Seven months after voters overwhelmingly approved plans for an expanded rodeo district on the East Side, leaders of the San Antonio Stock Show and Rodeo are accusing Bexar County leaders of going behind their backs to pursue an “alternative vision.”
In November, voters approved Propositions A and B to help fund a new Spurs arena downtown, as well as convert the existing Frost Bank Center and Freeman Coliseum grounds into a year-round stock show and rodeo district.
Now Cody Davenport, executive director and CEO of the San Antonio Livestock Exhibition, says Bexar County Judge Peter Sakai and county commissioners have been negotiating without them on a mixed-use development that was long expected to accompany the rodeo grounds — but as written, is “fundamentally incompatible” with the plan voters approved.
“It chokes us out,” he said.
Davenport played a key role in getting Props A and B over the line in November.
But the county appeared to be dragging its feet on his contract, Davenport said, and when multiple people alerted him about movement on this other vision, he sent county leaders a three-page letter expressing his frustration.
In it, he vents frustration over the developer’s plans to eliminate parking, saying the rodeo wouldn’t be able to use the $193 million voters approved in Proposition A to expand the rodeo grounds and grow its event calendar.
He also suggested the plan was at odds with the rodeo’s prior agreement with the county, which said that development shouldn’t interfere with or restrict rodeo activities.
“[County leaders] have been presented with an alternate vision advanced by the Hunt Companies and Lincoln Group that was not presented to voters, not described on the ballot, and not approved by the public,” Davenport wrote.
“While we respect the role that private development can play in economic growth, substituting a developer-driven, mixed-use plan for the voter-approved Rodeo-first plan breaks faith with the electorate.”
Bexar County Judge Peter Sakai did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.
From parking to plazas
Residents of the East Side have already lived through many promised — and later abandoned — visions for redevelopment.
The construction of the Frost Bank Center in the early 2000s, for example, was supposed to bring a town center on par with Southlake Town Square and Highland Park Village.
So when the Spurs owners first approached the county about leaving that arena to move downtown in 2024, Sakai said he wouldn’t help fund it without a plan in place to make good on old promises to the East Side.
As Sakai told it, the vision for an expanded rodeo came courtesy of Davenport, a cowboy from Uvalde who impressed them with his business savvy, promising to make a rodeo that already brings $330 million a year to the city even bigger.
The county needed a new anchor tenant to keep the Frost Bank Center from falling into disrepair like other abandoned sports venues, Sakai said. And in the course of several months, leaders put together a plan for fair grounds, livestock exposition centers and spaces that could attract visitors to year-round western-themed events.
Even without a clear picture of what that would look like, the $191 million proposal, known as Proposition A, appeared to resonate with voters.
They approved it with 56% support on the November 4 ballot, and voters on the East Side were among the biggest supporters.
It even wound up more popular than Prop B’s plan to help fund a new Spurs arena, which was approved with 52% support.
A week later, county commissioners sought a “master planner” to take the rebranded East Side coliseum district and spin it forward into a much broader urban revitalization, turning the site “into a world-class mixed-use district.”
A developer’s vision
In the end, Hunt Development Group and Lincoln Property Company together was the only respondent to a request for qualifications (RFQ), and came up with a vision that called for converting expansive surface lots at the Frost Bank Center into an “activated plaza” with music venues, a community center and a “Metro Lagoon” water park.
The plaza would encompass the east side of the site and rodeo events would be expanded to the west, according to the application.
Their 48-page application listed a who’s who of big-name developers, architects and engineers, and pointed to inspiration like the Fort Worth Stockyards and The Rock at La Cantera.
“Year-round hotel, retail, entertainment, dining venues, parks, plaza, outdoor flexible event spaces and a connected network of well-lit walkable streets and hike and bike trails will complement the two-week rodeo celebration, creating a thriving destination for residents and visitors alike,” the application says.
The proposal calls for 3.6 million square feet of development over 15 years at a site where the arena and coliseum now sit.
To pay for the infrastructure and public amenities, the developer suggested a new 30-year Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone, or TIRZ, could capture the increased tax revenue from private development.
That’s combined with a county-affiliated parking authority that would collect revenue from new parking structures, replacing the existing surface lots surrounding the Frost Bank Center.
Davenport said Tuesday that he did not know about the June 2025 RFQ or the winning Hunt proposal until after the election.
He acknowledged that the county’s overall Eastside redevelopment plan has long hinged on the idea that year-round rodeo events will draw visitors with money to spend, creating demand for restaurants, shopping and other amenities that locals also want.
But he said he can’t make his rodeo expansion work within the same footprint developers are proposing.
“I need hotels. I need restaurants. I need all those things down here to take care of all the people we’re bringing in here,” he said. “We just can’t support a development that is, in essence, anti-rodeo.”
A project shrunk down?
The county’s RFQ was specific in its description of the site boundaries, stating it seeks to transform the property along Houston Street and Frost Bank Center Drive.
It also mentioned potential “opportunities” involving the Willow Springs Golf Course and adjacent properties.
The 18-hole golf course was once considered a critical piece of the county’s redevelopment plan, with Commissioner Tommy Calvert (Pct. 4) saying it should be removed from the floodplain and developed into a neighborhood with workforce housing.
But leaders at the city, which owns the golf course, have long said the idea was a non-starter because they wanted to preserve limited green space in an industrial part of town.
The Hunt and Lincoln application barely mentions the golf course, only suggesting that a pedestrian bridge could connect the so-called “Willow Springs Park” to the new mixed-use development.
When asked about Davenport’s letter, Calvert responded with a text message saying he had no comment.
In March last year, Calvert’s office organized two public input sessions to invite input on what should be done with the area, then produced and distributed a roughly 400-page booklet of takeaways from those meetings.
It documents a wide variety of community hopes for the area, from more green space and businesses to a hospital and new school.
‘Going back on our word’
When the Spurs were spending big to bring their arena deal over the line, Davenport played a key role in their campaign.
He appeared at events, in media interviews and even worked the polls. He sold a vision for creating a rodeo district like Fort Worth or Las Vegas or Calgary, and reassured East Side residents about the rodeo’s shared vision for its longtime home.
Davenport said Tuesday that a mixed-use pedestrian district with internal streets, retail traffic and public plazas at the Frost Bank Center site is “fundamentally incompatible” with large-scale livestock operations.
“The rodeo requires wide, uninterrupted access routes; dedicated staging areas for 18-wheel livestock trailers; and freedom to close roads, reverse traffic flow, and adjust logistics dynamically,” he said. “Flexible open space is not excess land.”
With the kind of commercial development project now proposed for the site, he said all of that would be out the window, and could well impact the existing annual rodeo event.
“We do not have the ability to not only operate as we are currently, but most definitely it would not allow us to expand or grow as was promised to the voters and what everybody has backed us on down here,” he said Tuesday evening.
But the impact to the rodeo that draws over a million people every year isn’t even Davenport’s greatest concern, he added.
It’s a development plan that’s contrary to what the public expected.
“We, as a show [of support], stood up in front of Bexar County and made this proposal, and … we don’t want to be the slightest bit accused of going back on our word for all the people that were so wonderful about backing us and backing this vision.”
