Particulars of a plan to rework the southeast nook of downtown San Antonio right into a $4 billion sports activities and leisure middle are coming to mild as metropolis leaders gear up for his or her first public dialogue of what’s been dubbed “Undertaking Marvel.”
Metropolis Council will get its first public briefing on the proposed district, to be situated “in Hemisfair and the encircling space,” in keeping with the agenda for a particular session to be held at 10:30 a.m. Thursday.
The employees memo connected to the one-item agenda provides few new particulars, which states the beginning of hush-hush discussions started within the spring of 2023. Since then, town, Bexar County and the San Antonio Spurs “have had conversations relating to the chance to develop a sports activities and leisure district in downtown San Antonio,” which the memo asserts “could be transformational” for town.
The district may embody an expanded conference middle, an additional improved Alamodome, a brand new occasion venue, a conference middle lodge, “and probably a brand new area for the San Antonio Spurs.”
On Thursday, Council will study in regards to the conceptual plan, feasibility research, potential funding sources and subsequent steps. If the undertaking — or some parts of it — are deemed possible, town will have interaction the neighborhood with “planning and design workshops and public conferences.”
“[T]his briefing is the primary of many public briefings,” the memo states. Metropolis employees will return to council on Dec. 4 with a briefing on the Conference Middle enlargement feasibility.
Native reviews have revealed in latest months that metropolis employees have been in contact with a number of actual property and consulting firms to check the feasibility of creating a sports activities and leisure district in San Antonio. These firms and different officers had been requested to signal nondisclosure agreements.
Whereas town already owns a lot of the land in Hemisfair, it’s eyeing at the least two main parcels, property that Metropolis Supervisor Erik Walsh described lately as 40 to 50 acres able to be developed. Walsh stated town has the suitable of first refusal on the federally-owned land, that means it will get first crack at making a proposal to the Normal Companies Administration.
In April, the College of Texas System Board of Regents gave its approval for the College of Texas at San Antonio to enter into negotiation with the Metropolis of San Antonio about buying the Institute of Texan Cultures (ITC) property.
The ITC makes up roughly 13.5 acres within the public-private Hemisfair growth, sufficient house for town to construct a sports activities area if the museum weren’t there, in keeping with sporting facility specialists.
Plus, different contiguous parcels within the japanese quadrant of Hemisfair, both unused or undeveloped immediately, enhance the chances that the realm might be remodeled right into a full sports activities and leisure vacation spot with an area at its core.
Earlier this yr, a metropolis spokeswoman described a number of potential tasks for the positioning, included increasing the Henry B. González Conference Middle, wherein Walsh has stated should be completed to compete with different cities for assembly and customer enterprise.
One other undertaking on the drafting board requires renovating the Alamodome and constructing a land bridge over Interstate 37 to reconnect Hemisfair and the remainder of downtown San Antonio to the East Facet the place the Alamodome sits.
Metropolis employees look like aligning on what has been a tightly held undertaking for a while. At a developer’s commerce convention on Thursday, Transportation Division Director Cat Hernandez talked about it when requested how town will look in 10 years.
“I feel that our downtown goes to expertise some enormous potential alternatives from the leisure district [and] hopefully the baseball stadium,” she stated.
Reporter Tracy Idell Hamilton contributed to this report.
