Here's an article from the Express-News.
https://www.expressnews.com/news/article...ost-bank-center-peter-sakai-19755723.php
A new Spurs arena will cost a ton, and that gives Bexar County Judge Peter Sakai leverage
By Greg Jefferson, Express News Columnist
Sep 13, 2024
If the Spurs move to a new basketball palace downtown, Sakai would have to scramble to keep the county-owned Frost Bank Center afloat. But he's turning that predicament to his advantage.
Bexar County Judge Peter Sakai learned last summer that city leaders and top Spurs executives had been talking behind his back for months about moving the team from its county-owned home on the East Side to a new downtown arena.
Sakai was barely six months in office and still learning the ropes. He was wary of the organization left behind by his predecessor, Nelson Wolff, who'd towered over county government for 21 years, and many county staffers were befuddled by the new guy, who was hard to read and sometimes even harder to reach.
The confusion and near-paralysis that gripped the Bexar County Courthouse as Sakai settled in must have created the perfect opening for the city and Spurs to quietly push ahead on arena talks. The team's landlord was, ahem, preoccupied.
Sakai is said to have been livid when he learned of the secret negotiations, and it's easy to see why. Losing the Spurs as the Frost Bank Center's marquee tenant would leave the county with a gaping hole to fill. The Spurs are scheduled to play 40 home games in the 19,000-seat arena during the 2024-25 season. That's a lot of nights of "alternative programming."
Yet despite his initial pique, by last October Sakai was telling the San Antonio Express-News that he'd held "preliminary discussions" with city and Spurs officials and was open to the idea of a downtown move.
Fast forward to the present: Not only is Sakai open to it, he's willing to consider shouldering some of the new arena's construction costs. He said he's being a realist. If Spurs Sports & Entertainment sees the team's future downtown, that's where it's going. But Sakai intends to exact a price for his support.
What does he want? A serious plan for economic development on the East Side, with buy-in from the city and the Spurs.
The idea would be to make good on the still-unfulfilled promise that was implicit in the 1999 political campaign that persuaded Bexar County voters to approve $186 million in taxpayer funding for the SBC Center (later renamed the AT&T Center and now the Frost Bank Center). In other words, jobs and business growth for struggling East Side neighborhoods.
The challenge, in Sakai's words, is to "turn this into a win-win for the community."
If a new Spurs arena is built, it will be on the current site of the Institute of Texan Cultures at Hemisfair, and it would likely cost more than $1 billion. The Spurs, we're told, will put up some of the money, but they want local government to bear most of the cost.
The bill, when it comes due, would be too big for the city alone to cover. It needs the county to pitch in. That why Sakai has leverage to demand an economic development blueprint.
He said a "development team" of county, city and Spurs officials is working on such a plan. He didn't offer any details because he's not directly involved and doesn't know the fine points. But it wouldn't be crazy to think the plan might tackle obstacles to development such as the traffic choke points between Interstate 35 and the site of both the arena and the county-owned Freeman Coliseum.
"Let's take care of the East Side, and then we'll see what we can do for the Spurs," he said.
In the meantime, the county's starting to think through how to keep the Frost Bank Center busy if the Spurs decamp. Again, scant details, but this pledge from Sakai: "We're not going to let that facility become the next Astrodome — we are going to repurpose the arena."
At this point, the only good news is that the arena's other major tenant, the San Antonio Stock Show & Rodeo, would have the flexibility to make major improvements in its program if the Spurs aren't running the place.
Talk of where the county would find the money for its share of a new arena is zeroing in on the county venue tax, paid mostly by visitors to San Antonio who stay in hotels and rent cars.
"It has been brought up as a potential source of revenue for a new Spurs arena," said County Commissioner Justin Rodriguez, whose West Side precinct takes in part of downtown. "But we're far from calling any kind of an election."
For one thing, the Frost Bank Center needs upgrades, regardless of the Spurs' potential move, and the county expects to use venue tax revenue to pay for them. Also, the county will have to field what's likely to be a bunch of community requests for money for amateur sports and cultural arts facilities.
Bexar County Commissioners Court could ask voters to approve a venue tax increase next May or the following November.
If that happens, a Spurs arena would likely share the ballot with other projects, and Rodriguez said he doubts the county has the capacity to raise more than $500 million that way.
That's why it will take the county, city and Spurs kicking in for a downtown arena. "I think that's the only way that could happen," Rodriguez said.
Here's a good place to ask the question: Why can't Spurs Sports & Entertainment pay for the whole thing? The question is academic because the politics of the situation dictate that city and county officials will do what it takes to keep the NBA franchise here.
I asked Sakai a related question: Why would the county pay anything for a downtown arena, given the threat it would pose to the Frost Bank Center? "I don't want to lose the Spurs," he said. "I'm aware that we have to keep an eye on the ball — we have to support the Spurs. They're in a small market, and they need as much help as they can get."
His answer sounds familiar, shot through as it is by fear that if San Antonio loses the Spurs, it loses the one thing that truly puts us on the national map.
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