Is it time to have a serious conversation about building new professional sports facilities in a city that loves its Spurs and is hungry for more? The buzz of local media reports suggests an answer: The conversation is already happening behind closed doors.
The $186 million Alamodome was never really loved but certainly has served effectively as a venue for just about everything except for what it was intended, that is, as home to a National Football League franchise. (I’m not counting the brief stay of the homeless New Orleans Saints, who used the Alamodome in 2005 like they found it on a short-term rental.)
The $193 million AT&T Center, home to the five-time world champion San Antonio Spurs, is actually an arena without a paying name sponsor after the telecommunications giant that once called San Antonio home sold its share in the team and declined to renew its contract. Bexar County Judge Cyndi Krier punked San Antonio Mayor Howard Peak more than two decades ago in luring the Spurs away from the Alamodome and downtown with the promise of a new arena on county-owned property adjacent to the Freeman Coliseum.
Both facilities have had multimillion-dollar makeovers, and both will need more to keep them viable.
The East Side would lament the loss of the Spurs there, although the relocation to the county’s arena never did much of anything for area residents unless you count the value of renting out front yards and driveways to ticket-holders on game nights.
A well-connected member of the local chapter of the Urban Land Institute (ULI) told me on condition of anonymity about a recent effort to conduct a charrette to explore what uses could be made of the 19-acre near-Eastside site if the Alamodome was torn down. Housing was the leading idea being considered. City officials, the ULI member told me, objected to the proposed subject of study and it didn’t happen.
Perhaps it’s time.
Any public funding of new sports facilities will be met with significant support as well as significant opposition. Proponents will overstate the economic development benefits, while aginners will ignore the intangible value of protecting the Spurs as Hecho en San Antonio. Let’s face it: Without the Spurs, San Antonio becomes a much less interesting city.
With the arrival of French sensation Victor Wembanyama, it’s reasonable to assume the dynastic history of the team dating to David Robinson and Sean Elliott and continuing on with Tim Duncan, Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker will soon enter its third era, once again under Coach Greg Popovich. It doesn’t get any better than that.
The talk is of a potential development that might extend to both sides of the ugly Interstate 37 scarring downtown, with more than enough room for both a Spurs arena and a new Missions ballpark, all set amid an entertainment zone that would help activate the space year-around. Just about anything would be an improvement over the collection of HemisFair ‘68 buildings still standing on the south flank of Hemisfair. I know any efforts to raze the Institute of Texan Cultures or the former John H. Wood Jr. Federal Courthouse will rile preservationists, but count me among those who want to see a San Antonio that, at least this one time, looks to the future instead of the past.
Give me a new development that connects Southtown with downtown in an inspiring way that attracts a density of locals as well as visitors.
The collected net worth of the growing number of wealthy people, including billionaires, who own an interest in the Spurs, the Missions or both is, frankly, beyond the calculating capacity of this journalist. As a result, proposals that call for exclusive public funding of new venues will probably not succeed. Opponents often cite the work of Stanford University economist Roger Noll, who produced a noted study in 2015 demonstrating that public financing of stadiums and sports facilities seldom generates beneficial economic development in the surrounding neighborhoods. Opponents also are critical of a loophole that allows sports franchise owners to win federal tax exemptions.
On the other hand, the Spurs owners did contribute to the cost of the county-owned arena, and tens of millions of dollars in visitor taxes collected since 2002 have softened the financial blow for locals.
The Alamodome opened in 1993. The AT&T Center opened in 2002. Every 20 years, it seems, San Antonio faces a decision to build or not to build. I’d like to complicate the conversation and say that any discussion of new sports facilities should include a serious effort to explore bringing another professional sports franchise to San Antonio.
No, not the NFL. Not Major League Baseball. Neither is likely. Austin beat us in winning a Major League Soccer franchise. My favorite acronym in any discussion of a new sports team in San Antonio is NWSL: the National Women’s Soccer League. The NWSL, only a decade old, will expand from 12 to 14 teams next year, with plans to establish franchises in two new cities in 2026.
San Antonio is not in the conversation right now, but that doesn’t mean we can’t find a way into the room. And if you are not yet a fan of women’s soccer, now is the time to become one — with last week’s start of the 2023 Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand.
Isn’t it time the city takes a second look at acquiring a women’s professional sports franchise while it also talks about new facilities for the Spurs and Missions?
