The San Antonio Spurs want a new arena. They just don’t want anyone talking about it. They have been courting public officials for months in the hopes of getting a significant amount of public money for this new venue. But even though the team has been reaching out and arranging talks with the city for months, the public continues to have surprisingly few, if any, details about the costs of this new arena. Yet, the Spurs are now insisting on a new tax election that, if passed, would give the Spurs a significant amount of taxpayer money. We don’t know what that amount is nor do we know whether the city would, again if the measure passed, need to create a new tax or raise a current tax. The public is left to guess because city leaders continue to talk about these facts behind closed doors. What we do know is that the Spurs are “pushing for Bexar County Commissioners Court to call a May venue tax election”. The team submitted language to Bexar County that they wanted to be used in a new tax election.
Why don’t we know anything about this potential new arena? Because when the San Antonio local media asks for public information about the Spurs, the city attorney instantly runs to the Texas Attorney General to cry and whine like a baby to have him reject any open records requests. Or the team refuses to talk to anyone unless they sign an absurd non-disclosure form that currently stops San Antonio leaders from telling us the actual details of a new arena. Back in September of last year, the San Antonio Express-News wrote a story that expressed how little information was being given to the public about this proposal. Essentially, for over a year, the Spurs have continued to push local officials to give them taxpayer money for a new arena, yet “city officials and Spurs executives still won’t say what the basketball palace will cost or who would pay”.
Or as KSAT.com put it:
“City of San Antonio unveils conceptual plans for downtown Spurs arena, sports & entertainment district. Crucial details like exact size, design, price, or funding mechanism for the arena aren’t immediately clear” – KSAT.com, 11/20/24
Late last year, the San Antonio City Manager claimed in an interview that the cost of a new arena could be as high as $1.2 billion. Another local media outlet in San Antonio got their hands on an email from the Assistant City Manager that discussed potential project consultants for the new arena and pegged the overall costs to be between $3-$4 billion. Considering that the Spurs have allegedly told city officials that the team is willing to put in $240 million of their money into the deal, that leaves quite a gap for both sides of the deal. Fast-forward to today, and we know very little information about the new arena that we didn’t already know.
So it was rather refreshing to see one Bexar County Judge come out and say that he will not support any tax election for the Spurs arena until he “knows how much the facility would cost”.
“If you ask me today if I will call for a special meeting to consider a venue tax election in May, my answer today is no,” Bexar County Judge Sakai told reporters after Tuesday’s commissioners court meeting. “There are many questions about the Spurs proposal for a venue tax election and not enough answers at this time. We are also missing out on the input of the public…“The public needs to understand the details,” Sakai said. “They need to understand the facts, and they certainly need to understand the figures that are going to be used as to how much this project is going to cost, and how much the venue tax and the county can yield, and how much the county is willing to commit.”” — San Antonio Express-News, 01/07/25
The Judge also spoke about the need for the Spurs to pay, at minimum, half of the total costs, rather than forcing the city to raise property taxes for the new arena. The Express-News also wrote that even though the Spurs are pushing for this new election, the county continues to be “still in the dark about how much the Spurs and city would contribute to the arena’s construction”. The Judge said that he would only call for a tax election if the team gave up a specific plan that answers his questions. That means that the team would need to have this plan given within a week if it wants a tax election in May of this year. The next time that the Spurs can ask for a new tax election is November of this year. This week, the city agenda showed that local officials would be going over the arena project and discussing “methods of financing the proposed project” and whether local officials should sign a “memorandum of understanding” with the Spurs when they negotiate a “financing plan for an arena”. Alright! We will finally get some details! Oh wait, the meeting is taking place “in a closed-door session”.
The Express-News wrote a recent story that points out that in 1999, the Spurs were given a publicly financed arena. In exchange, the Spurs promised that their new arena would bring in “jobs and growth for the surrounding area”. The arena was built. What about the other part of the deal? Yeah, few jobs, if any, were created and the Arena “never delivered on that promise”. In the end, the Spurs paid for just $29 million out of the $190 million that it cost to build their current arena in 2002. The residents around the current arena were told about a magical “economic boom” that would occur once the arena was built. As the Express-News wrote in a story detailing business outside the arena…“It didn’t happen. Now the Spurs might leave”.
By the way, do people remember how the San Antonio Spurs tried to get a new arena built in 1999? One of their brilliant proposals included a plan to take money away from elementary schools that were teaching children on an already bare-bones budget. Screw the kiddies! Let’s build it! Furthermore, it wasn’t that long ago when San Antonio taxpayers gave the team over $100 million dollars for a massive renovation of the arena. I wonder what happened to those upgrades. At the very least, let us be happy that the team wants to leave their current arena for the right reasons. Their current arena is falling apart. Oh, I am being told that it is far from falling apart and that it “could stay in operation for a few more decades”. Why does the team want to leave? Why else? A new arena “generates more income for a franchise”.
But where are we right now? Have the Spurs disclosed the actual cost of the arena to the city in private?
“A city spokesperson said this week the Spurs still haven’t provided a revised estimate, and that how much the team is willing to put up for arena construction remains unknown” — San Antonio Express-News, 01/09/25
So, nothing? The public gets nothing before the team wants taxpayers to give them hundreds of millions?
