Deal to spend $500m+ in taxpayer money on new Spurs arena moves ahead, judge promises it won’t cost taxpayers

Bexar County commissioners took another step toward approving at least half a billion dollars in tax money for a new San Antonio Spurs arena yesterday, voting 4-1 to approve a memorandum of understanding with San Antonio and team owner Peter Holt to start negotiating terms of an arena deal. Or perhaps that should be continue negotiating terms of an arena deal, because the initial framework of a deal is already in place:

The county’s so-called venue tax is made up of two taxes: one on hotel rooms and another on car rentals. It could yield up to $397 million in revenue if the hotel occupancy tax remains at 1.75%, or as much as $449 million if the county asks voters to raise that tax to the maximum of 2%, County Manager David Smith told commissioners early this month….

Aside from the venue tax, the new Spurs arena could be financed with other pots of public dollars, such as revenue from the city’s project financing zone and increases in property taxes within a tax increment reinvestment zone.

The hotel and car rental taxes appear to be headed for a public referendum, possibly in November, otherwise next May. The TIF district and project financing zone (basically a TIF for business and hotel taxes) wouldn’t have to go through a public vote, but would require the approval of the city council or county commission.

The total public outlay from all this is as yet undetermined. (The city is also considering gifting Holt a publicly owned golf course, market value likewise undetermined.) But it’s not stopping proponents of the arena project from saying it’s clearly better than the current situation, where the Spurs are forced to play in an ancient 23-year-old arena that is practically falling to bits, probably:

The county would need to pour about $78 million into improving the Frost Bank Center through 2029, Mike Wooley, co-founder of Venue Solutions Group, told commissioners Tuesday. The venue would require about $245 million worth of improvements over the next 20 years — if it continued hosting an NBA team.

The San Antonio Express-News doesn’t bother to ID Venue Solutions group, so let’s look them up: They were “launched in 2011 by three industry professionals with over 65 years of collective experience in the public assembly facility industry” (names of said professionals not included on the company website) and have done “facility condition analyses” for a bunch of different arenas, though when you click on “view case study” no actual studies are available. So while county judge Peter Sakai and county manager David Smith both said that’s $245 million the public wouldn’t have to spend on arena improvements if they built a new arena, there’s no way to tell how much the public would have to spend on improvements for a new arena, which in 20 years would be almost as old as the one the Spurs owner is desperate to get out of now.

But anyway, spending [insert large number here] dollars of tax money on a new Spurs arena to replace the one that was opened during Season 14 of The Simpsons won’t cost taxpayers anything, promises Sakai, because reasons:

Sakai made clear numerous times that putting this on the backs of County taxpayers is a non starter for him.

“For me to continue to have the county be invested, no homeowner property tax,” he said. “It cannot fall on the seniors. It cannot fall under disabled. It cannot fall on the veterans who are on fixed income. That’s that’s a deal breaker for me.”

Well, that’s okay then! Wherever the money comes from, it won’t take away from money for seniors or the disabled or veterans or adorable puppies, because they’ll have just as much public money at their disposal, from all the magic beans that will come with this deal, once it’s negotiated, for sure. Also, Sakai promises, the current Spurs arena will remain “sustainable and viable for the long term” and won’t “turn into the next Astrodome” — because that always works out well.

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8 comments on “Deal to spend $500m+ in taxpayer money on new Spurs arena moves ahead, judge promises it won’t cost taxpayers

  1. They assume that a 2 percent motel and rental increase will not affect tourists spending habits while in the city.If that is the case why not jack it up 100 percent.
    Tourist dollars are not infinite.Every dollar you tax means they have less to spend somewhere else.

    1. Don’t the fools that vote for hotel and rental car taxes realize that money could be spent on highway improvements? The concept that tourism and sin tax money is play money is a scam to line the pockets of contractors and sports team owners.

      1. In San Antonio the economy is centered around the military, not so much tourism, certainly not convention business. You can’t raise as much in hotel taxes from people on per-diem staying overnight at government rates.

  2. Just wondering, with the advent of ridesharing services is car rental still a big thing? If you can just Uber is it worth renting a car unless you’re going to be driving long distances or if you have a big family and you’re traveling with a lot of stuff. I’m sure people still need to rent cars when traveling but hasn’t the volume of car rentals decreased?

    1. Nope, it’s projected to continue to keep growing steadily. https://www.statista.com/forecasts/891426/number-of-users-in-the-car-rentals-market-in-the-united-states

    2. The car rental business may well have lost some ground to the rideshare apps, but it’s still a big enough market that airport authorities across Merica have built entire off-site facilities dedicated to housing rental cars and rental companies.

      Using Orlando as an example… in a city like this where public transportation options are severely limited (especially to places that people want to visit), and where entire districts/destinations can turn into humongous surcharge areas, hopping on a car from Hertz or Avis might be more worthwhile than waiting forever for your Uber or Lyft ride to reach you.

  3. My reading of the third block quote (“For me to continue to have the county be invested, no homeowner property tax,” he said. “It cannot fall on the seniors. It cannot fall under disabled. It cannot fall on the veterans who are on fixed income. That’s that’s a deal breaker for me.”) is that it’s not about services, it’s about politically-sensitive demographic groups that pay property taxes.

    It’s part of why, for all the hype about “Berkeley bans gas stoves” it’s always “(in new construction)” — no city council member wants to be interviewed for a news story about a senior who has to sell their house because they can’t afford mandatory updates.

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