The San Antonio Spurs, their future suddenly brighter after landing No. 1 draft pick Victor Wembanyama, are exploring the idea of developing a downtown arena, sources say.
At the same time, the San Antonio Missions' new owners are pushing for a new baseball stadium in the inner city.
If both projects come to fruition, they could be built side by side. A source familiar with both ownership groups says they’re exploring the possibility of developing a professional sports district that would bring together sports, dining and drinking.
Peter J. Holt, whose family holds a majority share in the Spurs, and several other investors in the NBA franchise also own stakes in the Missions.
Co-locating the teams' facilities, the thinking goes, could bring a year-round stream of fans to the central business district, which is struggling to recover from the COVID pandemic, and touch off a wave of new restaurant and bar openings. Fans could make a night of it, buying drinks or dinner before walking over for a game.
The Spurs' current home court, the Bexar County-owned AT&T Center on the East Side, never generated that kind of development.
In seeking voter approval in 1999 to raise the hotel and rental car tax to build the facility, county officials said the 19,000-seat arena would set off a burst of economic activity in the surrounding community. The reality is much different. People attending Spurs games, concerts, the San Antonio Stock Show & Rodeo and other events at the AT&T Center typically drive in, park and leave when the fun is over. There are few nearby restaurants or bars to hang out in before or after an event.
The team’s lease on the 21-year-old arena expires in 2032. Nine years is more than enough time to decide to seek public funding for a new arena, campaign for it and, if voters say yes, move on to designing and building the facility.
The Spurs organization is silent on the matter. Team officials did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
But downtown interests — developers, business executives, tourism-industry officials, lawyers — have been buzzing about the possibility of a Spurs move for months. "People are having a conversation about an arena for the Spurs downtown," said Eddie Aldrete, who ran the winning campaign for public funding for the AT&T Center.
Aldrete, a political and communications consultant with ties to the business community, said he hasn't heard directly from the Spurs that they're sizing up the possibility of a new arena. But he has no doubt that there's substance behind the chatter.
"I think they're doing some preliminary research to see if it would make sense," he said. "They wouldn't want to start the conversation if the math doesn't add up."
For their part, the owners of the Missions, the city's Double-A baseball team, will say only that their current home field, the city-owned Nelson W. Wolff Municipal Stadium on the far West Side, doesn’t meet the standards of Major League Baseball, which controls the minor leagues.
Bexar County Judge Peter Sakai said he met with a group of Missions owners and briefly discussed the possibility of a new stadium downtown, though he added, “There was no ask at this meeting.”
“It appears to me to be an attractive proposal to enhance the downtown area,” Sakai said. But the owners would need to prove the project would benefit county taxpayers if they’re going to seek public financing, he said.
Missions owners who were in the room included Randy Smith, CEO and co-founder of downtown development firm Weston Urban; San Antonio businesswoman and former Texas Secretary of State Hope Andrade; and Reid Ryan, son of MLB Hall of Fame pitcher Nolan Ryan and CEO of Ryan Sanders Baseball, which co-owns and operates the Missions.
In an interview, Sakai’s tone shifted when he was asked about the possibility of co-locating a new baseball stadium and Spurs arena in the central business district.
“I’m not prepared to bring the Spurs into this conversation,” he said.
Sakai’s comment hinted at some of the political difficulties ahead if the Spurs seek to leave the AT&T Center for a center-city basketball arena, which would likely depend on at least some taxpayer funding.
Sakai’s predecessor, former County Judge Nelson Wolff, was more pointed in his assessment.
“That makes absolutely no (expletive) sense — the AT&T Center is a very good arena,” Wolff said. The facility was built for $245 million in 2002 under his watch and has since undergone hundreds of millions' worth of improvements.
If the team leaves the AT&T Center, the county would have to work hard to find a new anchor tenant — which is unlikely — or cobble together enough events to cover the facility’s operating costs. Wolff worries that constantly scrapping with the city-owned Alamodome for concerts, one-off sports events and trade shows would hurt both the city and county.
With all the background noise about a potential move downtown, county leaders aren’t standing still.
“We’re already in the process of developing a strategy to keep the Spurs in the AT&T Center,” Sakai said.
Sakai didn’t elaborate, but county officials are starting to discuss a visitors-tax election to pay for upgrades at the AT&T Center and a spate of other venues, possibly including the Tobin Center for the Performing Arts downtown and amateur sports facilities, Precinct 2 County Commissioner Justin Rodriguez said.
Rodriguez said the AT&T Center needs up to $85 million in improvements “as a starting point.” If the Spurs decide to go for a downtown arena, the county could jettison upgrades specifically designed to accommodate the team. But the county would still need to spend money to keep the arena up to date and competitive in the events trade, Rodriguez said.
“As a responsible landlord, we’d have to make that investment,” he added.
The county could ask voters to approve raising the venue tax to pay for the upgrades as early as November 2024, the next presidential election.
A new game
The Spurs have momentum — and some leverage if they seek a new arena.
The team, which has failed to make the playoffs for four consecutive seasons, hit the lottery with French star-in-the-making Wembanyama. Season ticket and luxury box sales are surging, and the Spurs once again will be a team to watch.
But its owners were making major moves before chance handed them the NBA’s No. 1 draft pick.
Led by Peter J. Holt, the Spurs organization has shaken up its ownership group. The restructuring started in earnest two years ago with Austin billionaire Michael Dell and San Francisco-based private equity firm Sixth Street Partners buying out 11 Spurs investors and acquiring some of the shares of two others. Dell and Sixth Street own a combined 30 percent of the franchise.
More investment capital followed. Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia, Paul Viera, CEO of Earnest Partners investment firm in Atlanta, and Kimberly Lewis, founder of investment management company KSL Resources and ex-wife of oil and gas tycoon Rod Lewis, each bought stakes in the team.
Spurs Sports & Entertainment is using some of the cash to expand the team’s fan base in Mexico and the Austin metro area. (Sources say a downtown arena within walking distance of restaurants and bars could make a trip to watch the Spurs more appealing to out-of-towners.)
Shortly after bringing in Dell and Sixth Street, Holt made public a letter to fans pledging to keep the team in San Antonio, its home since 1973. He was addressing worries that the new investors and the overhaul of the franchise’s governance structure, which put operational control in Holt’s hands, meant a relocation to Austin could be in the offing.
Sakai, for one, is over that concern. He said he’s comfortable the team will remain in San Antonio for the long haul and that the Spurs' plan to build The Rock at La Cantera helps cement its ties to the city.
The Rock, a development at the northwest corner of Interstate 10 and Loop 1604, is expected to cost as much as $500 million and will include a state-of-the-art training facility for the Spurs, a research center, an event plaza, a park and medical and commercial space. Spurs Sports & Entertainment is contributing at least $100 million to the project, the city of San Antonio is providing $17 million and Bexar County is kicking in $15 million in exchange for the park.
Building The Rock would make little sense if a relocation is in the cards.
Yet if the team decides to move downtown and opens talks with city and county officials about public financing, the threat of relocation would loom in the background — never referred to, but there nonetheless.
Missions pressure
The Mission owners' desire for a center-city stadium has been clear since last fall. That’s when a group of prominent developers, Spurs stars and members of the city’s Latino business and political elite purchased the Missions for about $28 million from Elmore Sports Group, returning ownership of the team to locals for the first time since 1987.
Their top priorities: bringing Wolff Stadium on the West Side in line with league standards and finding land for a new facility in the downtown area.
MLB effectively took over Minor League Baseball with a new Player Development License agreement that kicked in two years ago. It requires clubs to comply with league requirements by the beginning of the 2025 season.
Leading up to that deadline, certain improvements must be made to Wolff Stadium this year and next year to show progress toward compliance, Missions president Burl Yarbrough said through a team spokesperson. If the stadium doesn’t meet the minimum standards — larger clubhouses and better field lighting and player training facilities — the club will be at risk of losing its MLB affiliation, Yarbrough said. The Missions are the Double-A affiliate of the San Diego Padres.
While the team has made some upgrades to the stadium, it did not meet the requirements laid out for this year, and it asked for a deferral, which MLB granted, Yarbrough said. It’s unclear whether the league would allow any more deferrals.
MLB sent a letter to the Missions’ owners asking them to put in writing their “long-term plan to keep baseball viable in San Antonio,” said Yarbrough, who declined to provide a copy of the letter.
“Continuing to ‘band aid’ an outdated community asset is not an intelligent use of resources given the age and functionality of Wolff Stadium,” Yarbrough said. “In the absence of meeting these minimum required facility improvements or an acceptable plan for a new facility, the Missions Player Development License is ultimately at risk in the worst case, leaving San Antonio without affiliated professional baseball.”
The group that bought the team, Designated Bidders LLC, includes Weston Urban co-founders Smith and Graham Weston, Holt, Andrade, Spurs shareholder Bruce Hill and onetime Clear Channel radio executive Bob Cohen. Spurs legends David Robinson and Manu Ginobili also have stakes in the team.
Weston Urban is a major downtown landowner. Its projects include the Frost Tower, the first new office tower built in downtown San Antonio since 1989, and a pair of developments with over 600 apartments combined, a major infusion of rental housing.
It's unclear where in downtown the new Missions stadium would be built.
The former Fox Tech High School baseball field, a 2.3-acre site near San Pedro Creek Culture Park, had been floated as a potential site.
Weston Urban was planning to acquire that land from the San Antonio Independent School District, which would receive 2.2 acres owned by the firm in return. The district’s board of trustees approved the swap last year, and Weston Urban also approached other nearby landowners about selling their property.
But the deal did not go through, said SAISD spokesperson Laura Short. “My understanding is that other options are being pursued by both parties,” she said.
Stadium locales
Sources say other potential sites for a ball field, basketball arena or both include the cavernous Alamodome and its sea of surrounding parking lots, and the Institute of Texan Cultures at the southeastern corner of Hemisfair.
The city-owned Alamodome was built in 1993 as a football stadium when the city was trying to attract a National Football League team. It was home to the Spurs until the 2002-03 season.
The aging arena is not outfitted with the amenities fans are used to and needs technology and lighting improvements, and local leaders say it must be renovated if San Antonio is to hold its own in vying with other cities for exhibition games, trade shows and other events.
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That was the impetus for recent state legislation that would allow the city to take the state’s cut of sales taxes generated by any hotel within 3 miles of the Convention Center and Alamodome, an area called the “project financing zone.” The city’s overall take would be an estimated $222 million; the measure, approved by the legislature, makes the Alamodome, Convention Center and any “arena, coliseum, stadium” or other facility for sporting events eligible for that funding.
The dome hosts the annual Alamo Bowl and the University of Texas at San Antonio Roadrunners and San Antonio Brahmas football games.
The ITC is just across Interstate 37 from the Alamodome and near several hundred apartments built by developers with Opportunity Home San Antonio, formerly known as the San Antonio Housing Authority. UTSA is considering options that include moving the ITC or renovating the building that it occupies.
The university has not been approached about a stadium, said spokesperson Joe Izbrand.
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