The San Antonio Water System board approved a $2.3 million expenditure on Tuesday to fund a feasibility study on relocating its downtown chilled water plant, potentially to make way for Project Marvel.
Based on plans for Project Marvel, a $4 billion plan for a new Spurs arena and entertainment district, the current site of the chilled water plant would become a new convention center hotel tower.
The approved study will look at how much it would cost the city-owned utility to move its downtown chilled water plant, how long it would take to build a new plant or plants, and how SAWS could move forward with construction without interrupting service to its current 23 downtown customers, which include the Henry B. Gonzales Convention Center, Alamodome, and several buidlings within Hemisfair Park.
SAWS and its predecessors have owned and operated the district cooling infrastructure in downtown San Antonio since 1968.
SAWS staff emphasized on Tuesday that the decision to relocate the downtown plant and/or build additional chilled water plants is driven primarily by the area’s broader growth and by an inevitable convention center expansion, not specifically by Project Marvel.
“We want to make clear that the move that SAWS’ is making today is driven more by the convention center expansion than it is by Project Marvel,” said Jaime Castillo, SAWS chief of staff. “Project Marvel — we don’t know the details of that, but what we do know is that the convention center expansion, from what we hear from the city, is moving forward, regardless of any arena or anything like that.”
SAWS’ downtown district cooling system consists of an underground pipe network filled with water that is chilled at SAWS’ two district cooling plants. Its Central Cooling Plant is responsible for chilling most of the system’s water, and is supported by its smaller Cherry Street Cooling Plant, which is located over by the Alamodome.
The plants chill the water, which then travels from the plants to the 23 buildings within the SAWS downtown cooling system, helping to cool the spaces before returning to the plants to be cooled again. The chilled water runs through the buildings’ HVAC units, helping the buildings save energy because they don’t have to utilize the thicker, harder-to-move alternative of refrigerant.
The system reuses about 70% of the same water for the most part, utilizing some potable water to replace lost water. Buildings within the system include the Alamodome, the convention center, several buildings within Hemisfair Park and many of the area’s hotels.
SAWS is looking at three potential locations to either move the existing downtown plant or to build additional service capacity: the near West Side, Port San Antonio — which already has its own small closed-loop plant — or “other.”
SAWS staff is currently anticipating the move will cost “an excess of $100 million, said Chris Wilcut, SAWS’ district cooling and energy strategy director. Discussions still linger on whether or not the city would reimburse SAWS for the move, or if SAWS would be responsible for footing the bill, Wilcut added.
“To be clear, we would be moving forward with looking at the west-downtown site and another site, regardless of whether or not plant relocation is on the table,” he said. “Again, growth is a direction of the city and our board, and so we would be looking at that independently.”
Mayor Ron Nirenberg, an ex-officio member of the SAWS board, added that he wants to challenge the current perception of what Project Marvel is, adding rather than thinking of it as one large project he hopes residents will view it similarly to the Decade of Downtown launched under former mayor Julian Castro — as smaller projects that are meant to improve downtown.
“Project Marvel is a shorthand way of describing all the different projects that are going on downtown, and the need to have a more comprehensive and strategic approach, regardless of what happens with the arena,” he said. “I can’t emphasize enough, it’s not a done deal. It won’t be a done deal until we have sufficient public engagement, and we really decide priorities and opportunity costs.”
Several members of the public present at the SAWS board meeting Tuesday voiced lingering concerns surrounding Project Marvel and what they said has been a lack of transparency.
Initially, resident Annalisa Peace said she felt SAWS approval of a feasibility study for Project Marvel felt premature; however, after SAWS staff said the study was not solely related to Project Marvel, said she supports the idea of the study if it helps SAWS add additional capacity to its downtown system.
Peace added she would still like to see more transparency around Project Marvel from the city in general.
“You see the city manager and the assistant city manager running around bestowing the verses of this project, and nobody knows what the project is,” Peace said. “So it’s enormously confusing … there’s been no opportunity for citizen input.”
