If Spurs move to a new downtown arena, it could be in Hemisfair – San Antonio Express-News

Randy Smith, left, and Mayor Ron Nirenberg enjoy the highlights of Nelson Wolff Stadium before a news conference to announce the new local ownership of the San Antonio Missions baseball team. Smith is one of the team’s new owners, and Ryan is CEO of Ryan Sanders Baseball, one of the owner/operators of the team.
The Spurs in action against the Houston Rockets at the Frost Bank Center (formerly the AT&T Center) on Oct. 18, 2023. The county-owned arena on San Antonio’s East Side has been the Spurs’ home since 2002. Team executives have been talking with city officials about a possible new arena downtown.
Nelson W. Wolff Municipal Stadium on the far West Side is the home field of the San Antonio Missions, a minor league baseball team. The club is looking for a new home downtown.
The latest maneuvering over plans for new sports facilities in downtown San Antonio suggests that Hemisfair is being looked at seriously as a potential site for an NBA arena for the Spurs.
No one involved in the discussions is saying anything publicly. But recent contacts between city officials and the owners of the San Antonio Missions baseball team indicate that the site of the Institute of Texan Cultures at Hemisfair has emerged as a possible venue for a Spurs arena.
According to sources familiar with the matter, a city official discouraged the Missions’ owners from pursuing the 13-acre property as a location for a new baseball stadium, most likely because City Hall is eyeing the site for a new home for the Spurs.
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RELATED: City manager, Spurs in private talks about possible new downtown arena
An NBA arena, which could cost up to $1 billion, would be the capstone of the city’s years-long conversion of Hemisfair, originally the site of the 1968 World’s Fair, into a family-friendly gathering place surrounded by apartments, a hotel, offices, restaurants and shops.
Why would a minor league baseball team have anything to do with plans for an NBA basketball arena?
It’s complicated.
The Bexar County-owned Frost Bank Center (formerly the AT&T Center) has been the home court of the San Antonio Spurs since it opened in 2002. It was built for the Spurs and financed with county-issued bonds backed by county tax revenue. Now, the Spurs are considering leaving for a new arena downtown.
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Both the Missions and the Spurs are weighing plans for new venues, and for a time the teams' owners considered the idea of a downtown sport district with a baseball stadium and a basketball arena side by side. Boosters said the project would attract bars, restaurants, retail and other development and energize a central business district still struggling to rebound from the pandemic.
That idea appears to have lost traction. But by all indications, the Spurs’ interest in moving downtown has not.
The Missions, meanwhile, urgently need a new stadium because their existing home on the far West Side, the dilapidated Wolff Stadium, doesn’t meet Major League Baseball standards. And the team’s owners — who include Graham Weston and Randy Smith, founders of the downtown real estate development firm Weston Urban — want the Missions to play in the urban core.
The team is expected to seek public financing for a new ballpark, which would require permits, construction, utilities, police and fire protection, possible zoning changes and numerous other land use issues.
City Manager Erik Walsh and Mayor Ron Nirenberg have had “a preliminary conversation with the Missions group, but they have not submitted a plan to the City,” Laura Mayes, a spokeswoman for the city, told the San Antonio Express-News via email.
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The Missions’ owners are expected to submit a plan to the city in a matter of days. But it likely won’t include the Institute of Texan Cultures property as a potential location, even though it’s one of only a handful of sites in the city center that could accommodate such a project.
Other downtown sites that have been discussed as possible locations for sports facilities include the parking lot south of the Alamodome, land near San Pedro Creek Culture Park, the former Lone Star Brewery complex and property along San Pedro Avenue where VIA Metropolitan Transit has its Metro Center and bus maintenance facility.
The Institute of Texan Cultures is a museum and library that celebrates the state’s cultural and ethnic diversity. Its events and programs include the annual Texas Folklife Festival, and its collection includes manuscripts, rare books, millions of historical photos and hundreds of oral histories.
But it has suffered declining attendance and staff layoffs in recent years. The building it occupies, originally the Texas Pavilion of the 1968 World’s Fair, is rundown, outmoded and not easily accessible from other downtown attractions. The institute is sandwiched between the former federal courthouse on César Chávez Boulevard and U.S. 281. 
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The University of Texas at San Antonio, which owns the property and operates the museum, is considering several options for revitalizing it. They include fixing up the current building, moving the institute to another spot within Hemisfair or relocating it outside Hemisfair. 
The university has a memorandum of understanding with the city and the owner of the Crockett Hotel to explore building a new home for the museum on what is now the hotel’s parking lot near the Alamo. UTSA leaders consider that the most appealing option.
Their evaluation is expected to take about six months.
The Institute of Texan Cultures at Hemisfair was originally the Texas Pavilion of the 1968 World’s Fair. The museum, whose collections and programs celebrate the state’s cultural diversity, has fallen on hard times. The University of Texas at San Antonio, which owns and operates the institute, is considering moving it to a new site near the Alamo. That could free up space at Hemisfair for a new NBA arena.
“At this time, the university is fully focused on assessing all the site options that are available to find a viable site that will support the long-term success and sustainability of the museum,” Veronica Salazar, UTSA’s chief enterprise development officer and senior vice president for business affairs, said in a statement.
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“The City of San Antonio remains an essential partner to UTSA’s development in the downtown urban core, and UTSA is committed to future partnerships with the City that advance the mission of the university,” Salazar added.
If university officials decide to move the institute, they’ll sell the current property and use the money to help pay for a new facility.   
Mayes, the city spokeswoman, said UTSA requested the city’s help in finding an alternative site for the institute.
Asked whether city officials urged the Missions’ owners not to propose a new baseball stadium at the Hemisfair property, Mayes did not respond.
Walsh and several of his lieutenants have been exploring the possibility of a downtown basketball arena with top Spurs executives since January, if not earlier, according to emails and text messages the Express-News obtained under the Texas Public Information Act.
The Spurs currently play in the Frost Bank Center (formerly the AT&T Center), an East Side arena owned by Bexar County. It was designed and built for the Spurs and was financed with county-issued bonds backed by county tax revenue. The Spurs have played in the arena since it opened in 2002.
If the team moved to a new downtown venue, the Frost Bank Center would lose its main tenant.
RELATED: Spurs looks to showcase Wembanyama in new downtown venue
Nevertheless, county officials, including County Judge Peter Sakai, who took office in January, were kept in the dark about city officials’ discussions with the Spurs, sources told the Express-News.
On April 11, Walsh and Nirenberg met with Spurs General Manager R.C. Buford and Bobby Perez, general counsel of Spurs Sports & Entertainment, at the East Side arena complex.
Mayor Ron Nirenberg, left, and City Manager Erik Walsh have held discussions with Spurs leaders about a new downtown arena for the NBA team. Significantly, those talks did not include Bexar County officials. If they move downtown, the Spurs would leave the county-owned Frost Bank Center without its main tenant.
Sakai said last week that he was open to the Spurs’ moving to a downtown arena and has had “preliminary discussions” about it with team and city officials.
Sakai said that if the Spurs decide to relocate, he would push the city and NBA franchise to spur more economic development on the East Side. That was a major part of the rationale for building the arena there, but the promise of spinoff jobs and businesses largely failed to materialize.
While city officials have been eager to discuss with the Spurs a possible move downtown, they’ve given the Missions a cool reception.
Text messages obtained under the Texas Public Information Act show that Randy Smith, the Weston Urban co-founder and CEO and a Missions investor, struggled to get Walsh to focus on the possibility of a new downtown ballpark.
“This is my 1, 2 and 3 priority,” Smith said in a May 15 text message to the city manager. “We are losing all credibility with padres and mlb. I will move mountains to sit with you for a bit, lots shaking and baking on my end.”
The Missions are the Double-A affiliate of the San Diego Padres. 
Weston Urban is the developer of the Frost Tower and two major residential projects under construction nearby, including a high-rise at Main and Travis that will have about 350 apartments.
The firm has amassed more than 30 acres in the downtown area, including a collection of parcels around San Pedro Creek Culture Park, and in the past it has approached other landowners about acquiring their property for a ballpark.
The firm recently bought the Soap Factory apartments, which are spread across three parcels of land on both sides of Martin between Camaron and Travis totaling 8.9 acres. It also owns 2.5 acres across Camaron from the Soap Factory and is set to acquire from the city a 0.9-acre site at the corner of Travis and Santa Rosa, next to the apartment complex.
Speculation in real estate circles is that the Soap Factory property could become the site of a new baseball stadium.
Weston, Smith and the Missions’ other owners are under the gun to produce a workable stadium plan.
Major League Baseball is requiring clubs to bring their stadiums up to its standards by 2025. Wolff Stadium, where the Missions currently play, would need extensive upgrades to meet the requirements. If the Missions do not lock down a plan or spend millions to improve the stadium, the club could lose its MLB affiliation.
The San Antonio Missions minor league baseball team are facing a time crunch to upgrade their home park, Nelson W. Wolff Municipal Stadium on the far West Side or lose their affiliation with Major League Baseball. MLB sets standards for minor league stadiums.
The Spurs are not facing such a time crunch. The team’s lease at the Frost Bank Center expires in 2032.
Spurs Sports & Entertainment did not respond to requests for comment for this article. Neither did Smith nor Bruce Hill, a Missions board member and investor who is identified by MLB as the “control person” for the baseball team.
Sakai met this year with a group of Missions owners and briefly discussed the possibility of a new stadium downtown, though he noted in an interview in early July that the owners did not ask for anything specific.
“It appears to me to be an attractive proposal to enhance the downtown area,” he said at the time. “But the owners would need to prove the project would benefit county taxpayers if they’re going to seek public financing.”
Missions owners who were in the room included Smith; San Antonio businesswoman Hope Andrade, a former Texas secretary of state; and Reid Ryan, who is the son of MLB Hall of Fame pitcher Nolan Ryan and the CEO of Ryan Sanders Baseball, which co-owns and operates the Missions.
Two sources said the Missions had another meeting recently with Sakai’s office to discuss the owners’ stadium plans.
Through a spokesman for Sakai, the Express-News requested an interview with the county judge. He did not respond.
Madison Iszler covers real estate, retail, economic development, and other business topics for the San Antonio Express-News.
Reach Madison at 210-250-3242, madison.iszler@express-news.net and @madisoniszler.
Greg Jefferson is Metro Editor of the San Antonio Express-News. Previously, he covered the energy industry, City Hall and politics for the newspaper. Greg also edited the alternative newsweekly San Antonio Current, wrote for the San Antonio Business Journal and co-founded Plaza de Armas, a now-defunct website that covered San Antonio politics and culture.
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