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The San Antonio Missions have unveiled new renderings of a planned downtown ballpark.
The minor baseball league team’s owners are working with the city, Bexar County, and developer Weston Urban on a multi-use facility near the San Pedro Creek. Estimates in 2024 put the anticipated costs of the ballpark at $160 million. The estimated completion is early 2028 with an opening day sometime in April that year.
The project goes before the city’s Historic Design and Review Commission next week, a standard step in the creation for many new buildings especially in the downtown area.
The development has sparked backlash over the displacement of residents and concerns about gentrification. The plans led to the ultimate demolition of the Soap Factory apartments, one of the few affordable housing complexes in downtown.
Last week, the San Antonio City Council unanimously approved new requirements for future developers to conduct displacement impact assessments before projects move forward.
If the design is approved, the ballpark project would next head into financing and construction planning.
“This community gathering place, in tandem with the adjacent mixed use residential developments, is truly the culmination of well over a decade of public and private effort to breathe vibrancy into the San Pedro Creek Culture Park,” said Randy Smith in a press release sent by the Missions. Smith serves as a board member of Designated Bidders which is the ownership group of the Missions.
The designs show the first detailed look at the stadium itself and neighboring projects.
According to city documents, it would have 4,500 fixed seats but a maximum capacity for 7,500.
The ballpark would replace the 32-year-old Nelson Wolff Stadium on the West Side at Highway 90 and Callaghan Road, which has been the home of the Missions since 1994. MLB.com lists the existing stadium as having 6,200 fixed seats and seating in left field that can accommodate an additional 3,000 people.
The city has had something of a back-and-forth with the construction of a new baseball stadium over the last decade. In early 2016, then-Mayor Ivy Taylor worked with the Elmore Sports Group for the creation of a downtown baseball stadium that would host a Triple-A team.
However, several months later, the deal was off the table due to a lack of funding commitments.
Then the plans were shelved indefinitely in 2017 when Ron Nirenberg was elected as mayor and said a baseball stadium was not amongst his priorities. Nirenberg at the time was favoring a push for a Major League Soccer team, a plan that also ultimately did not materialize.
Now San Antonio is in the throes of two major stadium projects. The Missions baseball park and a new basketball arena for the San Antonio Spurs on the opposite end of downtown.
