks the plan will bring that part of downtown out of blight and honors the traditions of San Antonio. “You have my full support,” he told the owners.
District 5 Councilwoman Teri Castillo said she is concerned for the area residents who will be displaced by the ballpark and new development, and asked Weston Urban representatives to come up with a relocation plan as soon as possible and waive rental application fees and deposits.
Councilman Jalen McKee-Rodriguez, whose District 2 includes the Frost Bank Center on the East Side, where the San Antonio Spurs play, said he was also concerned about resident displacement and then asked city staff to explain what he considered a complex funding agreement in simple terms.
“I have constituents who will say … this is great — it’s time we start looking like other major cities in the U.S., and our downtown is ready for it,” McKee-Rodriguez 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.”
This story has been updated to correct San Antonio CFO Ben Gorzell’s name.
