While plans for a new downtown stadium for the minor-league San Antonio Missions would cost city residents $126 million in tax kickbacks, the more pressing issue as a city council vote approaches this Thursday is the 381 units of affordable housing that would be demolished to make way for the new development, which would also include a hotel and new stores. City officials say there will be replacement apartments as well, but after meeting with project proponents on Sunday, some residents now say they don’t trust the promises and want the council vote delayed:
[James] Boscher and [Brooklyn] Ramos told KSAT on Friday that they didn’t expect to be able to stop the stadium project, but they wanted guaranteed housing in the area at similar rates and money to help move.
Boscher’s opinion shifted after taking part in a Sunday meeting that included [Weston Urban developer] Randy Smith and three city council members. It seemed clear, Boscher told KSAT on Monday, that council members didn’t have enough information and that Weston Urban “didn’t have any actual guarantees.”
Weston Urban owns the Soap Factory apartments, which it says it would tear down in stages, with residents being allowed to move temporarily to other units before those are then demolished, or moved to other housing it owns elsewhere in the city if those are available, or maybe just given “housing navigation” services to find new homes. The stadium wouldn’t actually go on the Soap Factory site — it would be across the street, if I’m reading this map correctly — but the apartments would be torn down to make way for a mixed-use development that could eventually include 1,500 new apartments, or not:
Under terms of the Missions owners’ deal with the city and county, bonds for the ballpark’s construction would be sold only when Weston Urban has its projects for phases 1 and 2 designed and financed.
Those initial phases would add about 575 apartments and between 175 and 200 hotel rooms, Smith said….
More than 1,500 apartments could be built through all four phases.
No guarantees about whether any of that housing would be built, though, or whether it would be available at the same low rents as the current apartments. And really, no explanation of why the Soap Factory buildings need to be torn down rather than built around, other than presumably that Weston Urban doesn’t think low-income neighbors would be as attractive as thousands of new residents meant to “be a massive shot in the arm of existing businesses and small [food and beverage] folks,” as Smith puts it.
Mayor Ron Nirenberg says the new development is necessary in order to generate new tax revenues to pay for the stadium so that taxpayers don’t “end up on the hook” — which only makes sense if you think that tax revenues from new development should go to pay private developers’ costs, something that has not worked out well in the past. Some council members have reportedly expressed concern about tearing down the apartment complex; we’ll have to wait and see whether it’s enough members, or enough concern, to delay Thursday’s vote.
ooooh, “housing navigation” services.
when the bronx terminal market was demolished for a shopping center, the NYC Economic Development Corporation said that they would help the remaining vendors find new places to move to…by handing them a pile of faxed pages of commercial vacancy listings from placement services.
I am sure that “housing navigation” services are something very, very similar.
And the Salt Lake City Council claims to believe that a 60 story luxury condo tower will increase affordable housing. Really? I’m sure those condos with a view of the Wasatch Mountains towering above the skyline will be affordable, just like Park City. Just another batch of giveaways to billionaires.
I think ‘housing navigation’ services might consist of a link to Zillow…
Doing this for a AA minor league baseball team might win San Antonio the award for most ridiculous giveaway to super wealthy team owners.
They probably want this new ballpark to try and get their AA team “upgraded” to AAA, but it’s still irrelevant minor league baseball, so that is still not nearly enough reason to give away over $100 million.
The minor league teams are really starting to run shakedown operations similar to the major leagues, scaled down to fit their particular markets. The Modesto Nuts, with MLB backing, wanted $32 million, which has to be a significant fraction of Modesto’s total parks budget.
I would not be surprised if they’re not actually done with paring down the minor leagues. The teams that survived the first round are thus incentivized to plan as extravagantly as possible, so they have a better shot at surviving the next round of cuts.
I agree. MLB reduced their minor league subsidies to 4 MLB-financed minor league teams for each MLB team. They don’t really need 4 each, given how few low-minors players ever make it to MLB.
If MLB wants to get more aggressive about cutting those costs, they could easily pare it down to 2 MLB-financed minor league teams per club, plus a single-A level team based at each club’s spring training site.
Minor league baseball is no less (or more) “relevant” than major league baseball.
It is still baseball and, in the grand scheme of things, a very high level of baseball. But it is just baseball. It cannot improve the lives of many people who struggle to afford a place to live.
Minor league baseball (and college baseball) is much more “relevant” than major league baseball insofar as it remains somewhat affordable for fans and brings a high level of baseball to people who live far from a major league park.
This mentality of “the only things that matter are the things that matter to rich people in the biggest cities” is a rot in our sports culture and, perhaps, culture overall.
However, that does not justify that level of public shakedown, of course.
There really is not much value for the fans in jumping from AA to AAA anyway. They are very similar, really, except that AA is more about developing young players with MLB potential and AAA is a bit more about stashing the guys are on the 40-man roster, but not MLB regulars. Both are still a very high level of baseball in the grand scheme of things.
I get the strong impression that one of MLB ownership’s best ideas about hedging the regional sports network decline is to drive people towards attending the major-league ballparks. I’m starting to think of them like the small-town landlords I’ve encountered who think they’ve got a goldmine just because they own the biggest building in central Podunk… no, your asset is not as strong as you think it is, and your reasoning depends upon a faulty assumption that everyone would be clambering to spend money on it if only a few external factors were different.
Trying to turn MLB into a “destination” sport a la NFL is probably going to backfire in their faces rather spectacularly, if only because they have 81 games to book rather than 8. And part of the appeal of baseball as an accessible sport, that they’re throwing in the garbage, is that you can follow a player’s minor-league journey up from the farm team in your hometown, or maybe catch an existing major league star on a rehab assignment. The owners don’t really seem to understand the on-ramp to their product. The chance of Star Trek’s prophecy about professional baseball disappearing during the 21st century has surely never been higher…
Fully agreed about the flaws (futility?) of MLB’s desire to turn MLB into a part-sport/part-attraction setup — and it actually leads right into a corollary to the Reed’s point of how the only things that matter are the things that matter to rich people, which is “Nothing that can’t or won’t produce the maximum possible revenue is worth doing.” If there’s one thing that the ultra-rich would want try to buy with their money, it would be even more money.
Speaking of stupid business decisions, https://bizfromthestands.blogspot.com/2024/09/sacramento-as-playoff-games-not-in.html.
From That Guy: “In Portland, Providence Park is no longer an adequate baseball facility and seats around 20,000 anyways.”
It’s no longer any type of baseball facility. It’s no longer a baseball facility at all, and hasn’t been since 2010.
Easy solution, fold the 33-115 White Sux into the AA Birmingham Barons and then Guaranteed Rate Field or whatever will be open for playoff games.
Guaranteed Rate Field will be available in October for the next several seasons at least.