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The City of San Antonio began its last round of two-day Project Marvel Sports & Entertainment District community workshops on Tuesday. The city has held workshops in each city council district to inform residents about the major proposed development project centered around a new Spurs arena, and to solicit resident feedback.
More than 60 residents attended the District 1 community forum on Tuesday night.
Assistant City Manager Lori Houston told the group that although there won’t be a specific citywide vote on moving forward with Project Marvel, a potential November infrastructure bond election would serve as the method for residents to signal their approval or disapproval.
“I’ve heard people say, ‘How do I stop this project?’” Houston said. “You’ll have an opportunity. We don’t want to stop the project, but this is part of the process.”
The infrastructure bond’s passage is essential to prepare the district area for more development. The San Antonio City Council has until August 18 to call that election, and the new council is on recess until the beginning of August.
That timeline frustrated several people who spoke at the forum, who said they believed the process was rushed and that their input couldn’t be adequately considered by the city council in the short time before the August decision.
Houston said the city would be certain to get the traffic situation downtown right, particularly in light of recent construction woes in the last several years.
“How will traffic, parking, and construction be managed to minimize disruption and protect neighborhoods and small businesses?” she said. “It has to be, I want to stress that there’s no half-assing this.”
Houston made her pitch for the component pieces of Project Marvel — the Spurs arena, upgrades to the Alamodome, expansion of the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center, the addition of a new Convention Center hotel, converting the John Woods Courthouse into a mid-size music venue, and a land bridge connector over Interstate 37.
She said the Spurs’ desire to leave the Frost Bank Center, where the team has played since 2002, was to improve the fan experience. The city and Spurs are now imagining a fan experience downtown centered around the availability of restaurants, shopping, and public green spaces.
“That is why the district is important, making sure there’s opportunities for everyone to participate,” Houston said.
She reiterated the methods to fund the arena, in a slightly different formulation than it has been discussed in the past — tourists through the Hotel Occupancy Tax, developers through taxes on their guaranteed new development, the Spurs through their own contribution, and the private sector through things like naming rights or equity.
Houston said although general taxpayers would not directly contribute to the arena, public money from Tax Increment Reinvestment Zones would.
“We can use those taxes to support the arena,” she said. “But city council already made the authority and approved the fact that those taxes are diverted from the general fund in 2017 when they created the TIRZ.”
The TIRZ is a geographic area where property taxes over a base year valuation are held onto by a separate entity and used for upgrades within the geographic area, rather than going into the city’s general fund. Some council members have floated the idea of dissolving or finding a way to use funds from some city TIRZs as a way to fill gaps in next year’s budget.
Houston said upgrades to the Alamodome and Convention Center were essential to hold onto hundreds of millions of dollars in economic impact both offer the city every year, and neither would require resident tax dollars of any kind.
“We’re going to fund that through the Hotel Occupancy Tax,” Houston said, referring to a tax paid by visitors who stay in city hotels and short term rentals.
And she said upgrading the Alamodome was far cheaper than the alternative, which would be tearing it down and starting fresh.
The new Convention Center hotel would be funded primarily by tax credits and private funding, with some public support for necessary utility and road upgrades.
The John Woods Courthouse conversion is intended to relieve the Alamodome of mid-size events that don’t fill its capacity and force the city to lose out on ticket revenue for larger concerts and events. She said this would likely be funded by a historic tax credit and private investment.
And the land bridge over I-37 would be completely contingent on federal funding that the city can't move forward without.
Following Houston’s presentation, members of the public worked together to come up with their own ideas for what could improve the project — or in some cases, why it shouldn’t go forward.
One group suggested making Cesar Chavez St. pedestrian-only on nights when the Spurs are playing; another attendee suggested placing the new hotel on top of the Spurs arena, and a few groups said they wanted money in an infrastructure bond to be used on other things like flood mitigation.
13 San Antonio residents died last month when Beitel Creek flooded on the city’s northeast side, and more than 100 have been found dead in Kerr County following a disastrous flood there.
Attendees were also given surveys to fill out about Project Marvel that asked questions about their concerns with the project, what amenities would make it more enjoyable for them, and whether they supported using public funds to improve downtown infrastructure to support Project Marvel.
Houston said all the information gathered at the workshops, including survey responses and verbal comments, would be compiled and delivered to the city council before they vote on whether to call a November infrastructure election.
“[The council] already told us, ‘We want to know what public sentiment is about this before we make any decisions,’” she said. “That’s why this is important.”
You can fill out the survey online to share your feedback.
One additional community workshop was recently added for District 2 on July 19, where the city will also ask what local residents want to happen to the area around the Frost Bank Center.
