SAN ANTONIO | The Rock at La Cantera
 

The official thread for La Centera's new The Rock facility for the San Antonio Spurs.

https://www.ksat.com/sports/2021/11/...at-la-cantera/

Figured to start a new thread for the Rock at La Cantera! Interesting article from KSAT.

This is a great development, But it is so far away from the Spurs arena (not AT&T center anymore). I would understand why they would put this here because of the development on 1604 and I-10. But them putting their training facility in the burbs like this takes away the whole scheme of why they built the arena in the area they did in the first place. Did they just abandon the idea that the arena did nothing for a struggling area of SA?

The Star (in Frisco) is much further away from AT&T Stadium (in Arlington) than these two facilities!

One would want their training facility closer to where their athletes live - not play...

In a word: yes. The arena should have been built downtown, and would have but for a cadre of weak kneed SA council members, (has San Antonio know any other kind?), who refused to put it on a city ballot, and the County, led by Nelson Wolfe at the time, swept in and got a county arena on the ballot, and it won by a landslide.

Yes, it was touted to bring prosperity to a historically neglected part of town, and now that that hasn't happened, that assertion is largely ignored.

It’s still the att center. It hasn’t changed yet. Also, yes, the idea of that industrial area of the east side developing because of the arena was always an empty promise. The arena should have been built in the urban core. But that was twenty years ago and a lot has changed.

Their current practice facility is in the burbs currently. This just keeps it in the burbs but also gets it closer to where they live and creates a new state of the art development that will focus on sport medicine and advancement of sports science. It also gives the Spurs a much larger and more high end and high tech practice facility. Not to mention the mixed use component.

Isn't that the forever-promised-and-never-delivered argument used to get taxpayer funded stadiums/arenas built. They never bring the economic activity promised, but enough people fall for it every time to get them built. Insanity!

There were two proposals made; one by the city (headed by Mayor Howard Peak) and one by the county (headed by Judge Cindy Krier). The city wanted the arena to be built downtown, next to the Alamodome. The Spurs chose the County plan. It was paid for with the hotel and rental car tax increase, which was an easier sell for the voters.

All I know is when they decide to build a new arena (hopefully give ATT to the rodeo) in the future, it has to be downtown. I think there is so much emphasis to grow downtown it would be a no-brainer.

Yup. What this guy said.

I would have located the new arena next to the Riverwalk between downtown and the Pearl.

I see stadiums like this as negatives for economic development, not positives. If you built a sports bar right across the street, no one could even get to it. Police and cones force you out to highways after games. Seas of surface parking lots create an unwalkable moat between the stadium and the neighborhood. It’s the exact opposite of the human-scale development ideals of new urbanism.

If they had built a new arena downtown, they would have paved hemisfair for parking. I’d rather continue building the more walkable version, similar to Pearl.

Sunset station and east side redevelopment has probably been more hurt by the Alamo Dome than helped.

Looking forward to learning more about this practice facility, though!

Completely agree.

There used to be an arena at Hemisfair. It was called the Hemisfair Arena. The Spurs played there for decades, all the big music shows were there. The arena had a parking garage so Hemisfair didn't get paved. Imagine if the AT&T Center put a parking garage on one of its lots and built mixed-use on another. It might be the economic boon for the area that was promised.